Well this blog has certainly fallen by the wayside of late! It's not as though I haven't been catching and identifying beetles and flies since my last update three months ago, it's just that I really haven't been very good at blogging about it. Thankfully, in a way, with a mere three days of the year remaining you won't have to worry about my lack of input into this blog for very much longer. I'm still somewhat undecided regards whether or not to take this blog offline, or to leave it up. It will no longer be updated in either case, seeing as this was always going to be a blog purely for the duration of 2020. I suspect that I'll leave it online for a month or so and then pull it. Should you want to save any part of it, now is probably a good time!
So what was the original purpose of this blog?
Traditionally I set myself annual challenges which focus on a couple of discrete areas in natural history. For 2020 I decided to continue my dalliance with the insect orders Coleoptera and Diptera. There aren't any groups that I actively dislike, but clearly I find some more attractive than others; beetles and flies both fall into this latter category. My aim for 2020 was to discover if my interest in beetles and flies would blossom or wane, would I become more enthused by one over the other, would I lose enthusiasm for both, how would I feel about them after a year spent in their company? The purpose of this blog was to chart and record my journeys in, and discoveries of, all things coleopteran and dipteran.
Did I stick to this purpose?
Pretty much. Apart from the obvious lack of blogging in the final quarter of the year, I did indeed make headway with both beetles and flies. Halfway through the year I had a sneaking suspicion of how the remainder of the year would pan out - though I wouldn't have placed money on it ending that way at the beginning of the year.
First quarter of the year round-up
As is always the case, I start the year massively enthused and keen for action. This year was no exception and halfway through the first week I decided that I ought to be keeping tabs on how many different dipteran and coleopteran families I was encountering. Gotta love a spreadsheet! Somehow this ended up being a joint effort between myself and three other fellow nutters who read this blog. It soon developed into a mildly competitive game of chase as we all added our respective fly families onto the spreadsheet. Unfortunately for three of us, there was a decent dipterist in our ranks and he stormed ahead of the rest of us in short order. Quite simply, he's not allowed to play next time.
Then my old mate The Ghost came up with a cunning plan, why not have our own little challenge running alongside my own? He's not too shabby with his flies but is not very up on his beetles. I'm pretty shabby at my beetles but even worse with flies. The challenge was simple - whoever had the highest combined total of identified beetles and flies at the end of the year was the winner. I'm a complete sucker for a challenge and it took me all of about three nanoseconds to agree. Game on!
Towards the end of February I managed to book in some holiday time and headed south to friends in Hampshire and Bedfordshire. One friend happened to be quite into flies, the other is massively into beetles...definitely nothing in The Rules to say this wasn't allowed. I saw lots of great stuff whilst in Hampshire, including a simply amazing session sieving reedbed litter at Lymington with a huge haul of beetles found. This was followed by several jaunts into the New Forest leaflitter sieving. Up until this point I had been identifying my beetle and fly specimens for myself. Then I stayed with Mark Telfer for a few days and things changed. We spent time sieving soil in Whipsnade Zoo's Butterfly House (!), sieving giant piles of woodchip in Milton Keynes and sieving debris from rotten trees in Buckinghamshire. At one point I even found myself halfway up a tree ragging out a storm-exposed honeybee nest in case there were beetles in the bottom of it. You could say that my 2020 beetle list had taken off with a bit of a bang! Those few days in early March were by far and away the absolute highlight of my entire beetling year. I had a fantastic time, the company was terrific and I learned absolutely loads. I did also manage to find a few flies whilst down south, though they lagged behind the beetle tally by a fair margin. It was simply too early in the year for them really. A visit to Dinton Pastures Country Park, my first time there in maybe twenty years, provided me with the opportunity to wave a few pinned fungus gnats beneath the nose of legendary dipterist Peter Chandler. This added a further two species to the tally, with one of those being a lifer.
At the end of March 2020 my fly tally stood at 31 species (17 lifers, with 15 of them self-identified) whereas my beetle tally stood at a whopping 98 species (53 lifers, 24 of which were identified by Mark Telfer).
At this point I had accrued a massive lead over The Ghost in our private challenge. I think he was on about 10 beetles and had yet to spot a fly at the time, haha!
Second quarter of the year round-up
I didn't leave Skye for this period, not even for a daytrip. I didn't meet with any other naturalists either. Coronavirus had put the country into lockdown, anything but essential, local travel was a no-no. Everyone here at the hotel was furloughed. Oh, apart from me, I still worked my full hours. Initially I was happy with this, it meant that my job was relatively safe, but it soon rankled watching the other live-in staff throwing beer-fuelled barbeque after beer-fuelled barbeque and waving at me as I mowed the lawns/painted the walls/wished they would all drop dead. For the duration of April and May my world decreased to the size of the monad I live inside, with occasional excursions into a neighbouring monad if I was feeling particularly adventurous. But the weather was great and fun was still to be had. I largely restricted my antics with sweep net and beating tray to the upper, relatively inaccessible section of Uig Wood, well out of sight from the locals. Throughout the entire summer I only saw one family hike through those woods on one single occasion, otherwise I used it as my own private playground. In June I began venturing a little further afield on Skye as the Scottish lockdown restrictions slowly began to ease.
