Not quite as terrifyingly horrific as disembarking from a landing craft and straight into heavy enemy gunfire, as happened early one June morning in 1944 (I'm sure you've seen the Omaha Beach landing scenes from Saving Private Ryan) but nonetheless, after viewing this down the barrel of my microscope, I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the hapless victims of the beetle I found scampering across the grass clipping pile this morning. Imagine you are a centimetre long, quietly squirming your way through the grass heap before sensing you were being watched. You freeze, trying to escape notice but already it's far too late as you are scooped up into the jaws of death...
Pity one mandible moved inwards a smidge before the glue dried
Beetles have very definitely taken a back seat of late. In fact, I was pondering that sad fact just this morning, wondering what it would take to reignite my interest in them. And then boom - this huge bugger ran out in front of me, right on cue.
Safely in a glass pot - barely!
I was in the process of dumping my second or third wheelie bin of grass clippings onto a rather sizeable grass heap when I spotted motion by my foot. Ooh, a great big brown staphy. I had no pots or tubes on me - instant panic! I reached down and grabbed it in my fist before heading indoors to find a tube. There's a fair chance that had I have noticed quite how large its jaws were I may have acted differently! Anyway, I threw it into a large glass tube and was shocked to watch it scamper up the vertical sides with ease. Twice I almost decapitated it whilst trying to slam the lid into place, but finally it was contained within and I continued emptying and refilling the wheelie bin with yet more grass clippings. Those lawns were getting a tad out of control but it's great to know that the resulting grass piles are proving so attractive to flies and their predators.
As soon as I'd finished for the day, I looked to see exactly what it was that I'd captured.
This is Ontholestes tessellatus, a large staphylinid beetle that can be found in dung heaps, carrion and also - it would seem - in and around decomposing grass clipping piles. Basically, anywhere that has a concentration of fly and beetle larva upon which it preys. I've not seen this beetle before. There are just two British species in the genus, the other being Ontholestes murinus which I've seen before, though not on Skye. Ontholestes tessellatus is my 529th British beetle. One day I shall attempt to work out how many of those 529 were self-found and identified. I fear far too many have been shown to me without my understanding quite why they were what I was told at the time.
It really is a spectacular beast! The NBN Atlas suggests it is entirely new to Skye (indeed new to the whole of The Hebrides), but Richard Moore lists two records from adjacent Raasay, though none for Skye itself.
This is a fast-moving killing machine, pouncing on its victims from above. There's only one song that fits. Enjoy!
This is the famous Taxis to Hell – and Back – Into the Jaws of Deathphotograph, taken on June 6th 1944 by Robert F. Sargent, a chief photographer's mate in the United States Coast Guard. It shows the ill fated beach landing by American troops, landing on an unexpectedly heavily fortified beach held by a well-entrenched German army. After huge losses on both sides, the beach was finally taken.
I know what you're thinking, no posts for weeks on end and then two on the same day! What can I say - maybe I should take a day off more often. Please do feel free to petition my boss demanding that henceforth I only work a two day week. Obviously without any drop in pay.
So, alongside yesterday's pipunculid lifer, I spotted an intriguing-looking fly sat on a bracken frond. I watched it from afar (ie from about a metre away, wondering if it would vanish before I unlimbered my net and handle from my rucksack and quickly assembled them) before remembering I had a camera in my pocket. This was the single shot I took before swiping the hastily assembled net into action and securing my quarry in a small glass tube.
The epitome of a 'record shot'
I then stood still and took a thorough visual scan across the surrounding bracken fronds. It was soon obvious to me that, at any given moment, I could see at least two or three of these mystery flies wherever I looked. I potted up a second individual, this also from a bracken frond, before heading off in search of warm sunlit spots.
My initial thought was that these were maybe sciomyzids; they had that sort of flat, broad-winged, short-legged look to them. Back indoors I ran them through Oosterbroek and was delighted (yes delighted!) to key them through to Opomyzidae, a whole new dipteran family for me! Even better, there aren't very many of them on the British list and I just happened to have a chart of wing patterns and a key to species already saved on my desktop - sweet!
