The Society for the study of flies (Diptera)

Just ordered a copy. Not sure if this book concentrates on UK species or refers to the family worldwide. Either way, this is a group which I often encounter but my identification attempts often come to an uncertain end.

The keys are OK as far as they go but I frequently find them rather ambiguous when my examples fail to easily fall into the required firm yes or no categories and I can't find any clear photographs to confirm the alternatives.

Stuart Ball has produced excellent UK keys for the forthcoming workshop.

My earlier attempt was "adequate" I thought, certainly should have resolved some of the uncertainty. I won't give you the link as Stuart's is so much better.

Photographs may be obtained on Diptera.info but photographic guides are an issue which remains to be resolved, identification from photographs is tricky (though Paul Beuk manages it mostly). This is an area where a DF gallery might be helpful.

I'm using Darwyn's 2007 keys. Most keys make more sense the more you use them, providing you get a successful result each time.

My problems occur when I'm uncertain about the end result which is where a real photo proves so useful. If my final 'identification' looks totally different from a real life colour image I know I have gone wrong somewhere!

Some of the more recent publications like Britain's Hoverflies for example are so useful in this respect. I find the Mike Hackson keys so user friendly. He has revised some older keys and added decent colour images at many of the dividing points; although a lot of his revisions cover other insect families like beetles etc, more than flies.

So often, I get to a division which turns on something like 'frons shining'. Well the frons on my example isn't exactly shining; but I wouldn't call it matt either! Which, I know, comes with experience; but it can be tough when first encountering a new species where my experience is zero.