The flies on Skye suddenly woke up with the onset of spring warmth and my meagre tally of 31 species shot up to a more healthy 127 species by the end of June (46 lifers during this period, all self-identified). Conversely, my beetle tally, though still increasing, had started slowing down. It increased by just 41, up from 98 to 139 species (with a mere 12 lifers added, all self-identified). I did manage to find the marram specialist Otiorhynchus atroapterus at Glenbrittle Beach, which I believe is a beetle new to Skye. I suspect that, in part, this slowing of new beetle species was due to my becoming ever more fixated on catching flies and a lack of samping techniques undertaken. I'm not sure I used my sieve at all in this period, certainly I failed to set any pitfall or bait traps, as had been my plan. I also came to realise that it's a lot quicker and far easier to mount and label flies than it is to card beetles. In fact, I came to see carding beetles as a necessary evil and not something I took particular pains to perfect. This too, I feel, played a part in my favouring flies over beetles. Sheer laziness, end of the day.
Third quarter of the year round-up
Scottish lockdown ended in time for high summer and I was free to meet up with other naturalists once more. Unfortunately, I only know a few decent naturalists here on Skye. One was self-isolating on an island, another had seemingly disappeared into the ether and the other seemed to be mostly doing his own thing. Despite this, we did manage to meet up on three separate occasions, each one putting me in territory I didn't know, allowing me to find a few extra flies and beetles that would otherwise have remained off my radar. I had already placed all of the Skye Nature Group's 2020 field trips on hold at the beginning of lockdown, which is where they stayed throughout the remainder of the year, so these few outings in the company of other naturalists was a blessing to me.
The easing of lockdown also allowed Ali from Fife to head across to Skye and spend a few days easing me into the world of muscids, amongst various other hairy flies. Evenings spent shoulder to shoulder at the microscopes, assorted keys strewn across the table top, cans of beer at our feet made for a very useful if slightly messy contribution to my knowledge of keying diptera. It's not so daunting when you've a decent dipterist sat at your side talking you through the options, and I'm very grateful for the helpful mental nudges he provided whenever I struggled. Plus he named a lot of flies in the field, sharing hints and tips for the identification of many - always very useful!
Crunch time. How did I fare with the beetles? Well, (and I'm so sorry, Mark!) in this three month period I managed to amass a pathetic eleven additions to my 2020 beetle tally, representing a rise from 139 to 150 species (6 being lifers, all self-identified). And the flies? Well they jumped by 68 species, meaning I was on 195 species for the year so far (39 lifers with 29 of those being self-identified in this period). My diptera tally overtook my coleoptera tally on 16th July and it simply never looked back from that point onwards.
The Ghost was still a considerable way behind both my beetle and fly totals. I found it hard to believe that I was beating, nay thrashing, his fly tally, but he was insistent I led by a fair margin. Tortoise and hare, he told me. W'eva, loser!
Fourth quarter of the year round-up
In October I spent an amazing eight days in the company of TinyRecorder and The Ghost traipsing our way across every inhabited island on The Scillies, finding all manner of weird and wonderful animals and plants in the process. I came away with sixty new species on my PSL, sixty in a week!!! Lots of our time was dedicated to seeking out weird alien plants and creatures in rockpools, but clearly we also found a lot of flies and beetles whilst there. I was slightly miffed to discover that we'd effectively walked past a Locust Fly along one ivy-strewn lane, seen and photographed by a chap who hadn't realised what it was until a few days later. I had a look, but either it had moved on by then or I simply missed it. Darn. In mid-December I learned that The Ghost had begun spending time at his microscope, quietly going through the backlog of flies from earlier this year. Tortoise and hare! What a sneaky wee beggar! In retaliation, I too hit the backlog box and made good progress clearing whole rows of neatly pinned flies. In the space of a single week's worth of evenings at the microscope I added over thirty species to my PSL. Days spent in the field came few and far between, as I prioritised catching up on various tasks elsewhere. Never the less, I continued to slowly add both fly and beetle species to the tally. A surprise find was an Adistemia watsoni slowly trying to break free from a blunder trap I'd placed in the kitchen, my second one for the site and, I think, one of only two or three beetle species that I have up on Mark Telfer!
The year isn't over yet and I'm going to hit the backlog box again before 2020 ends, but at the moment my beetle tally stands at 168 species (18 additions in the period with 6 lifers, 5 being self-identified) and my fly tally stands at 234 species (39 additions, mostly from the backlog box and all self-identified).
BUT...
Yesterday I received shocking news. Very shocking news. The Ghost has been exceptionally naughty and his diptera tally has finally overtaken my own. About bloody time, I say! I never envisioned holding the lead much beyond about April or May, never mind for 363 out of 366 days (leap year innit).
So I plan to get stuck in with the pinned stuff and see if I can claw back that lead. Forget the American presidential elections, if I lose this bastard challenge I WILL be demanding a recount and taking the sneaky so and so to court on charges of fraud. I'm fighting this all the way, you won't see me on no damn golf course! Well, not unless there are new flies or beetles on it.
Stay tuned for the final post of 2020 Vision, which will be published at year's end.
Place your bets now folks. And sorry for the lack of piccies. Umm...have this, the Backlog Box. It was three boxes at one point, so I'm doing alright!
EDIT: I have just been informed by the main man himself that I haven't led on the flies since the very beginning at all. It seems he overtook me to reach 100 species first, it was only after that I began whupping his ass. My selective memory does play tricks on me, it seems.
He also says not to waste my time trying to catch him up. I thought he'd been a bit quiet of late. Oh dear, looks as though the tortoise has beaten the hare on the diptera front, at least.
Maybe...