The wing pattern, combined with tergite colour, is enough to clinch the species
Basal scutellar bristles much the same length as the apical scutellar bristles
No vibrissae, a single recurved F-bristle, scattered setulae between the eyes...
This is Opomyza germinationis, which is apparently one of the commonest flies in Britain. Opomyza petrei is the main confusion species, but there are differences in tergite colouring and patterning and the ovipositor differs between species (both of my examples were female). NBN shows a whole barrage of Philip Entwhistle records from the far south-east of Skye and I fully expect it to occur in almost any patch of woodland edge throughout the island.
Opomyzidae is my 48th dipteran family of the year, 36 of which have seen me identify at least one specimen to species level. The remaining dozen are either exceedingly difficult/obscure or I lack the required keys/magnification/skill level. All told, I have now seen and recognised members from 53 British dipteran families, which equates to 49.5% of the 107 families that occur here. One more and I'm halfway there!
In case you were wondering, the 2020 Challenge between myself and The Ghost is still ongoing. Neither of us has been furloughed and we've both been busy at work and otherwise. In fact, I've been substantially busier than usual at work ever since the Covid-enforced shutdown of the hotel. But I've still managed to get out and play from time to time.
Yesterday was my ninth consecutive day at work. I deliberately finished up by 3:30pm and hit the woods whilst the sun was shining (today, my one day off, it is raining. Exactly as was forecast...) Happily, I found a few interesting wee things yesterday afternoon including one fly that immediately grabbed my attention as it slowly floated beneath some bracken, legs dangling and wings catching the light very nicely indeed. One swipe of the net and it was captured.
Why Grandma, what big eyes you have! (And you appear to have a stinger too...)
This is one of the Big-headed Flies (Pipunculidae), closely related to the Hoverflies (Syrphidae), in fact these two families compose the superfamily Syrphoidea. I guess the term 'Big-headed Fly' is a bit non-PC these days, but hoverflies do hover and big-headed flies do have rather a big head, so....
Pipunculids have a bit of a reputation as being proper hard bastards to key correctly. A lot of this is due to earlier works not recognising species aggregates, something that is now far better understood, though work does still need to be done in some areas. Taxonomically there have been a good few changes since my copy of the RES Key was published in 1966. This key is still available to buy as a used hardcopy (mine has annotations in the margins) but this online version is far more readily available and is free to download. In this key there are 77 species described as British, a massive jump from Verrall's 1901 work which recognised 32 species.
Dave Gibbs, possibly Britain's greatest pan-species lister, runs the Pipunculidae Study Group which has distribution maps for each British species and keys to genera. Nowadays there are 95 species of pipunculids on the British list. To quote Dave from his site -
...with the exception of a few very conspicuous species, all these records have been checked by me. Because of the considerable difficulty most people encounter with these flies, I have not accepted records unseen.
Dave is a professional dipterist, hence his maps can be considered overwhelmingly accurate. I currently have a handful of pipunculids on pins, all collected from here on Skye. Once their flight season is over I shall post them off to Dave for confirmation (or re-determination) and get a few more dots added to his atlas. Skye seems relatively devoid of 'pips' judging from the maps, with just 7 species recorded up here. I strongly suspect that this is entirely down to observer bias - all of the Skye records are clustered in the far south-eastern region, an area which was heavily frequented by a renowned entomologist whilst holidaying on Skye.
Happy that I was looking at a pipunculid, I set about keying it to species with my battered 1966 RES key. First was the key to subfamily, which I'll run through in an abridged fashion.
Couplet 1 - are there ocellar bristles?
You can see the three small ocelli situated on a small bump between the rear edges of the eyes. No bristles visible from above or from the side. So far so good, go to Couplet 3...
Couplet 3 - is the hind margin of the eye deeply excised and do the thorax and scutellum have strong marginal bristles?
