PFL

PFL is a brutally aggressive competition between adversaries whereby the last fighter physically standing is the winner. Kicks, headbutts, choke outs and punches are fully admissible. Biting, gouging and elbow usage are not allowed. Broken bones, blood, pain and unconscious losers are the norm. There can be only one PFL Champion - the fiercest, the boldest, the fittest, the fastest, the canniest and the strongest fighter will prevail. Huge amounts of money, glory and adoration shower the winner, the runners-up ignored like so much broken dross blowing down a litter strewn gutter, forgotten, overlooked and unloved. Nobodies.

This year I have entered into the PFL competition. My adversaries are Gilbert White's Ghost and Mark 'The Terror' Telfer. It started ugly early into the opening round with a couple of dodgy moves from The Ghost resulting in some name calling from myself. Whilst The Ghost and I were trading our first shin kicks and swinging handbags at each other, The Terror was quietly spending his time in training for the season's madness and boldly made an early claim for leadership!  

So far however, the scorecards show that it is I, The Gibster, who has a clear points advantage. I am the youngster of the group and with by far the least experience, was I acting a fool when I agreed to take on these heavyweight titans in the ring? Will my bold dash for early leadership backfire, will I start to flag and find myself choked out or beaten into submission by my older and wiser adversaries?  

Just to clarify for the totally confused amongst you, I've not actually signed myself up into the Professional Fighters League. No, but I have agreed to a small challenge between friends in an attempt to see as many fly families as possible this year. Mark Telfer, Father of PSL has now come up with Diptera PFL - Pan Family Listing! As background, a large part of my decision to tackle dipteran families this year came about through my following the excellent Fly Guy and his blog hence, by extension, this Challenge has been born. If you're into PSL then, by definition, you're a lister. And listers usually like to have more on their list than the next guy does, even if they won't publicly admit it. Hence part of the concept behind this 'friendly' challenge. Coz yeah, PFL is a dirty game and it takes no prisoners (that holds true for either PFL, I'm not yet sure which will prove to be the meaner and more bloodthirsty!)

Three weeks into the first round the year and here are each combatant's fly family tallies - 

1) Limonidae (Short-palped Craneflies) - Seth

2) Mycetophilidae (Fungus Gnats) - Seth

3) Sciaridae (Black Fungus Gnats) - Mark and Seth

4) Psychodidae (Moth Flies) - Seth

5) Trichoceridae (Winter Gnats) - Seth

6) Anisopodidae (Window Gnats) - Seth

7) Chironomidae (Non-biting Midges) - Seth

8) Hybotidae (Dance Flies) - Mark

9) Phoridae (Scuttle Flies) - Mark

10) Lonchopteridae (Spear-winged Flies) - Mark and Seth

11) Agromyzidae (Leaf-mining Flies) - Ghost and Seth

12) Chloropidae (Frit Flies) - Mark

13) Heleomyzidae (no common name) - Ghost and Seth

14) Sphaeroceridae (Lesser Dung Flies) - Mark and Seth

15) Drosophilidae (Fruit Flies) - Mark

16) Ephydridae (Shore Flies) - Mark

17) Scathophagidae (Dung Flies) - Ghost

18) Calliphoridae (Blow Flies) - Ghost and Seth

There are 107 currently recognised families of fly that occur in Britain. I have no idea if anybody has ever achieved the full suite in a single year, doubtful seeing as some consist of just one or two rare/infrequent species, but I bet the most active (aka hellbent) dipterists could probably achieve 100 families in any given calendar year. It will be interesting to see how many families we manage, both between us and as individuals. 

Currently the scores show The Ghost bringing up the rear with four identified families, then The Terror with eight families and yours truly with twelve families so far. But it's early days. Numerically I have seen less species of fly than has The Ghost, who in turn is slightly behind Mark in terms of the number of fly species on his PSL. I'm badly out of my depth here, but I'm looking forward to seeing how the year progresses for we three amateur dipterists. Very amateur indeed in my instance.

And the prize for the 2020 Pan Fly Listing winner? No mere gold medal, no bottle of champagne, not even a crown of laurel leaves. No, the winner is presented the coveted Halo of Flies presented by Alice Cooper himself!!! (Failing that there's always Wee Alice from the croft over the hill. She looks like a man wearing make-up at the best of times, it's close enough...)

To follow my fly (and beetle) exploits for this year in far greater detail, click the Vision 2020 tab in the navbar above. And then bookmark it, coz it's a good read. Honest! 

No water - it must be January again

I've been having a whale of a time at work over the last few days. The bosses have gone away on holiday and I've had the place entirely to myself, love it! There are a couple of bathrooms being ripped out whilst the place is closed throughout January. Plus some new flooring and lots of wires to be chased and re-routed through various walls and beneath floor joists. Today the plumbers and carpenters arrived. Yesterday, in anticipation of this, I decided to go ahead and demolish the two bathrooms that are coming out. Crowbar, hammer, muscles and a manic grin throughout - this is absolutely my favourite time of year at work. I get to wreak havoc and get away with it. 

