A grand day out

 Saturday was my first opportunity to join the Devon Fly Group on a field visit. I arrived at Lower Sharpham Barton Farm ,a wilding site near Totnes, via a lift from local dipterist Bob Fleetwood,


The morning was spent following a track down to the river area and for myself, a look at the edge of a small woodland. Here group member Andrew pointed out a couple of Brachypoda hoverflies around a tree with an almost invisible sap run. A new species group for me.  These brown hoverflies don't really resemble any others but I wasn't able to get a photo in the field. 

Identification relies on things such as the shape of a small pit on the inside of antennal segment 3 so I had to examine one under a microscope to confirm that this was Brachypoda scutellaris.


Brachypoda scutellaris male


Kidney shaped antennal pit

I thought that this would surely be the highlight of the day but I was very much mistaken.


As I walked back up the track for lunch I noticed a tiny hoverfly in a celandine flowerhead and duly swung my net. A closer look revealed it to be a Sphegina species. While these are very tricky to identify I realised that the Devon Fly group contained everyone in the UK who had identified a new species to Britain in this group in the last two years. This was Sphegina limbipennis which will be called the Devon Pufftail. These seemed the ideal people to help with the identification of my catch as they would clearly know every species.


I passed the tube to Rob who got out his hand lens, stared at the fly, smiled and said " Congratulations on catching Britain's 4th ever Devon Pufftail  "

Mind you within 2 hours several others had found their own. That is now four separate sites suggesting it has rapidly become established. I'll be looking for a Somerset one from now on.


Devon Pufftail  in tube


Same again

Sorry for the blurry pictures but the excitement of joining the Fly Bingo game, a regular event for the group was just too much !! Or it might have been the whattsapp that arrived from my daughter with news of her engagement at the same time !

Spegina clunipes (top) and limbipennis (bottom)

As you can see differences are slight especially as my one was teneral and so much paler than normal. Usually the wingtips are much darker, though the smaller size helps a little. Differences in haltere colour and patterns of spines on the rear femurs are needed for confirmation.



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