40 Flies

I had a day off work today and, despite it being sunny, it was blooming chilly in the NE wind. However, the Swallows are back and the Common Sandpipers are calling so it must be springtime. Actually, I even heard a lamb yesterday, thinking about it.

I took a quick wander along the track through Uig Wood, lots of flowers and a bit of blossom starting to show at last. I did spy a handful of small flies tucked deep inside Dandelion heads, but it was too breezy and cold to bother swiping around with the net. Happily, I did spy one fly that was well worth stopping to admire

Male Tipula vittata sunning itself on a dock leaf

I was pretty sure I knew the species, but vaguely remembered that there is a lookalike species, so I jammed it into my largest pot and took it back for a closer inspection. 

It's a very smart beast!

Easy to see why they call this family the Long-palped Craneflies!

The confusion species with Tipula vittata is Tipula lateralis, which I now realise is a far smaller insect. It has a somewhat similar pattern to the wingtip, though less well-marked and not as extensive. Below is the wing membrane of today's Tipula vittata, firstly against a pale background and then against a darker background to highlight the dark and pale markings

Tipula vittata - note the pale markings which extend to the wingtip itself

And this is the wing membrane of Tipula lateralis, from a specimen I collected here in May 2019

Similar, but the pale markings only head downwards and not across the wingtip

But the most obvious difference, when placed side by side, is the larger size of vittata (left) compared with lateralis (right)

So that's one more species added to The Grand Fly and Beetle Challenge and it just so happens to be my 40th species of fly for the year. That's not very many, considering it is almost May, but things have yet to really start emerging up here. The weather has been brilliant for much of the past week, but it's gone cold again now thanks to that northerly wind. I have tomorrow off work too, I may swipe that net a bit more and see if I can't find a few more identifiable flies for the tally. Last night The Ghost began taunting me: 

Been doing flies today, starting to hunt you down....

I don't know why he always has to talk in italics, he's just a bit weird like that. 

Anyway, I reckon I have at least twenty more fly species in the Backlog Box that I can identify, plus there's a whole shedload that are beyond my current capabilities (lack of magnification and keys being the main issues), hence need specialist attention. Stuff like the Sciaridae, Mycetophilidae, Ceratopogonidae, Chironomidae (those are all nematocerans) and there's a small but growing haul of Sphaeroceridae too.  

Roll on number 50 and then it'll be a race to see who hits 100 first! Of course, I'm completely whupping his arse when it comes to the beetles. As the lyrics say I WANT MORE!!!! 

Edit - The Ghost has now seen this post and responded accordingly:

I've gone from 20-something to 36 in the last 24 hours and I've only done the syrphids I had awaiting attention. You're going down...

Now I don't know about you guys, but I call that Fighting Talk. That Backlog Box is getting hammered tonight! 

Labels

All of the pinned/carded specimens in my storeboxes have accompanying data labels, apart from some 1930s butterflies and a couple of Green Tiger Beetles that I inherited from an elderly chap (it was either that or they were going into a bonfire). In the early days these labels were gangly great handwritten things, often dwarfing the specimen itself. 

A couple of years ago Ali kindly provided me with some Skye-centric bespoke labels, which lasted surprisingly well, though ultimately I almost ran out. Thankfully Ali sent me extras last year which kept me going until quite recently. Since then, I've depleted stocks down to the point of almost non-existence. Happily, I finally managed to find someone with a printer and tonight all has been put right once more. I realise that this is a somewhat niche subject matter, but hopefully it will be appreciated by anybody reading this who has their own specimen collection. 

My data labels, in all of their glory. I should maybe mention now that henceforth I'm going to be recording the month in Roman numerals. There are different methods of transcribing dates across the world and the chances of transposing the months with the days is a real risk. I'm not reinventing the wheel here, this has been standard for some time. I've just finally gotten around to catching up.

First the where, when, who labels - I think I've covered my options with the following templates

NG3963 - my beloved home monad

NG4063 - the adjacent monad where I also spend a lot of my free time

Skye (without locality) - for all of the other sites I frequent on this magical isle

And the final site option - anywhere that isn't on Skye!

So that's the sites done, what else is there? Ah yes, the species and determiner.

Genus and species with me as collector and determiner

Genus and species where I'm the collector but somebody else is the determiner

Edit - CRAP!!!! Can't believe I've got the genus and species the wrong way around...cue more printing. What a complete and utter knobber!!!!

And a pic for scale, each label is 13x7mm in size, considerably smaller than my existing labels - ALL of which I'm going to replace with these new ones. Mark Telfer, upon seeing my 'travelling storebox' of specimens last month, quietly mentioned that the data labels ought not be larger than the card the specimen itself is mounted upon. I hadn't appreciated this, my collection must appear a hideous abomination to any self-respecting entomologist.  

Not much life left in that nib, looks like I'll be replacing my pen too!

I'm also changing ALL of the data label pins for these 38mm insect pins in an attempt to standardise my collection with other collections. Because, as Max Barclay once commented to me, "there are only two types of collection. Those that end up in a museum and those that end up in a skip". It's not something I've really given much thought to, but there may be a local museum that might like to receive my assortment of badly pinned and wonkily carded specimens someday. I'm not getting any younger after all, despite the Peter Pan nickname I was given some 15 odd years back. If nothing else, they can be used as an example to students of how not to card and pin specimens, ha! 

Right, you've been very patient reading through that drivel. Here's some beetle porn for you as reward

I'm sure everyone will instantly recognise this as being the aedeagus of a Quedius (Staphylinidae) beetle. My question is, does it look a better fit for fuliginosus or curtipennis (it keys through to this pair)? I'm (marginally) favouring the latter but would really appreciate your thoughts, guys. Comment below, please. Apologies for the big blob of glue in the lower image, I didn't realise it was there until after I reviewed the pic.

Now here's a song that always makes me smile. Firstly because it resonates with me on a deep yet calming level, and secondly because of the opening lines 

Once a label is on something

It becomes an 'it'

Like it's no longer alive

Agromyzid Activity

Last month, whilst down in England with The Ghost, I collected several very small fly pupae from within old Hogweed stems. A bit of online detective work led us to believe that we had found Melanagromyza angeliciphaga, which would be a new species for both of us. Anyway, we each took several home in the hope of rearing through some adult flies, hence enabling a conclusive identification.

Earlier this evening, The Ghost asked if I'd had any flies emerge from my pupae yet, seeing as he'd recently had a couple hatch out. I hadn't actually checked since yesterday morning and a quick look revealed that one was definitely colouring up in readiness to emerge. I can only surmise that it's a lot colder on my desk up here on the tundra than it is in The Ghost's Haunted House down in tropical Hampshire, hence my pupae - who live in a tube within inches of my eternally open window - must still think it's midwinter. I haven't had to scrape any ice from their glass tube yet, but it's been close a few times. Balmy it certainly ain't!

Here's a pic from a few weeks back when they'd just arrived here in Uig

Home Sweet Home, chaps

And here's a pic of tonight's star of the show

You can even see the legs - how amazing is that!?!

Even now it completely baffles my brain to think of a small, 'mindless' maggot encapsulating itself in a thin external case, dissolving almost its entire body apart from the central nervous system into a glutinous soup and then re-solidifying into a completely different assemblage of parts including compound eyes, wings, articulated legs, bristles and genitalia - none of which it had beforehand! It really is just boggling when you think about it. It's akin to putting a two year old child into a sleeping bag for a few months and having an adult dolphin emerge afterwards. 

I was quietly admiring this process of transformation when something quite unexpected happened. Well, unexpected for me at least. The legs kicked. I mean, I actually saw them kick! Then they kicked some more, this was so ridiculously cute! I managed to capture a bit of it on video. 

This may be niche, and my paternal instincts may be overriding the accepted norm, but how bloody amazing  is this?!?!

I bet you didn't start today thinking you'd be watching fly legs kicking from within the pupal case. But why are they twitching like that? Is the fly dreaming (and of what)? I've seen plenty of dogs 'running' and woofing in their sleep, clearly dogs dream. Do flies? Is it, as I believe more likely, strengthening muscles that have never previously existed?

So I've now moved Junior into a larger pot, in order that he can walk around a bit, stretch his newly formed legs and find somewhere suitable to expand his wings. Here's his new home

Minimalistic but functional

This is a far larger glass tube, plenty of room to properly develop its wings. I've placed Junior on a piece of plastazote for traction as he emerges. There's a strip of nu-poly for him to climb up if he wants to hang vertically. There's also space at either end of the plastazote pad for him to wander onto the underside should he so wish (an earlier agromyzid that I bred through spent its first two days upside down on the underside of a leaf, maybe it's something they like to do?) Anyway, apart from a seesaw and set of swings, Junior has all he could ever need. Other than food. And a mate. And a future. 

Seeing those legs kick put me in mind of a few songs. Hope at least one of these catches your fancy

I delivered to one of the band members of Ozric some years back. I won't say that I fell over bongs and got stoned just by breathing the air in his hallway. But yeah, I fell over bongs and stuff....

Not sure how long I need to wait for Junior to emerge, should be a couple of weeks at most I suspect. Naturally, I shall keep you updated. 

The Humbling River

Just downhill from here lies Uig Wood, with a block of native 'Celtic Rainforest' woodland heading upstream of the road and a 130 year old planted woodland dominating the downstream side of the same road. The upstream section has a footpath that dead-ends after just a few hundred feet at the remains of a weir (dynamited apart in the 1930s by a person with a grudge to bear, apparently!) Unlike the busy downstream section, this upper section enjoys far fewer visitors. I like it, it gives me the opportunity to act like a complete insect geek in public, all in relative safety and anonymity.

The river has been running high for much of the year thus far, thanks to an extremely extended wet period, but it has now finally subsided somewhat. Subsided to the point that I can safely explore the backwaters and pools for diving beetles without the need for chest waders, a sturdy rope and an emergency whistle.

Now you may call me childish or simple-minded (and honestly I don't mind), but I find it absolutely captivating to quietly watch diving beetles swimming around underwater as though they own the place. Which in their world they clearly do. One genus in particular would appear to be quite common in the river; Oreodytes. These are small diving beetles, closely related to the far larger Dytiscus diving beetles that many folks are familiar with. There are only four members of the genus known to occur in Britain, Oreodytes alpinus, davisii, sanmarkii and septentrionalis. O.alpinus is a curiosity in Britain, known only from the far north eastern corner of Scotland and presumed to be a relict species left over from the last Ice Age. It's also the only member of the genus I've yet to encounter. 

A couple of days back I found myself at the edge of a shallow pool, watching a couple of Oreodytes swimming across the surface of algae-laden stones, I managed to hook one out without too much difficulty. Back indoors I soon had it carded and ready for identification

Pity it has lost an antenna

This is Oreodytes sanmarkii, a species that I've found here before. And here is the other species of Oreodytes that I've found in this river

A very poorly carded specimen, I know this...

I must have been in some sort of a tearing rush when I carded this beetle, it's appalling! I need to find another and set it out properly. This is Oreodytes davisii, which, at 3.8 - 4.5mm, is more elongated and somewhat larger than the commoner Oreodytes sanmarkii (2.9 - 3.3mm). 

Here's a pic of them side by side

My carding technique is definitely improving...

That's a pretty obvious size difference when shown side by side! I've recorded Oreodytes septentrionalis only once before, with Mark Telfer at Loch Garten last year. Mark retained and determined the specimen, hence I'm keen to find and determine my own at some point. Plus I'd really like to get up to that top corner of Scotland and see if I can locate Oreodytes alpinus for myself. 

I haven't listened to this track for a good few months, YouTube tells me it now has something to do with the soundtrack to a Transformers film, which is pretty gutting. Anyway, if you don't know it, this is Puscifer with their sublime track The Humbling River

An Early Season Muscid

It was nice and sunny today and, out of the cool wind, it was modestly warm too. I quickly headed into Uig Wood in search of flies sunning themselves on tree trunks and within ten minutes I'd potted up four sizeable muscids, all of which looked to be the same species. A brief bout of sweeping low vegetation added several very small flies to my tally, all of which I brought indoors to pin and identify. But first the four muscids.

They were all from the genus Phaonia and I used this key to take them to species level. There are almost 50 species of Phaonia in Britain, though not all of them occur this far north, whilst others only fly later in the year. This particular key is very user-friendly and is well illustrated throughout, indeed it was almost a joy to work through.

The key is in two parts, the first for males and the second for female flies. I had three males and one female and they all keyed through very nicely. 

