Iain MacGowan has recently (June 2015) found Okeniella caudata (Zett.) at two localities in high level flushes above 850m in Perthshitre and Angus. It looks a bit like Pogonota barbata in that it has a fan of long golden hair on the genitalia, but lacks the "beard" of simlar hairs on the jowls and also does not have the modified male wing veination of that species.
Myself and Roger Morris travelled to Kirkwall to deliver a training course: Introduction to Hoverfly Identification for the Orkney Record Centre on the weekend of the 6-7th June. To make the trip more worthwhile, we spent nearly a week getting to Orkney and a further week getting back, via the north and west coast of Scotland to undertake some recording in these remote and poorly recorded areas.
The Dipterists Summer Field Meeting was based at Bangor University from 5th to 12th July 2014. The weather was good and we got to some good habitat, especially the calcareous fens of central Anglesey and coastal habitats around Anglesey and the Llyn Penninsular. Whilst many of the sites we visited were very nice, flies seemed a bit hard to come by and the general consensus was that it felt more like mid-August than early July.
I have been unable to identify a male swept from "beach edge" by Andrew Halstead on 17/06/2005 at Wesport Dunes, Macrihinish (NR655261) on the west coast of the Mull of Kintyre. Whilst it seems to belongs to the group of sea coast species around S. litorea / S. calida (with a bare arista and hairy pteropleuron) of which there are many more around the coasts of Greenland, Canada and the Russian arctic, it does not appear to key out in Hackman (1956)
The Workshop took place at Preston Montford, Field Studies Council over the weekend of 22-23 Feb 2014 and 21 members attended. The topics covered were Bibionidae (led by Richard Lane), Sepsidae (led by Steve Crellin) and Scathophagidae (led by Stuart Ball).
I produced a new version of the Key to British Scathophagids (version 4.1) and a set of preliminary distribution maps.
This event provided the opportunity to launch the Scathophagid Recording Scheme.
