uk-soldierflies.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Another day, another #BeeFlyWatch feature! Thanks this time to @fieldstudiesc.bsky.social for their blog by Olivia Watts at www.field-studies-council.org/2025/02/26/s...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Great photo! #BeeFlyWatch

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Many thanks to the #EncounterNature app for featuring #BeeFlyWatch alongside their other helpful 'natural notifications', and also hosting a linked bee-fly feature www.encounter-nature.com/features/bee... ... 1/3

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

As well as the bee photos, Rob reports a bee-fly! This is the first I've heard of in 2025, and it means #BeeFlyWatch is under way for another year 🎉 See more info, ID guides and a recording form at dipterists.org.uk/bee-fly-watch

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

👍👏👏🙏

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

While we wait for spring 🌞 and bee-flies in the UK, here's a smart-looking new bee-fly from South Africa

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

What a good idea 💡 👌 #BeeFlyWatch

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

These remarkable creatures will be emerging in 6 weeks or so - harbingers of Spring. Cuteness with a dark side. #insects #ukwildlife #invertebrates #wildlife #photography #nature #macro

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

A nice colourful soldier fly, Banded General (Stratiomys potamida) seen on the South Downs near Alfriston in East Sussex in July 2021. #flies #ukwildlife #macrophotography

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Tension rises as we await the 1st #BeeFlyWatch sighting of 2025! Judging by the weather where I am at the moment it's going to be a while yet ... but as soon as you do start seeing bee-flies please get a photo & add a record - full details + ID guides available at dipterists.org.uk/bee-fly-watch

submitted 20 days ago • 2 comments

Great video clip of what I think is a horsefly larva - amazing speed and cool use of the fleshy lobes on the abdomen segments to help propel it along 🤩

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

On #WorldWetlandsDay don't forget to celebrate the wonderful range of #soldierflies that depend on unpolluted natural wetlands for their survival, alongside all the other plants and animals of these special places www.worldwetlandsday.org @dipteristsforum.bsky.social

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Common Green Colonel soldierfly (Oplodontha viridula) seen on the Somerset Levels last May. #insectthursday #soldierflies

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Fabulous #flies – a male Hairy-legged Horsefly (Hybomitra bimaculata) at Westhay Moor NNR on the Somerset Levels ... hairy eyes too Our Guide to #FliesofBritainandIreland to be published Oct 25 bit.ly/4dqQI8Z #StevenFalk1 #gailashton #Ecoentogeek #flygirlNHM #SomersetWT

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

Here is a delightful little fly for #BlueMonday, the Stratiomyid or Soldierfly Chloromyia formosa found at @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social . She has the most amazing metallic blue abdomen! #BlueBugs @uk-soldierflies.bsky.social

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

I've also only seen this once, at Dungeness in May 2022. A mere 327 flies on my list so far...

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

#speciesaday no. 528 is Oxycera trilineata. A local, wetland soldierfly. This is the only one I have ever seen, which is odd as it's not that scarce. Recorded at Iford in June 2021. I've only recorded 562 species of fly (which ranks me a lowly 16th for flies on the #PSL website).

submitted 41 days ago • 6 comments

Great to meet up with members of the Leicestershire and Rutland Entomological Society last night, thanks for hosting the talk!

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

Tonite! For one night only!

submitted 44 days ago • 2 comments

Striped Slender Robberfly (Leptogaster cylindrica) from Longrun Meadow in Taunton last Summer. Great to watch it make darting forays for prey amid the tall herbage then come to rest suspended from a suitable new vantage point. #insectthursday #soldierflies

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Thursday January 16th 7.30pm on Zoom - Martin Harvey, "Soldierflies & allies in Leicestershire & beyond" Book here (free): leicestershirerutlandentsoc.blogspot.com/2025/01/thur... #Flies #Diptera #entomology #UKWildlife Please repost!

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

An impressive wasp that is a parasitoid of soldierflies in genus Stratiomys - not an ecological lifestyle that the soldierflies recording scheme approves of 🤔, but it's all part of the network that allows biodiversity to thrive

submitted 49 days ago • 0 comments

A Black Colonel soldierfly (Odontomyia tigrina) from the Somerset Levels in May last year. The sun gave the fly a nice silvery sheen when it moved position. #soldierflies #insectthursday #bugsky

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

One starting point is to use our vice-county lists to check which species have been recorded in your area @jimhorsfall.bsky.social dipterists.org.uk/soldierflies... Good luck with finding them!

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

24 from 2024: My Invertebrate Highlights. 1. Laphria flava, Bumblebee Robberfly, star find of the year from our trip to Scotland in June. A brief glimpse of one in Abernethy Forest but rewarded by it returning and seeing at least two others in the week. Having them land on me was even better. #Fly

submitted 59 days ago • 2 comments

Good to see this from 2024 - so far no-one has sent in any records of S. chamaeleon for 2024, and there was only one in 2023 - always worrying that this species could so easily be lost. Thanks to @judywebb.bsky.social for her dedication to conserving the habitats and species at Cothill 🙏

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

Dipteran highlights here in garden in 2024: Conops vesicularis ♀, Ctenophora pectinicornis ♀, Macronychia striginervis ♀ & Nemotelus nigrinus ♂.

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

Good photo! A robberfly that seems to be doing well around Morecambe Bay, judging by the numbers recorded during the @dipteristsforum.bsky.social meeting. #soldierflies

submitted 62 days ago • 0 comments

I wasn't aware of #hexapodecember either, but here is my pick is a Hornet Robberfly - UK's biggest predatory fly, it grabs other insects as big as grasshoppers, then stabs them with its venomous needle like mouth! I nominate @flygirlnhm.bsky.social to continue hexapod chain!

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

Last call for contributions to the next Soldierflies and Allies newsletter - brief articles or news items are welcome on any aspect of recording and natural history/ecology, or photos showing interesting behaviour etc. Previous newsletters available at dipterists.org.uk/soldierflies...

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

There are only four other databased bee-fly records in year 1951, all from Worcestershire, so this will add significantly to the known range that year 😀

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

You can't beat an insect feeding on a yellow flower. This is a Western Bee-fly, Bombylius canescens, which I saw in a gorgeous flower meadow at Pentwyn Farm in Gwent. Seen mainly in south Wales and south west England. #flies #ukwildlife #pollinator

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

#soldierflies

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

To my mind, almost the most beautiful of the wetland-breeding soldierflies. What's the most beautiful ? coming soon...

submitted 77 days ago • 2 comments

As @sjbknott.bsky.social has said, this is the superb Three-lined Soldier, Oxycera trilineata (a male), which breeds in shallow ditches and pools and fens, and can cope with slightly brackish conditions #soldierflies

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

Great photo of a Kite-tailed Robberfly (Machimus atricapillus), and the others are quite good as well (they can't help it if they're not #soldierflies and allies 😄)

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment