I broke my car last night, so will be exploring more locally, and on foot, for the forseeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it's been probably a couple of months since I last set foot in Uig Wood! So today I decided to rectify that and took myself the entire quarter of a mile into monad NG4063, which contains a largely undisturbed part of Uig Wood. NG3963, which is my home monad, also includes a decent chunk of Uig Wood, but that section is filled with dogwalkers and dogshit and is far too busy for my liking.
The sun was out and it was borderline uncomfortably warm as I stood on the edge of the treeline waiting for flies to land on the sunlit Sycamore in front of me. Sheltered sunlit leaves are few and far between up here, usually there's a wind, or it's cloudy (or raining...) but there are several large Sycamores in a sheltered hollow which trap the sun and reliably turn up the goods. Today I was hoping for soldierflies. Muscids, more muscids, lots of mating hybotids, a cranefly, calliphorids, yet more muscids...in itself this would ordinarily be ace, but I had an objective in mind so my net stayed by my side. I didn't have to wait long before the first of several soldierflies landed on a suitably sunlit leaf. Out with the net and....
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| Sargus flavipes - top two images are of a male, bottom image is of a female |
These are Sargus flavipes, a common species of soldierfly across much of Britain. I've seen it here in Uig Wood before, but these were the first for the year. For anybody interested, I totted up my diptera yearlist today for the first time since May. I'm on 119 species so far, which is very humdrum for July. I've a backlog of pinned stuff which would probably jettison me over the 200 species mark even if I don't see another fly all year, getting around to it is the issue.
Whilst wandering the woods, I spied what looked like a small bumblebee nectaring on a Common Valerian flowerhead. It didn't fool me for long, no bee sits there quietly like that - they're always busily clambering around flowerheads or hovering from one flower to another. They never just quietly sit there like this thing did. Out with the net, one swipe and it was straight into a pot. I didn't recognise it. Definitely not Eristalis intricaria, which is what I thought it was going to be. Not Volucella bombylans or Cheilosia illustrata either. Hmmm, so what was it?
It didn't take long to run it through the keys, this is a male Criorhina berberina and a new fly for me. I looked at the maps. Oh right, a new fly for The Hebrides too as it turns out! This is the map from the Hoverfly Recording Scheme's page (the arrow has been added and points at Uig Wood).
One thing that has struck me, I'm proper shit at remembering to take images of flies in the field! I generally tend to swipe the net first and ask questions later, by which time it's in the pot and the opportunity has been missed. So I made a (small) effort to remedy that, after all nobody wants to see pics of pinned flies when you could be looking at them in their natural environment. I'll make a proper effort from now on to add field pics. Here are a few 'early attempts' from the past few days.
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| Leucozona glaucia - females at the top and middle, a male at the bottom |
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| Male Eristalis pertinax - a very common fly across Skye |
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| Xylota segnis - a weird-looking sawfly mimicking hoverfly that usually scurries rather than fly |
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| Leafmine of Amauromyza labiatarum on Hedge Woundwort (not spectacular but they all count!) |
