Eudejeania ← ChrisR

My first stacks 7

Apr

2011

Yesterday Malcolm Storey (bioimages.org.uk) brought over some new equipment he had just bought for photo-stacking, along with a ‘kit’ including a spare dSLR (3MP Nikon D100) and macro lenses. The real star of the equipment is Malcolm’s new StackShot – an automated system for racking a camera through pre-defined focus points and taking the photos ...

Back to the NHM again …

Jan

2010

Recently I had a few chances to go back to the NHM in London and work with the world Diptera collections – it was marvellous! I took along some of my larger & more spectacular specimens from North & South America and tried to identify them (with varying levels of success!). I also took lots of ...

Some Argentinian, Bolivian & Costa Rican tachinids 1

Dec

2009

A few of the more dramatic specimens from the neotropics a sample kindly donated by Martin Hauser 🙂 Identifications were derrived by comparing ot material in the NHM collections, London. EDIT (6/8/2011): I have just spotted that Monty Wood has demoted Trichosaundersia Townsend to a synonym of Epalpus – so have amended this article accordingly.

Tachinid Recording News

Identifying slim, black tachinids with grey dusting May 30, 2020
I always seem to have difficulty identifying the slim black&grey tachinids in the tribe Blondeliini and Phyllomya volvulus in photos. This mini article is a work in progress but should give some clues and rules of thumb that might be useful: Phyllomyia volvulus: orange/yellow wing bases/calyptrae; long & strong abdominal bristles, often longer than […]
Identifying the bronze-black Spring tachinids April 14, 2020
Work in progress… Spring can be an exciting time for Dipterists, when the first species emerge and we all clamour to identify our first flies. However, a few of the species can be quite tricky to identify from photos because they look superficially quite similar. That said, it can be possible to identify most […]
How to identify greenbottles in photos September 15, 2019
There are a few greenbottle tachinids and one of them (Chrysosomopsis aurata) is incredibly rare so I thought it might be worth showing how to identify it from the others. It is on the wing in late summer so could be easy to confuse for commoner species: Hairy eyes and strong erect bristles on […]
Tachinids that look like Eriothrix rufomaculata August 18, 2019
Eriothrix rufomaculata is an incredibly common fly in mid-summer, especially on any flowery meadows. The species is very easy to identify from the red abdominal side-patches, silvery face with projecting mouth edge, long costal spine, slightly shaded wings with a small petiole on the median vein. The only problem is that several other, rarer, […]
A quick guide to the new UK phasiines August 17, 2019
This year we have been lucky enough to receive records for 2 new species to the UK – Ectophasia crassipennis & Phasia aurigera. These both bear a resemblance to Phasia hemiptera and have been confused with them in the past so I thought I’d put together a few pointers on how to spot them. […]