Hello No 9 Spider,
Thanks for the help
From the insect folks I'm already starting to understand how complex identification can be. Although I spent three years working in tandem with a fabulous Zeiss microscope, and love microscopy, I'm now finding myself in a quandry as I can't bear to kill anything to get an ID, yet I recognise that it's necessary to be certain.
I'm hopeless, really. I spent ages last night catching both a mosquito and a cranefly for release. Should never have read that Buddhist stuff when I was younger
Think I'll stick to my plan to get an old microscope to help me to identify fungi instead, and otherwise be happy with what ID's can be done on live specimens
I'm just off to look up those two books you mentioned. Thank you so much for the help.
Cheers,
Andestine