Selection of 2011 tachinids for ID help please

[Geoff F]

More from my 2011 unidentified files. All from S. Devon.

I think these are from the Tachinidae family although I'm rather unsure about one. This is another of those families where, apart from a few obvious cases, my knowledge is rather poor.

From June



From August. After a few changes of mind, I was thinking about a rather bright Thelaria nigripes but with poor abdomen markings. But this is mostly guesswork



August. This is the one I'm not sure about being Tachinidae



And from May 2 shots of the same fly.





Any suggestions welcomed; I find this family very confusing and I don't have any good keys to help me.

ps. This appears to be 'one of those posts that makes me struggle'. After getting half way, I went to 'collect' another image but couldn't find my way back; so I had to start again.

Then trying to be clever, I decided to upload the partially completed post, to keep it safe, and continue adding the rest as edits; but forgot to Click on Save.

Does anybody else have days like this - or is it just a mixture of me and age!

[ChrisR]

Looks to me like:

- Nyctia halterata (sarcophagid)
- Thelaira nigripes
- a muscid
- possibly Exorista rustica group

[Geoff F]

Thanks for that Chris, a great help.

[ChrisR]

No problem Geoff - always happy to help when it comes to tachinids

I can email you keys that you can try but it is very hard / impossible to use them on photos. You might get more joy using something like MoschWeb (::: MOSCH WEB Interactive Key of Diptera Tachinidae :::), which allows you to feed in the criteria that you can see and skip the ones you can't ... but it only goes to genus and it does contain genera from across Europe ... so it might be a bit confusing.

Tachinids are not as difficult as people think and there are many that can be taken to genus or even species in the field or from photos. The only problem comes when you only have 1 angle to view the insect from or where you're just unlucky enough to have a genus with lots of similar species. Like most fly groups, tachinids need to be collected to be studied seriously

[Geoff F]

Thanks, I have bookmarked that site.

At one time, I did try a trial version of the Delta Keys but found them impossible to fully load onto my computer. And expensive if I wanted to continue.