Beetle or Fly? Any idea of what this bug is?

Found this bug hanging out near my peas on the wall of my vegetable garden. Anyone know what this might be?

badmommablogger,
Your bug is neither a beetle nor a fly. Beetles have hard front wings. Flies have only one pair of wings and you can tell from your picture that yours has 2 pairs (4 wings). I thought at first it might be a wasp of some kind, but the antennae and the apparently scaly front wings suggested that it might (somewhat surprisingly) be a moth.

I then managed to track it down and it is indeed a moth, in the clearwing family Sesiidae. Yours is the Squash Vine Borer - Melittia cucurbitae: http://bugguide.net/node/view/291511/bgimage

We have a page for that moth in BugFiles: http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/1404/ and would be pleased if you would add your image to that page.

Having answered your query, I would just point out that this forum is not a good place to seek insect identifications.

This forum is for questions relating to adding data to the BugFiles database.

We have a forum on Insect and Spider Identification here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/bugid/all/
and if you post your question there, you may get some help,

If you have an image, you could attach it to the message you post for a better chance of getting an identification

Kennedy
BugFiles Administrator