First New Fly of the Year!

I performed my nightly inspection of the laundry shed walls and ceiling, and drew a blank for the second night running, so then I checked beneath several security lights and found a leggy gnat perched on the wall beneath one. I quickly potted it up and returned indoors to see what it was I'd caught this time. 

It was somewhat larger than the midges, fungus and window gnats that I've been seeing this week, emphasised by its hugely long legs. Here's a pic of the beast in the tube

I was one of seven folks heading home through Wimbledon Village in an old Ford Puma once, I reckon my knees and elbows were bent up in the air in a similar fashion to those of this fly. Here's the car I'm on about. Seven of us, ha! 

It really is just as well the police never saw us...

Anyway, back to the fly. I ran it through the keys and went wrong. Huh? Going back I checked and had to double-check again the top of its head, which had collapsed in on itself despite the fly only being dead for a matter of minutes. Weird. But, eventually, I saw that it did have ocelli and took it back through the key. Very tricky to discern indeed. From that point onwards it ran straight to Trichoceridae, which I knew it would. I've been keeping my eye open for a species of Trichocera all week. In fact, I half expected it to be my first diptera family of the year, even though I've never identified one before.

I found an online RES key to Trichoceridae and within a very short space of time had it down to genus and then species. Check out the (admittedly rather vague) dark cloud over vein r-m

Vein r-m is the short upright(ish) bent one in the middle of the widest part of the wing

And here's a pic of the claspers, it being a male

I definitely need to improve on my microscope pics - sorry! 

All of which leads to a robust identification of Trichocera regelationis - a new fly and a new family for me. According to the NBN Atlas it's also new for the Inner Hebs. Excellent, who knew gnats and midges could be so cool?