Monday, August 21, 2017

Dalgety Bay - Soldiering on

A weekend heavily dominated by a wonderful 3 hour session patrolling mayweed on the shore. Every slow trek along the stretch turned up something new, including two fantastic flies. The first, which I thought was a Gonia, I now realise isn't - it's Tachina fera. Since both are things I have really wanted to see for a long time I somehow transposed them. What a bizarre mistake to make. Ironically the less scarce Tachina is new for VC85 whereas the Gonia wouldn't have been.


Anyway ... the second , which is new for the county at least, and possibly new to Scotland, is the soldierfly Chorisops nagatomii. Both species of the genus are southerly in distribution but nagatomii is a late summer species and in all references consulted so far has no Scottish records. Once I establish the species ID is good I'll cross check to see if someone else has pipped me to the post. (An aside on this is that I didn't realise it was anything interesting until I got it under the microscope. No voucher, no record!)

yellow humeri and posterior calli are key to the, erm, key


And how about something truly beautiful? Coniophora puteana. Lovely.


869 Tipula fulvipennis A cranefly
870 Hebeloma crustuliniforme A fungus
871 Diarsia dahlii Barred Chestnut
872 Chorisops nagatomii A Soldier Fly
873 Sericomyia silentis A hoverfly
874 Vanessa atalanta Red admiral
875 Erisyphe cichoracearum A fungus
876 Pipiza noctiluca A hoverfly
877 Pteridium aquilinum Bracken
878 Rhagoletis alternata A tephritid fly
879 Coniophora puteana A fungus
880 Eristalis arbustorum A hoverfly
881 Kaestneria pullata A Linyphiid spider
882 Dilophus femorata A Bibionid fly
883 Tachina fera A tachinid fly


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