Smash, crash, love it!

This used to be a horrible wooden cabinet with built-in sink and the toilet sat next to it. And the wall used to be tiled. Oops. 

You can see the original roof timbers behind the bath taps - who knew (not me!)

These walls are staying, so I only had to remove the tiles. Nice

The stopcocks to this bath and the toilet were seized, so I left that for the plumbers to sort. They had an easy solution - shut the water off at the mains.Well yeah, even I could have done that...

This is the same room today (ie the following day). Tidy chaps these plumbers, can hardly even tell they've been in there...

I have to admit that I love poking around and seeing what it is they've done. I'm not a plumber, but I still find it fascinating to see how everything fits together so beautifully and, once the floorboards go back down, you'd never even know it was there. 

Except the floorboards haven't gone back down yet. There may be a small issue. They may have run out of time tonight before solving it. And they are away for "at least the next two days" on a Broadford job. This means the water has not gone back on again yet. And that means there's no heating either. Gee, I'm glad it isn't winter time...

But it's not end of the world, there are two buildings on site and the other has water and heating. I just have to go for a wander when I want to shower or flush the loo. It's no biggie, I lived in a hatchback for nearly three months once and survived.  

In other news, seeing as this is supposed to be a nature blog, I've made a start on my 2020 Vision year whereby I'm concentrating on coleoptera and diptera (beetles and flies) for the next twelve months. I've captured and examined a few gnats (plus one that got away tonight - zipped out of the pot and is currently hiding somewhere in my room) plus I have three species of beetle already on the list with the fourth, a flea beetle that I potted tonight, being the next on the agenda. 

If you haven't checked it out yet, please do click on the tab in the navbar above. 2020 Vision, you can't miss it. 

And just because I think of this tune every single time I write the word 'vision'....

Olympus TG-6

Late into 2017 I treated myself to an Olympus TG-4 and then went on to pretty much trash it within a few short months. I've dropped it down a cliff (and very nearly killed myself recovering it), I've left it on low rocks as the tide was coming in, I've even left it in a pub and not realised until two days later. And yet somehow I've managed to coax life out of that poor, beaten, battered camera ever since, it really must hate me by now. Lately I've been somewhat disappointed with the sharpness and clarity of the images it produces, occasionally it refuses to change 'mode' from landscape to microscope. Sometimes it even refuses to turn on FFS... Serves me right for all but destroying the objective lens and repeatedly neglecting to wash it clean after plunging it into rockpools time after time after time. Despite all of that, I actually do love my little TG-4, but the time has arrived when I need to upgrade to a fully functioning piece of kit.

Tonight I finally bit that bullet

Call it an early birthday present to myself. The good news is that you can expect sharper pics in the near future. The bad news is I'll be living off of bread and water for the foreseeable.

New Blog Time

Just a couple of hours out and about today, it was too grey and dull and miserable to be out for longer. I managed over a hundred species, but they were almost as an aside. I had a couple of specific targets in mind today and happily I successfully found one of them.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have a new blog for you to (hopefully) enjoy and publicise as widely as you can. This year I am going to be spending my time delving deep into the world of Coleoptera and Diptera, the beetles and the true flies. I am very deliberately slowing things down in 2020. I am no longer trying to wrap my head around everything from lichens to millipedes, from springtails to micro-fungi. My head just isn't retaining enough knowledge, I've spread myself too thinly for years now. I do believe that I'm a pretty decent general naturalist, but I am rubbish when it comes to the nitty-gritty of species recognition in far too many groups. 

My new blog is dedicated purely to the beetles and the true flies. In a moment of sheer pun-tastic brilliance, I thought of a catchy title. Google quickly showed me that just about everyone else had already beaten me to it, but I kept it anyway - PSL - 2020 Vision. Clever, huh? You can find it by clicking on  https://psl2020vision.blogspot.com/. By all means, feel free to link it to the sidebar in your own blog should you have one, and I fully appreciate that some of you have already linked this blog to yours - thank you!

I've been asked why I don't just incorporate the 2020 Vision into this blog instead of starting yet another new one. Well, I intend to keep this blog running much as it has been, covering topics from plants to birds, Skye Nature Group outings and anything else I feel may be worth sharing with you, doubtless including beetles and flies from time to time! 

But I wanted an entirely separate blog to record my progress throughout the year with beetles and flies. That way, I might attract the attention of dedicated coleopterists and dipterists who simply aren't interested in hearing about plant twitches, or moths, or the barnacles on my local beach (though there is a very smart fly called Aphrosylus celtiber that associates with barnacles, now I think of it. It should be here on Skye, it's known from all around...)

Just for fun, today's tally comprised 13 lichens, 7 fungi, 10 bryophytes, 47 vascular plants, 4 molluscs, 1 arachnid, 1 springtail, 1 beetle (you'll just have read the new blog to find out which one), 2 myriapods, 2 crustaceans, 11 birds and 2 mammals. Yep, including human. She was first on the list as it happens.