Basic kit for identifying and saving specimens

 I fully understand that many people would not like to catch, kill and preserve Hoverflies, preferring instead to photograph them. That is indeed fine and I have no issue with those views.

For myself, though I feel strongly that it is important to know exactly what insects exist so that declines can be measured and action taken. Unfortunately it simply isn't yet possible to identify the majority of UK species in the field. I am fortunate to have the skills and opportunity  to carry out identification using a microscope. To me it is important that I do what bit I can.

The UK Hoverflies Facebook group do a great job of recording about a third of the UK species but cannot, yet go beyond this. Roger Morris has written a paper discussing how trends in populations may be being influenced by photographic recording.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355203638_Is_photographic_recording_influencing_published_trends_in_the_relative_frequency_of_invertebrates?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InByb2ZpbGUiLCJwYWdlIjoicHJvZmlsZSJ9fQ

Anyway feel free to skip this blog post if the techniques are not for you.

This is what my desk looks like, when its tidy !

My kit consists of the following main items.

                                                    Euromex binocular microscope. 

This was, by far, my biggest outlay and influenced heavily by the course I attended at BENHS.

In order to look at the flies from all angles I made this simple stage with stuff from my local DIY shop.

To actually hold the flies in place I have pins bought from Watkins and Doncaster. These are A100 and also No 3 Continentals for the finished article including label.

The pins are stuck into plastazote which I have stuck to a base plate for ease. The same material comes in little strips for putting the fly on so you can attach a label.

My early labels were far too big using up loads of plastic sandwich boxes so I have just finished re-labelling everything. My label kit is below

I now cut thin card/thick paper into 2cm by 1 cm strips with a guillotine and scissors. To write the label small enough I use a 0.03 pen. This also means I need a small magnifying glass as my writing is not neat. I write two labels for each specimen. The top one has my name, the scientific name of the fly and its sex.

The second label has the date caught, name of site and Grid reference.

I discovered that storing the boxes in my garage was a disaster and now use a cupboard after also putting a small pack of silica gel in each one. (Also note that using the chest of drawers in your daughter's old room can cause upset when she comes home to visit and tries to unpack !)

Finally here is a labelled specimen and what one of my boxes looks like. This is the second of my two Cheilosia collections. They do all look alike !

                                                           Cheilosia soror female

                                                             Cheilosia specimen box 

Hopefully these first few blog posts have given a flavour of the basics required to study and record Hoverflies. I will cover other topics in photography etc as the year progresses but for now its back to research and waiting for the season's first actual live hoverfly to appear.