Clearly there is no strong excision in the hind margin of the eyes and, although the scutellum has strong marginal bristles, the thorax does not. Which takes us to couplet 4 (Pipunculinae)
Couplet 4 - Coloured or colourless stigma?
The stigma definitely has a bit of brownish colour to it, which leads us to couplet 6.
Couplet 6 - Tricky one this, though you wouldn't think so from reading the key. Thorax universally (though minutely) hairy on top, or with two lines of (tiny) dorsocentral hairs and bare between? This is where I've gone wrong before when keying pipunculids. The hairs are almost invisible from most angles, but once you know what you're looking for they are fairly easy to see. Not so easy to photograph though!
This was the best of a bad bunch of images! Hopefully you can see the two rows of pale hairs running back along the top of the thorax, just along the outer edge of each pale band. Helpfully, the microscope's ring light has illuminated the tips of these hairs making them easier to discern. Onwards to couplet 7.
Couplet 7 - Propleural fan of hairs present or absent? This is a bit of a bugger to see and all but impossible to photograph without removing the head, and I didn't want to remove the head. This may be a bit of a leap of faith for you, so just take my word and believe me when I say there's a propleural fan of hairs visible in this next image!
So what you're looking at here is the back of an eye. Beneath the silver-coloured rim are lots of small downward/inward-pointing, essentially straight hairs that are directed into the cavity behind the huge eye and are facing towards the front of the thorax. These are easy enough to see. But, if you squint really hard, you should be able to make out a bunch of curved hairs coming from the depths of the shadow and curving from right to left. This is the propleural fan. In the image below I've highlighted this fan in coloured ink. A very young schoolkid could do better, I know, but at least it'll give you a head's up of what to look for in the image above.
All of which has finally led us to a subfamily - Cephalops. Phew!
There are quite a few Cephalops in the 1966 RES Key. Thankfully, this specimen drops out to species very early in the couplets.
Couplet 1 - Vein M1+2 with or without an appendix of varying length?
No messing around there, that's a very definite appendix! Previously, I had a specimen with a tiny appendix along this vein (and on both wings too) which can occasionally happen in aberrant specimens. If I ignored the appendix it keyed through nicely to what I hope is the correct species. If I ran it through the keys as having an appendix - which is what I did first time around - it makes a nonsense and goes nowhere. Anyway, appendix present on this specimen - go to couplet 2.
Couplet 2 - a very long couplet filled with lots of detail which leads to one species, or alternatively lots of detail which leads to another species. Different set of details for males and females. This is a female (it has a wicked-looking ovipositor). Essentially it all comes down to colour of the tergites when viewed from above and the shape of the ovipositor. So...
"Tergites 2 to 4 are light grey, sometimes black or brown banded anteriorly, when this colour may also extend across the disc of the thorax".
"Base of ovipositor fairly deep, with an apical large brown protuberance above which appears rounded from side view"
All of which, miracle of miracles, would seem to lead to a straightforward identity! My fly is a female Cephalops furcatus. Unfortunately that name is no longer in use, my fly has now been redesignated as Cephalosphaera furcata. A quick glance at Dave's distribution map for this species shows it to occur northwards as far as central Scotland, making this is a notable record as it rather extends the currently known distribution.
In other good news, I whacked the image up on the UK Diptera Facebook group and it was 'Liked' and commented upon by several decent dipterists, which is far better than the "I think you may have gone wrong with this one" type comment that I so often see.
I like empids (no not the American flycatchers, though I like those too), I'm on about the Empididae flies. Though, very much like the birds, I haven't actually seen too many of them before. Twitching the Alder Fly in Cornwall was a very pleasing experience, especially watching LGRE being forcibly told to piss off whilst trying to collect money "for the farmer" (wrong bucket, more likely it was just his petrol money home we all reckoned. Plus we'd already paid into the right bucket). But I digress, back to the flies.
As you will hopefully be aware, this year I have been challenged by The Ghost to see which of the two of us amasses the largest combined beetle and fly yearlist. It's just a bit of fun with the idea being that we both gain a bit more knowledge in these two groups. Empididae belongs in the infraorder Eremoneura - Empidoidea which itself comprises the families Atelestidae (2 British species), Hybotidae (182 species), Empididae (208 species), Brachystomatidae (4 species) and finally Dolichopodidae (305 species), all of which amounts to a very healthy 701 species. Of which I've seen maybe ten. Max.
Luckily, I own a copy of the British Flies Vol.6 Empididae Pt 2 Hybotinae Empidinae (except Hilara), published way back in 1961. It's a bit of a beast of a book to navigate but it does seem exceptionally good, despite the numerous changes in nomenclature that have taken place these past 60 odd years.
Anyway, I netted a male empid and did my best with it. Here's a pic of the beast in question
It's a rather smart looking critter, though only 5 or 6mm in length
One feature that immediately caught my eye was the looped 'thing' at the rear of the abdomen. I briefly wondered if it had somehow flown away with part of the female genitalia still attached. A closer look left me almost as baffled. Just....why???
Oooh! 'ello big boy...
Yep, that's exactly what you think it is - that's a penis. I bet he's a hit with the ladies! Once I'd finally finished trying to imagine how that thing is even manoeuvred into position, I thought it would be a good idea to see why the family are colloquially known as daggerflies (and no, it's not because of the size of their dick!)
This fly's hugely elongated 'chuck it over yer shoulder' penis, combined with the three blackish stripes across the top of the thorax quickly helped to identify it as a male Empis trigramma, a common and widespread springtime/early summer daggerfly - yet the first I've identified.
I also swept a female that looks to be the same species, plus a much larger brown empid that I fully expect will run to Empis tessellata. Then there are the several far smaller hybotids that I swept from long grass/bluebell/bracken understorey. I bet they don't run through the keys quite so easily. Platypalpus is my stab in the dark (see what I did there?)
So daggerflies are now on my yearlist for dipteran families, which puts me even further ahead of The Ghost. Whatever is he playing at, the silly phantom?
Last week I swept a small fly from a patch of Ramsons and, despite twice keying it to Tachinidae, it fell down almost at the first hurdle seeing as it lacked an unbroken suture across the thorax. I put it aside for another time, intending come at it with fresh eyes at a later date.
Today I keyed it again and once more it dropped out at Tachinidae. That's three different keys all telling me the same thing, hmmm... It was a bristly wee thing with an inflated sub-scutellum, which fits Tachinidae perfectly, but with no suture (unbroken or otherwise) whatsoever - which clearly means it isn't one.
I bit the bullet and keyed it through as if there were a suture.
The fly in question
Highly inflated sub-scutellum (arrowed) - diagnostic of tachinid flies
Any suture should cross the thorax somewhere between the fly's head and the pin
I usedBelshaw to key this fly and seeing as I'm very unfamiliar with the vast majority of tachinids I ran it through the key to genera first. Below is a highly abbreviated version of the route I followed
1) Very large black fly with a yellow head (no) >>2
2) Bright metallic (no) >>4
4) Arista with long hairs (no) >>15
15) Eyes with hairs longer than width of arista (no) >>74
74) Vein R1 with hairs (no) >>82
82) Vein R4+5 with a line of hairs extending beyond half-way to crossvein r-m (yes) >>83
The line of hairs extending over half-way from the node to the cross-vein
83) Parafacial area with a line of bristles not extending beyond middle of antennae 3 (yes) >>84
84) Excavation on tergite 1+2 extending all the way to rear of segment (no) >>86
Excavation only extends about half the distance to end of segment
86) Abdomen 3 and 4 without median discal bristles (yes) >>87
You'll just have to take my word for it that the full version of my route through Belshaw's Key to Genera was far more complex than the above few lines would imply. I left out lots of detail!
So, despite not having a suture (and hence not being a tachinid...) it keyed very well to genus Siphona (a tachinid). Online pics showed that I was in the right ball park for size and overall looks, and that they do occur in this part of the world and that they fly in the spring. Excellent! Now to figure out which Siphona it was that I had.
