General discussion

Here is a reminder that the Devon Fly Group are holding our annual indoor winter meeting at Woodah Farm on Saturday 7th March. We will start casually at 10:30am and finish mid afternoon. Woodah Farm is near Doddiscombleigh in the Teign valley (SX847867, EX6 7PR).

BRC is printing out the handouts for the DF Preston Montford workshop on 14-16 February. Is there anyone going to that workshop who could collect the handouts from me and deliver them to PM? Would need to be collected from Wallingford in Oxfordshire or near Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire.

Thanks!

In the last few days we've added a few new items to the website:

• A page for the new Heleomyzid Recording Scheme
• Downloads for Stuart Ball's keys to Diptera families (with the Ismay's additional input) and to Sciomyzidae, available via the DF membership area (you need to be logged in to the website to access these).

Other recent additions in case you missed them:

Test image addition

Charlie Griffiths catching summiting Sarcophagids - Stapley Hill, Shropshire 2019.

We now have a much easier way to add photos to forum posts. When you add a post, you should see an "IMAGE" section immediately under the "Body" text section, and you can simply upload one or more photos. They will appear underneath your forum text, and will automatically be shown as a thumbnail that you can click on to open up to full size (see example below).

For full details see Posting in the forums from our Help pages.

Please do remember to give details of any events you are arranging this year both on this website and on the Year of the Fly site http://yearofthefly.org/, however local.  We want to make sure that flies have as high a profile this year as we can!

I'm in the process of updating the fly database for VC55 Leicestershire & Rutland. We have very few records of the Psychodidae but note from Phil Withers Dipterists Digest No 4 (1989) on Moth Flies that he indicates 23 species have been recorded in Leicestershire but without specific record details.  Any help in locating these records would be most welcome!

Ray Morris

VC55 Diptera Coordinator

Alan Outen has asked us to pass on details on the Sandwich Bay Bioblitz on 6-7 July. Dipterists are welcome to visit the Bay, join in the recording and if possible help with identifications. For full details see the entry in our Events section.

This pupae was collected from the end of a bramble stem whilst looking for hymenopteran larvae, 20.ii.2019, Queens Park, Swindon, Wiltshire - SU155842. Thanks to Roger Morris for offering me the suggestion tachinid pupae. I reared through to its emergence yesterday 30.iii.2019, thanks due to Chris Raper for him identifying it from some poor images (worse than those below) - Triarthria setipennis ♀, a perusal of NBN Atlas suggests 242 records within it and none in North Wiltshire VC7. Chris commented "It's pretty common but not caught all the often ...

Thanks to Peter Chandler for providing another update (at February 2019) to his Checklist of Diptera of the British Isles. It can be downloaded from the Checklist page under the Resources menu, and to see the latest changes go to the Updates page.