Inspired

I spent a good few evenings of 2019 visiting the utterly brilliant Year of the Fly blog. Last year, of course, was the official Year of the Fly and this chap (heck, I don't even know his name!) decided to see how many of the 107 families of British fly he could see during the course of the year. With time on his hands, he was finally revisiting his childhood passion, picking up where he left off several decades earlier. And, as his year slowly progressed, he rediscovered and reignited his passion for flies. It's a great blog and I'm sad that it's finished now. 

But what I found truly liberating about his 'Year of the Fly' is that he really doesn't fuss too much about identifying every specimen to species level, he's quite happy to leave them at family level and to then move on. Why do I find this to be liberating? Well, because it's something that I just can't do! It doesn't matter whether it's a fly or a beetle, a sea slug or a tadpole, I need to know what it is, what it does and I need to know if I've ever seen it before. Hence this chap's blog has been a real eye-opener for me. Despite portraying himself as a bumbling amateur, he really is keen as mustard. He has a plan, which he sticks to, and by the end of the year he has far exceeded his initial expectations. And he even falls in love with flies all over again, beautiful. His final post is almost a tear-jerker. Go on, go read it. 

Inspired by all of this, I decided to do likewise and keep tabs on how many families of Diptera (and Coleoptera, of course) I encounter during the course of this year. I'm not in competition with anybody, I don't think I'll achieve anywhere near the Diptera tally that the other fella did and I have absolutely zero idea how many beetle families I could encounter this year. 

But...

I *may* have spent the last couple of hours typing up a spreadsheet with my Diptera and Coleoptera species yearlist (just one of each so far - it didn't take long to fill in those rows!) plus a full listing of  the currently accepted British families for each too. So that's 107 dipteran families listed by suborder, infraorder, superfamily and family with a note telling me how many species reside in each, plus 102 coleopteran families listed by suborder, series, superfamily, division (weevils only) and family. And yeah, I get to tick them off as the year progresses. Excitement levels are high, let me tell you!    

There are well over 11,000 species up for grabs, which is a preposterously high number to even think about, from a total of 209 families. I swore to myself that I wouldn't set myself any targets - other than recording beetles and flies in every month of the year.

Hmmm....I do love a target, though.

Do you know Dry Cell's work at all? They were pretty amazing back in the day. And yes he does sound a bit like Chester from Linkin Park. But far better :)