Male Phaonia have eyes which almost meet in the middle of the head, females have eyes that are widely separated from each other, as shown here

The underside of the abdomen differs between the sexes too. Males exhibit a horseshoe-shaped feature which houses the genitalia and the end of the abdomen is broadly rounded. In the females this feature is narrower and far more elongated and the abdomen itself has a more pointed profile

Right, so now we are ready to identify our first fly. I chose a male and began keying. 

Couplet 1 - is the underside of the scutellum bare or is there a patch of fine hairs?

No hairs under there - it's completely bare

Couplet 2 regards the length of the hairs on the arista, are they short, very short, or longer than the diameter of the widest part of the arista? This was easy to see but a complete pig to photograph! 

You're looking at the antenna which has a thick "bristle" projecting from it. This "bristle" is the arista and you'll see small hairs radiating from it, almost creating the impression of a feather. It's the length of these small hairs that we need to be checking. Clearly they are wider than the diameter of the arista at its widest part, which takes us to...

Couplet 3 - which asks whether the radio-cubital node has bristles or not. I forgot to take a photo of this, but it was bare. You'll just have to take my word for that. That leads us on to...

Couplet 5 -  now we need to look at certain bristles on the top of the fly's thorax. Bristles and hairs cover much of a fly's body and each 'tract' of bristles has a term unique to it. Sometimes even an individual bristle has its own name, as does each part of the body where they occur. It's quite boggling, but entirely necessary in order to determine that you are looking at the correct set of bristles. Anyway...

Does the area in front of the suture have 1+ pairs of acrostichals, or none? I've added coloured dots to the image below. In this instance the acrostichals are coloured BLUE. The suture is the thin line that runs across the width of the fly's back, BLUE dots on one side of it and RED dots on the other.

Clearly there are acrostichals in the area before the suture, which leads us to...

Couplet 31 (that's a pleasing jump, we're really getting somewhere now!) - there are a few parts to this couplet leading to just two choices, but essentially it breaks down to this:  

1) is the underside of the abdomen entirely translucent yellowish or is it black?  

2) Are there 4 dorsocentrals or not?

3) Are the sides of the scutellum hairy or bare beneath the strong bristles?

1) We can see from the images above that the abdomen is yellowish not black - easy.

2) The dorsocentrals are a series of bristles that form a line running along the top of the thorax, approximately halfway between the midline and the sides. In the image above I've marked them with RED dots. Clearly there are four of them.

3) Check the images above and below. The scutellum is the rounded pad between the wing bases. It's attached to the fly's back but has its own set of named bristles and hairs. In this instance we're interested in the strong marginal bristles, each of which I've marked with a RED dot in the image below

No hairs below those bristles - the sides are completely bare

So we have a yellow underside to the abdomen, 4 dorsocentrals and bare sides to the scutellum, which is the option that takes us to....

Couplet 32 - 1 pair of presutural acrostichals and an entirely reddish-yellow scutellum OR 2-3 pairs of presutural acrostichals and the scutellum broadly darkened at the base. The presutural acrostichals are marked with BLUE dots (see two images above), the scutellum is the image directly above. The second option fits our fly which takes us onwards to....

Couplet 33 - Another multi-part couplet leading to just two options 

1) arista scarcely as wide as antennal segment or distinctly wider? We've already looked at the arista back at Couplet 2 and you can see that, including the fine outstanding hairs, it is not quite as wide as the antennal segment it arises from. Definitely not "distinctly wider", at least.  

2) Middle tibia with 2 or with 3 posterior bristles? All flies have bristles on their legs and, being flies, all of these bristles have different names and positions. The posterior ones are obviously the ones on the back of the leg facing the direction behind the fly.

Two posterior bristles on the middle tibia

The third and final part of this couplet is a bit confusing and it took me a minute to figure out exactly what it was that the key was asking me to look at. But it's very obvious once the penny drops! 

3) Seen from behind, the median pair of presutural dark thoracic stripes, level with the first dorsocentral, is quite two thirds of the width of the grey dusted stripe separating them, OR not more than one third the width of the grey dusted stripe separating them. Clear???

