What's causing these "flares"

I like this photo, but those "flares" (don't know what to call them) bother me. What am I doing wrong? What's causing this to happen? There's also that large area at the bottom circled, I assume all them rainbow colors is because I used a high iso? I shot this during the day with natural sunlight, no flash. Thanks for the help.

Here's the photo stats:
Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/9.0
Focal Length: 65 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Flash: Off, Did not fire

post the shot with out the the green highlighting.

It looks the 800 ISO is causing some issues... maybe? (un-educated guess)

I agree with windpig, though. A shot without the green circles would be easier to see.

Ok, here it is without the circles, thanks.

Some type of chromatic aberration. I'm guessing you used an MP-E 65 so lens quality shouldn't be an issue. It may be a combination of bright sunlight and a high ISO. You might try going to say 1/250sec and f/11 or so, lower your ISO to 200 and use some type of fill flash.

I don't think its so much the high ISO causing this as the strong lighting onto a metalic surface. The metalic (it looks metalic but might be something else) surface that the fly is standing on is giving you the coloured reflections most likley as a result of the use of natural lighting as the dominant light source - if you were using flash the high ISO would be contributing here since it would allow more of the natural light to dominate rather than the flashes light which I would expect to give a slightly lesser effect.

I suspect this lighting factor is also affecting the natural shinyness of the fly - there might also be some reflection occuring off the metalic surface onto the fly itself.

Yes it's just strong specular highlights from the natural light with the ones on the fly being slightly elongated by I guess subject movement. You could probably avoid the reflections on the foreground by shooting at a different angle but the fly reflections are likely to still be a problem in strong sun.
I tend to shoot natural light shots when it's slightly cloudy or when the light is less strong in morning/evening. Using diffused flash as the primary light source can help avoid this but if the sunlight is very strong you end up with a bit of a fight. Sometimes in this situation you can purposely shade the bug but often they will fly as soon as you do this.

Brian v.

Any glare is also exaggerated by cropping the shot.

maybe you should try taking off the filter to remove the flare?

I didn't use a filter for this shot. This fly must be really reflective, don't seem to have this problem with other bugs, I'll have to experiment more, thanks all.