Time for an update

Most of my spare time at the moment has been taken up with working through my backlog of specimens. This is the most productive way to spend this time of year but I cannot let the competition think he's having it all his own way so I've done a bit of fieldwork in the few moments of decent weather to get the lists up and running.

Flies have been thin on the ground even then but I've picked up a few cluster flies attracted to the white walls of a friends house and on the windows of a barn at Knepp. Most of them have been Pollenia species which need a bit of work in due course to get to species but I have added Calliphora vicina to the year list.

Calliphora vicina  (Wikimedia Commons)

Also attracted to the walls of my friends house was the Heleomyzid Heteromyza oculata.

Heteromyza oculata - BioLib.cz

As well as the fly and beetle species challenge, I appear to have been roped in to a fly families challenge. This involves seeing how many different families we can find and identify. The identification only needs to be to family level, not to species. So as well as the families where I have identified a species, I can also add Scathophagidae, Phoridae and Muscidae from Knepp. I have never looked closely at Phorids before but they are fairly easy to identify to family level, having characteristic reduced wing venation. I was particularly impressed with their faces though, especially their antennae with mini-footballs for the third antennal segment and sideways pointing arista. I suspect that getting them to species will be a struggle but I've ordered the key so watch this space.

Phorid head and wing

I also found a moth fly or drain fly (Psychodidae) in my bathroom and then, whilst lamping in Botley Wood the same evening, another species from this family. This family is normally a no-go area for normal people and they almost all need dissection and are horribly difficult but the specimen I found at Botley was unlike any I have seen before and I just wonder if it might be identifiable when I can access a decent museum collection in a week or so.

Moth fly from Botley Wood

Beetles will always be a secondary consideration for me in the challenge (mainly due to my inability to identify most of them) but I have picked up the very common Tenebrionid Nalassus laevioctostriatus which was crawling up a tree trunk at Knepp and the common ground beetle Dromius quadrimaculatus at Botley Wood.

Dromius quadrimaculatus

So I finish January on the 'grand' totals of 3 beetles and 4 flies to species and 6 fly families. I may be trailing in last place at the moment but that could change tomorrow when I'm spending some time in the field with a Coleopterist (if I can stop him looking at bloody spiders). 

Challenge update

Seth has a weeks head start on me but I have managed to record a couple of flies and a beetle since the start of the year. Firstly the fly Phytomyza ilicis, the mines of which can be found on virtually every holly bush in the UK - apart from northern Skye (hahaha). Another fly in the same genus, Phytomyza chaerophylli mines the leaves of umbellifers such as Cow Parsley and I found large numbers of mines at Warblington cemetary when I called in to see the various paper bags there (aka 5 Cattle Egrets and 10+ Little Egrets).

Phytomyza chaerophylli mines

Assorted paper bags

As I said in the previous post, I am utterly useless at beetles but I found one under a log whilst looking for springtails at Hindhead Common the other evening. Given its appearance and location I assumed it was a carabid and, being blue and orange I thought it would be relatively easy to identify. It very quickly fell out of the carabid key so I resorted to using a picture book to see if I could find something similar. Much to my surprise I quickly came across a suitable looking thing in the family Erotylidae - apparently called 'Pleasing Fungus Beetles'! Of the ones in the book, mine looked a good match for Triplax aenea and searches on the web haven't changed my mind but I would like to get confirmation before I count it as it would be a new species to me and identifying beetles by picture matching is seriously dodgy.

Triplax aenea - hopefully

So I reckon that puts me on about 2 and a half combined total for the year. Not sure what Seth is on but I think he's ahead of me, for the time being.

Game On

My mate (yes, I only have one) Seth comes up with a natural history challenge each year. He creates a new blog to document what he's doing and then by about mid-February he gives up! This year his challenge can be found here

So his aim this year is to focus on beetles and flies and to identify as many species in each group as he can, with the aim of becoming more competent in the identification of these groups. This got me thinking. I am completely useless at beetles and slightly less useless at flies but would like to improve my skills in both groups. A little friendly competition might provide motivation to us both so last night I challenged Seth to a competition. The challenge was accepted.

The winner will be the one whose combined total number of species of flies and beetles recorded during 2020 is the higher. The species can be recorded in any life stage and we can get help with identification from other people as it is impossible to define a clear-cut line between doing it all yourself and just mindlessly asking people 'what's this?' that makes any sense. Neither of us is the type to just collect vast numbers of specimens and get others to do all the ID work anyway, and if we did it would sort of defeat our original object of improving our ID skills.

We both have advantages and disadvantages in this challenge. Seth is much better at beetles than me and I'm probably better at flies than he is although neither of us would describe ourselves as competent in either group. I live in the tropical south of England whilst Seth is in the tundra wastelands of Skye so I have access to a greater number of species, but Seth can largely devote his natural history time to the challenge whilst I have commitments with other taxa that I cannot ignore for the year.

It's going to be interesting to see how we get on. I honestly have no idea who will win and am largely relying on Seth giving up in mid-February to give me an easy win (and subsequent bragging rights for about the next 10 years). Whatever happens, there should be some good banter for the next five weeks (or however long Seth lasts).