There are ten members of the family known to occur in Britain (or there were in 1993 when the book was published) which didn't seem too daunting. Into the next key...
1) Thorax with 3 or 4 post-sutural dorso-central bristles? You're having a laugh! I looked at my fly and tried to conjure up a suture. I saw a vague depression running from a side margin and extending maybe a fifth of the way across the thorax. The opposite side held no clues whatsoever. Taking this as my 'suture' (the book did state that sutures may fizzle out a bit towards the middle...) I counted three dorso-centrals behind it >>2
2) Tarsal claws as long as the tarsal segment they are attached to (no) >> 3
Claws are shorter than the length of the tarsal segment they are attached to
3) Abdomen segment 1+2 with a marginal bristle at each side of the segment (yes) >>5
5) Femur of front leg with four postero-ventral bristles (yes) >> Siphona (mesnili) confusa
The leg accidentally came off, but certainly helps with the angle of photography!
These four bristles, amongst the British Siphona, are unique to S.ingerae (tarsal claws as long as the segment) and S.confusa, so that seems a pretty certain ID. I turned to the species account to see what that had to tell me about my fly.
Buggerall really. 16 records, all from late April and into May, and only discovered new to Britain in 1993 by the author of the book! Hosts unknown. Happily the Tachinid Recording Scheme have a bit more to say about it, though even now there are still only a handful of records (21 on theNBN map).
One feature that I struggled to understand is the shape of sternite 5. Supposedly "the apex of its lobes are abruptly turned in at 90 degrees", a feature that is unique to Siphona confusa. Mine was a male, which is meant to make things easier. Here's my pic of the relevant part, you're looking at the underside of the fly's abdomen.
And the same image but I've added red lines to show what I've interpreted as being the two possibilities that refer to the "apex of the lobes turned abruptly inwards forming a 90 degree angle"
If you've stuck with it this far, chances are you're probably properly into your flies, so feel free to tell me what it is that I'm supposed to be checking!
Anyway, it's a nice fly and one which I've now spent quite a bit of time with. It seems that the flight season is pretty short, so I need the temperatures to raise a bit higher than the two degrees it is at the moment if I want to find any more of these. It was snowing two days back, it didn't settle but was followed by sideways hail. Always a joy when you're approaching mid-May.
One last pic of the beast, all labelled up and ready to go into the relevant storebox. I can see myself needing to split my Brachycera collection into more boxes before too much longer. Currently I have "Diptera Nematocera", "Diptera Syrphidae" and "Diptera Non-Syrphidae" and the latter is becoming just a tad full. Clearly I shall need to split the Eremoneura, the Acalyptratae and the Calyptratae into their own boxes at some point.
Not too much space taken up by this one - each label is 12x7mm
Up until quite recently, I'd always viewed cranefly identification as being something of a dark art, something I considered best left to professional dipterists and other assorted crazies out there. But 2020 is the year where I'm trying to tackle any flies I happen to stumble across, and that obviously includes the leggy bastards that constitute the craneflies. I have keys, I have literature, I have a wealth of online resources and I have a need to stay one step ahead of The Ghost - and he's one of those crazies that already tackles tipulids. I soon found myself wading the murky waters of tipulid ID with an open mind having made the decision to tackle whatever came my way. Which is easy to do in the opening, quieter months of the year.
So what exactly are 'tipulids'? Ok, so firstly there is a nematoceran superfamily known as Tipuloidea which houses four families, these being Tipulidae, Cylindrotomidae, Pediciidae and Limoniidae.
Tipulidae are the 'Long-palped Craneflies' with 87 British species. These are the typical 'daddy longlegs' that everybody knows. The Cylindrotomidae are the 'Long-bodied Craneflies' with just 4 British species, none of which I've knowingly seen before. Pediciidae are the 'Hairy-eyed Craneflies' with 20 British species and finally Limoniidae are the 'Short-palped Craneflies' with a huge 222 British species. All in all that amounts to 333 species, quite a handful to get to grips with!
My cranefly year started on the 8th January with Limonia nubeculosa, a nice easy species of Limoniidae to begin with and one I've seen before. It has three dark bands on each pale yellow femur, a unique feature amongst the British cranefly fauna. I found this one skulking in the kitchen late one night. There are just a handful of previous Skye records but it is bound to be widespread.
My second cranefly was another Limoniidae, though somewhat smaller in stature. This is Dicranomyia chorea, another nationally common species but with only two previous Skye records, both from 2009.
The upper image is of a female that I potted from beneath Mark Telfer's window sill when I was in England earlier this year. The lower image is of a male that I caught here in Uig and shows the diagnostic terminalia which I'd hinged open to view. Despite not knowing what it was I had captured, it keyed to Dicranomyia very easily and the wing venation/pattern and genitalia are clinchers. So that's two out of the three hundred and thirty three possible species done - so far so good!
I had to wait until mid-March for species No.3 to make an appearance, a gnat-like wee thing spotted as it rested on the underside of a branch in Uig Wood.
This is a fairly undistinguished fly, though the hairy eyes immediately place it in Pediciidae and the wing venation quickly puts it in the genus Dicranota. It keys through straight to Dicranota subtilis, one I've never identified before. There are only two previous Skye records, both from the same chap in 2009, so it's nice to be able to add an updated record.
It wasn't until the end of March that I found what I had initially figured would have been my first cranefly of the year, spotted whilst fixing a broken window catch. This is Tipula rufina, a common species often encountered in the early part of the year and exhibiting patterned wings and a hugely diagnostic black streak running horizontally across the pleura.
This was my first Tipula of the year, a proper decent sized beast more readily recognisable as a cranefly rather than a large gnat. I saw a handful more over the next few weeks, but not as many as I would have expected to find. Maybe they're having a slow start to the year, or maybe I'm just not checking enough windows. Rather surprisingly, there are just two previous records for Skye (one being mine) and another from nearby Raasay.
An entire four weeks passed before the next Tipula was recorded, but it was well worth the wait!
This is the rather lovely Tipula vittata, a common springtime species typically found in damp woodland across much of Britain. This is just the third modern record for the species on Skye, with the only other being a 1939 record.
After the excitement of a decent Tipula, it was back to a small drab thing once more. This one keys to Dicranota pavida on account of the hairy eyes, a single wedge cell in the lower part of the outer-wing and an extra cross-vein in the upper part of the wingtip. There are no previous records of this cranefly from Skye.
My final cranefly of the spring thus far was found this morning, perched up on the wall of the laundry shed, presumably attracted in by the overnight light. I didn't have my camera or a pot to hand, so shoved it rather unceremoniously into a cup that was sat on the side.
The thirteen antennal segments, wingtips extending beyond the abdomen and narrow gap between the underside of the eyes all distinguish this as Tipula oleracea and not the similar Tipula paludosa, which flies quite a bit later in the year.
So, the first five months of 2020 has provided me with seven species of craneflies and has resulted in no major issues or mental breakdowns. Maybe they are do-able by lesser mortals after all. Mind you, identifying seven out of 333 species hardly makes me an expert on the subject! I'm certain I'll come tumbling down to earth with a bump soon enough.
I entitled this post Craneflies of Uig - Part 1 which kind of implies there will be a Part 2, maybe even a Part 3. Who knows where this could end (not me!) Well the tipulid season is about to kick off and I plan to keep abreast of identifying the ones I encounter as best I can. So yeah, there will definitely be a Part 2, probably for the summer jobbies, and a Part 3 for the end of summer species. Maybe even a Part 4 for the late season ones, who knows?
This is my breakdown so far :
Tipulidae - Tipula rufina, Tipula vittata and Tipula oleracea
Pediciidae - Dicranota subtilis and Dicranota pavida
Limoniidae - Limonia nubeculosa and Dicranomyia chorea
Cylindrotomidae - not yet.
