An Early Doli

Yesterday was a day of extremes. It started nice and sunny, though still rather cold with snow on the hills and the occasional light flurry of hail. Around midday I noticed a sizeable fly sat splayed on the wall outside my bedroom. Not expecting to see a fly whilst walking to the garage I didn't have a pot on my person, so I hastily nipped back indoors and grabbed one. A few seconds later and the fly was safely secured.

From this angle I was still puzzled as to which family it belonged. The splay-legged stance seemed wrong for anything other than craneflies and their allies - clearly it wasn't one of those! Maybe a long-legged soldierfly? Where there any? I popped in a wad of tissue laced with ethyl acetate and sat back to wait for the fumes to do their stuff. 

Once I was able to view the fly from different angles, it was immediately apparent that it was a doli fly, one of the Long-legged Flies from the family Dolichopodidae. Wow, I wasn't expecting that! I wouldn't have expected to see a doli for at least another month or so, and I'm much more used to finding them in the woodland and wetter areas of meadows than on the wall of a building. Bit of a curve ball, but it's a very distinctive-looking family of flies, so who was this huge (9mm long) doli that was active in the cold? 

What a STUNNER!!!

The colours don't really show up too well in that image, but the greens are properly sea green with turquoise running through everything. It's a beautiful fly, it really is. Note the diffuse dark spot in the wing, I figured that would be a clinching feature. Also just look at the head shape, bizarre!

Just look at the shimmer on the frons and the intricate striping on the thorax - this is a lovely fly!

It really didn't take me very long to figure this as a female Liancalus virens, which is the largest doli fly in north west Europe. I was still somewhat confused about the early date and habitat, but reading online it seems that these beautiful flies are active throughout the year - though peaking during the summer months - and the preferred habitat is wet gullies, water wells, wet walls and even just leaky water pipes! With that in mind, I'm surprised I haven't seen them before. Skye is currently awash with surface water and there are plenty of overflowing drains around Uig! 

I'm on the look out for a male Liancalus next, they have a small white mark at the wingtip. Presumably they indulge in some sort of wing-waving or wing-flicking during courtship. 

Flushed with success at actually finding a fly, I hit Uig Wood where, during light snow flurries, I found the pattern-winged midge Macropelopia nebulosa and a phorid which is female and hence possibly unidentifiable. Then I was caught out in some ferocious sideways hail a mere forty minutes walk from home. Damn but I was soaked by the time I made it indoors. Some spring this is turning out to be! I did notice several unopened blossom buds on the blackthorn bushes, reckon they'll be open in a week or so. That's assuming the hail didn't obliterate them all. Blossom means warmth and insects, I'm getting a tad fed up seeing pictures on FB of hoverflies and tachinids rolling through pollen laden catkins and blossoms from further south. Meh, the only hoverfly I've seen this year was a larva in January and I haven't even seen my first bluebottle of the year yet! 

Macropelopia nebulosa - blurry due to my wiping snowflakes off the tube!

 

The midge was confirmed by Tony Irwin on the UK Diptera FB page. He identified one for me a couple of years back and I thought this looked the same. Happy days. My fly yearlist now stands at a huge thirty species, with twelve of those being lifers for me. It'll get going soon, I just know it will. Not sure what The Ghost is currently on, more than thirty I suspect.