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Unidentified fly in Leicestershire garden

Found in my Leicestershire garden on 27th July  2021.

It was approx 8mm long, dark metallic grey with a green-yellow sheen in places, 'rough' textured, smoky wings, dark legs with some orange in places.  Just managed to take a few quick shots in the specimen pot. 

 

Any information, even a suggestion of genus, would be very helpful.  Thanks.

Comments

Hi Kate, that is Scenopinus fenestralis (House Windowfly, a female), from family Scenopinidae, one of the families included in the soldierflies and allies recording scheme. Its larvae are predators of other insects, usually inside houses - things like larvae of carpet beetles and other beetles. It isn't seen all that often, and I'd be grateful if you can add the record details to iRecord (or NatureSpot if you prefer) for the recording scheme. See map attached.

Many thanks Martin. Tha map is interesting, and I'm wondering whether the eastern bias is purely down to recorder effort, or whether other factors may be involved.

I'm planning to add all my records to iRecord, but there are many thousands - not just Diptera - and it's a daunting task, so I may give priority to the more significant and unusual specimens .

 

Thanks again.

My records are stored as worksheets (one sheet per Order), in a rather large spreadsheet, but I’m in the process of reviewing everything at the moment. I'm trying to tidy everything up and re-examine older records to see if I still trust them.

The ability to do a bulk upload would be make life so much easier, thank you.

Do you mind if I e-mail you directly with more details re. the above?