Go back up the screen three images, to the one where I've added the coloured dots. This time look at the ORANGE dots. These mark the first dorsocentral bristle (edit - I've just noticed that the upper orange dot is at the wrong bristle - oops!) Between these orange dots is a series of black and grey stripes. The couplet wants to know if the middle two black stripes are two thirds the width of the central grey stripe or less than one third the width of the grey stripe. I reckon they are definitely over half the width, thus I favour the two thirds option over the barely one third option. 

All of which...wait for it...drops us out at a species: "Phaonia subventa - Very common and generally distributed; often emerges during the winter in dwellings". Very common it may well be, but it's the first time I've identified it! The other two males ran through the exact same route and dropped out at Phaonia subventa. The female fly too, with all couplets being identical to those in the male key apart from the last one where the black stripes are narrower, half the width rather than two thirds the width. It fitted and it too is Phaonia subventa.  

What a beauty! 

Sieving Chainsaw Dust

Last autumn, two large Wych Elms were pollarded in the hotel grounds. Long story short - the logs were sectioned into metre lengths, several months later (about 2 weeks ago) a guy turned up and chainsawed them into shorter lengths so that I could load them onto my logsplitter and reduce them to firewood-sized chunks. I did a day's worth of splitting last week, today I finished splitting the sawn stuff. The fella with the chainsaw ran out of fuel on the day, there's still an awful lot of laying timber that needs to be sectioned and split, but who knows when he'll be coming back now.

Very nearly done!

You'll have to excuse the horrible metal bin in the background. It's one of those commercial 1280 litre galvanised things, I simply removed the wheels and lid and converted it into a firepit (coz everyone loves a good burn up!) The stuff I've leaned up against the wall has still to be chained to length, each lump is about 3 to 4 feet long, I need it cut into about ten inch lengths. As you can see, a fair amount of chainsaw dust has accumulated on the ground. You'll notice that some of it is still lovely and damp, I figured it would be worth sieving for staphs and who knows what else!

Just because I'm quite impressed by how much wood I split today, here's a video I took afterwards. This doesn't include the stuff split earlier - that's already been stacked into the woodshed. Note the shovel handle at the end, I wondered where it had gone! 

Anyway, I collected a large bucketful of debris and then managed to persuade the head chef that it was perfectly acceptable to nab his largest sieve for the purposes of sifting sawdust for beetles. We've had our moments in the past, but he's a good chap really. I suspect he thinks I'm quite mad. Here's the set up

A nice alternative use of the staff smoking shelter that I built last year

I think it took me about an hour and a half to satisfy myself that I'd gleaned every beetle from that bucket of sawdust. I have to say, there wasn't an awful lot to show for it afterwards, but that's not entirely unexpected.

Firstly the logs were only sawn in March. It's been cold ever since, hence most beetles have been largely dormant. The few that have been active have only had a few weeks to locate the mound of sawdust, though I did find several larvae, so clearly something is breeding in there. I suspect that when the rest of the logs are chainsawed to length, presumably sometime in the summer, there will be a far larger influx of beetles. Time will tell. 

This is what I managed to sieve from that bucket of sawdust

 This is how they appeared a short while later

I undertook yet another botched ptilid gen. det. - bloody things! Transmitted light via my compound revealed nothing. I removed the abdomen, micro-pinned it into place and began carefully opening it up. Bugger all. Sheesh, clearly I'm doing something wrong! You can see in the image above that I resorted to whacking them all on the same card. The 'large' beetles on the right of the image weigh in at 5mm. The featherwings come in at approximately half a smidge above zero mm....

Anyway, I now have more beetles to play around with. Aside from the featherwings, a single Cartodere nodifer is the sole non-staphylinid in this collection. One is an aleocharine, that gets put aside for another time. The remainder seem to comprise just three species. I shall get back to you regards their IDs. I also grabbed a couple of larvae, I do after all own a copy of the RES key to beetle larvae so may as well see how well it works. I suspect Staphylinidae.

Edit: the breakdown of beetles sieved from the bucket is as follows
Proteinus brachypterus x3
Cartodere nodifer x1
Omalium rugatum x2
Dimetrota atramentaria x3 (lifer!)
4 featherwings, 1 smashed beyond all recognition, the other 3 still to be determined....
1 very small aleocharine not even attempted
The two larvae are staphylinids as initially suspected