Diptera - Limonidae

For the first time this year, an after dark search through the laundry shed turned up a blank with an utter lack of flies or beetles. Damn, now what? It was far too windy to realistically expect there to be anything sat on the hotel walls and a few minutes with a torch proved this to be the case, absolutely el zippo. I figured the kitchen might be worth a look and so, with the lights off and torch in hand, I slowly scanned all the corners, nooks and crannies I could find in search of pest beetle quarry. Nothing at all, bugger. By sheer good fortune, my torch beam played across a smallish tipulid sat on the edge of a doorway. Ooh, it was only about 50 times larger than the gnats I've been finding so far! I reached for my 'big' tube and, after a brief chase around the room, snared it for closer examination.

Here it is as initially found (ie before it fled to the highest, furthest corner of the room)

Already there's enough in this pic to confidently ID this cranefly to species

I'll readily admit here and now, had I reviewed and zoomed in on this image at the time, there would have been little requirement to capture and kill it. None, in fact. Plus it's a female, so I feel doubly guilty that I took it. But I was too busy sneaking around the kitchen by torchlight at the time, chasing the skittish beast into far corners, thinking to myself "I bet The Ghost hasn't seen this one yet!"

So kill it I did. And then checked it under a handlens and instantly realised that I already knew this fly. Here's the HUGE shortcut for you

Three dark bands on the femora - that's completely unique amongst the British cranefly fauna

Here's a pic from the Shropshire Craneflies atlas showing the same series of pale and dark bands

The other tell-tale signature of this species concerns the wing markings and the 'angular loop marking'. Again, here's the image from the book

And my specimen for comparison

Limonia nubeculosa, my first cranefly of the year and a doddle. Wish I could say the same about the rest of them, but they won't be so easy. In fact they'll probably stump me bigtime. The Ghost is pretty hot on his cranefly ID. I currently know about three, possibly four, species that exhibit distinctive wing patterns, he's gonna completely trounce me with these! 

My 2020 running total is now four beetles and two flies. And no dodgy (ie empty) mines...yet. 

Here's a classic from the eternally amazing Morcheeba for you, the sublime beauty that is Blood like Limonidae...

This is a fun fact for you: the lead singer here is Skye Edwards, so called because she decided to take the first letter from each of her names and run them all together - Shirley Klaris Yonavieve Edwards. Or so Wikipedia would have you believe. I have it on good authority that she came here fly and beetle hunting and loved the place so much she named herself after it, u-huh yep. Who knows, it's entirely possible. 

Ok, so it's probably not entirely possible. Spoilsport.