Martin Harvey's blog

Yesterday we launched Bee-fly Watch for 2017, and today the first two bee-flies for the year were reported! One from the Isle of Wight and one from Dorset. Where will be next?

This presentation was given at the Bedfordshire Natural History Society "neglected insects" conference in November 2016:

Two new pages have been added today:

• Notes on British Soldierflies and their Allies (by Stubbs and Drake), intended to provide some extra guidance on difficult parts of the keys.
• Handouts from our training courses are now available to download.

The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) is a partnership of many organisations involved in biological recording, and one of its main functions is to enable records to be shared via the NBN Gateway website.

A Soldierflies and Allies Checklist is now available (Excel spreadsheet, 26kb). It includes a list of all species covered by the recording scheme, giving a brief summary of distribution and habitats.

Data from the Soldierflies and Allies Recording Scheme has now been supplied to Buglife to help inform the "Important Invertebrate Areas" project. Buglife say "Important Invertebrate Areas are nationally and internationally significant places for the conservation of invertebrates and the habitats upon which they rely.

The Biological Records Centre has recently updated the soldierfly records from iRecord onto the National Biodiversity Network Gateway website.

Malcolm Smart has kindly provided a copy of his 2005 paper (PDF download, 7MB) on the identification of three confusingly similar robberflies: Kite-tailed Robberfly Machimus atricapillus, Brown Heath Robberfly M. cingulatus and Irish Robberfly M. cowini.

New to this website: illustrated guide to distinguishing the two 'downlooker' flies, Rhagio scolopaceus and Rhagio strigosus. These are the only two species in genus Rhagio that have wings with mottled dark markings, but they are very similar to each other - check the antennae to tell them apart!

A record recently arrived on iRecord that stood out from the rest: