A cold spring

The news today reported that this was the coldest spring for 50 years! Well, the data from the internet confirms this - numbers of photographs accompanied by locality  posted this year are well down on both the last two years and in April they barely reached the level of 2010.

The following to graphs illustrate this. However, it must also be noted that the numbers of photographs with data posted in May exceeded any previous year. It is also quite surprising that good numbers of records were generated last Saturday, but the numbers for Sunday and Monday were well down on what might be expected for a nice sunny Bank Holiday.

Numbers of photographs posted with location data 2004 to 2013 for the period January to April. Each bar represents the cumulative numbers for the period.

Numbers of photographs posted with location data 2004 to 2013 for the period January to May. Each bar represents the cumulative numbers for the period.

These data suggest that interest in photo recording continues to grow. I am starting to think there might be scope in developing a more detailed photo-recording initiative based on iSPOT or similar technology. Scanning websites also makes me think we need a team of entomologists extracting data for all taxa. The numbers of moths and butterflies posted is amazing and there are good numbers of beetles and shield bugs.

Disrupted services

I realise that it is a very long while since I last posted anything. There have been various distractions; not least the job of send out large numbers of WILDGuides! We are not quite sure how many have actually been sold world-wide, but we think it is in the order of 1800 copies. Stuart and I have sold (on behalf of Dipterists Forum) around 200 copies. As I've previously mentioned, the proceeds are going to Dipterists Forum and we hope that they will be used to support training programmes for new dipterists.

There are several pieces of news to relay.

1. A new approach to keys

Stuart and I are working on a new key to Platycheirus. Although based on the key in Stubbs & Falk, we are planning that it should be extensively illustrated with photographs and populated with maps and phenology diagrams as well as species descriptions. It is the first stage in planning for a new version of Stubbs and Falk. However, unlike previous approaches we have concluded that a new format is needed to improve the presentation of the keys (lots of people have trouble with following the right couplets). We also want to re-organise and re-write the species descriptions to incorporate new learning and experience from running training courses. This key will hopefully come out as a Dipterists Forum publication in the autumn. My guess is that it will be 60-80 pages in length - I've completely re-written the species descriptions and Stuart has a draft layout for the key. All we now need to do is to put it together and chase down specimens of a few species to photograph.

2. Species on the move

Yesterday I was alerted to a photo of Rhingia rostrata from Cumbria. The locality is within the known hot spot around Grange-over-Sands whose climate is rather different to the rest of Cumbria. Given that it has moved this far - a massive leap from the latitude of South Yorkshire - there is the possibility of a wider scatter of new records this year!

Some while ago I was contacted by Chris Webster who takes fantastic hoverfly photos. He had a Syrphus-like species that was puzzling him. It turned out to be S. nitidifrons. The photo can be seen on Steve Falk's website http://www.flickr.com/photos/63075200@N07/8485678619/ .

3. Training

Stuart and I ran a weekend course at Cardiff Museum in April that was a departure from our traditional introductory course. This one was an 'improvers' course that focused on Platycheirus and Cheilosia. It was very successful and we hope that we will be able to run a few more in coming years. What is really nice is to see old friends who attended past courses and continue to record hoverflies.

Encouraging a younger generation of Dipterists

At the last committee meeting of Dipterists Forum we agreed to allocate funds to help to meet the costs for under-25s and students who would like to participate in our summer field meeting at Lancaster this summer (6-13 July). The headline cost of the meeting is £200 but our subsidy should bring this down to around £120 (this does not cover travel to the venue but once there we will make sure that transport is available and can possibly arrange to collect from the nearest railway station)..

Our venue is based in self-catering Halls of Residence. Food is not provided but participants are welcome to join in communal cooking arrangements. There will also be a workroom where we do our evening microscopy. We will make available equipment on loan for those who need it (nets, pooters etc) and will bring additional microscopes. Expressions of interest are therefore sought from qualifying individuals.

This is a great opportunity to visit a variety  of excellent wildlife sites and to get to understand the habitats around Lancaster in the company of some of the country's leading Dipterists. Anybody interested should let me know (roger dot morris at dsl dot pipex dot com).

Do training courses encourage more recording?

Over the last three years Stuart and I have run somewhere between five and eight courses each winter, plus additional courses for the FSC at Preston Montford.

What we failed to do is to maintain any record of the numbers of people we have trained. I did a few quick sums this morning and concluded that during these years, together with the intervening years from 1993 when we first started to run courses, we must have provided training for about 500 people!

Sadly, we don't know who they were and cannot therefore match records received with previous trainees! Thus, we cannot answer with any certainty just what impact our training programme has had on hoverfly recording or submissions to the Recording Scheme. We think it has had a positive impact and we do know of a few people who have become very active recorders as a result. Those that we know of give us hope that we will have a long-term impact on recording effort.

This question has become more than simple academic interest as we see the publication of the WILDGuide which we hope will act as a further stimulus for interest in hoverflies. What impact will it have on recording and in particular on sales of the critical work: Stubbs & Falk? Intuitively, I think it is likely that sales of Stubbs & Falk will drop, at least in the short-term, because lots of people will find that the WILDGuide amply satisfies their need for a guide to hoverflies. Some of those people would probably have bought Stubbs & Falk in the past but will not feel a need for it now. How many new recruits to hoverflies will feel moved to buy the main monograph too?

My suspicion is that relatively few people go much further than identifying a proportion of the common and obvious species by matching their find to a picture. This is clearly illustrated by the decline in the numbers of records of tricky genera submitted to the Recording Scheme over the 30 years since Stubbs & Falk was first published in 1983. Over this time, the proportion of records of tricky genera has fallen by about a third, suggesting that a larger proportion of recorders confine their interests to genera that require relatively little equipment and, in particular, a microscope. I hope the WILDGuide will act as a stimulus!

This issue has gained greater prominence after what is best described as an 'interesting' dialogue with the BENHS who publish Stubbs & Falk. Have we had an impact on their book sales? I  sincerely hope so, as that is really proof that people have gone away from our courses sufficiently inspired to buy the book! If 20% of people we have had contact with have gone that far, this equates to maybe as many as an additional 100 books sold that would not have happened otherwise. My suspicion is that the equation works differently, and that many people bought the book specifically in order to have it for the course.  Others may already have owned a copy but could now use it to better effect.

So, why does this matter? The reality is that many natural history societies are finding it difficult to maintain numbers and see their demographics changing with fewer young people joining. Times have changed and people feel less inclined to join societies. We all work via computers these days and don't make the effort to attend meetings and listen to lectures. It is a great pity because societies offer scope for like-minded people to share their interests. So, does this spell the demise of the Natural History Society? If it does, there is a real risk that there will not be the development of new specialist guidebooks. Societies create the mass that is needed to support publications. Stubbs & Falk would not have happened without the BENHS, and it follows that hoverfly recording in the UK would be much weaker. Also, lots of people might not have gained pleasure from the book and the insight it gives into the natural world. That includes those people who now buy the WILDGuide because I might never have become enthused sufficiently to do what I have done for the past 30 years (21 of which as joint National Recorder).

Publishing costs are rising, and this means that specialist books could become too pricey to attract a big following. I hear through the grapevine that BENHS is proposing a price hike for Stubbs & Falk. It is no real surprise because prices have been stable for goodness knows how long? They have not risen for at least ten years and possibly longer. However, raising prices just as a new competitor arrives on the block strikes me as a little unwise. BENHS have the better part of 1,000 copies of Stubbs & Falk in their warehouse and really need to be shifting them quickly! Stuart and I are already talking about a new book in a new format. It is a few years away, but when it comes out, it will be designed as a companion to the WILDGuide - providing keys and more detailed text for all species. Hopefully the two will work in unison. When it comes out, the existing S&F format will be obsolete.

Meanwhile, we will be developing a supplement to Stubbs & Falk that will be ready by this next winter. It will provide the relevant additions and will explain how they fit into the current keys. We are thinking of producing it as a free pdf for download from the website, and will print small numbers under the Hoverfly Recording Scheme label to meet demand from those who prefer a hard copy. I would be keen to get a feel for the numbers of people who would like a hard copy of the supplement - we aim to make it as cheap as possible - certainly under £10.00.

Hoverfly WildGuide

At last the book is out! Only the saga has not ended because although commercial distributors have received their books and have sent them out, I am still waiting for delivery of books - I have 124 customers awaiting delivery and cannot do a thing about it until I get books!

It is all the more galling because I learn that Amazon is selling the book at about £17.50 including postage. It is almost at the rate we set as a pre-publication offer to Dipterists Forum members and makes me look like a fool for pricing the book so high (£14.00 + £2 p&p when we expected the RRP to be £17.95 - the actual RRP is nearly £25.00).

This has really rather serious ramifications for publishers of technical books. Those like Britain's Hoverflies are always going to be a niche market so the margins are extremely tight. Being pinched like this by Amazon has knock-on effects on the ability of the publishers to cover costs, and of societies such as Dipterists Forum to make sufficient income to maintain the work we do in promoting the study of flies. I for one am seriously put off from making the effort again, as this sort of undercutting prices means that the years of work that has gone into the book are being devalued.

Bearing in mind that Amazon are reported not to pay UK taxes, it seems that the UK taxpayer is suffering a double whammy - it gets no tax, and its legitimate local businesses that do pay tax are being out-competed. I start to think the only solution is to produce free books as pdfs and give up trying to produce hard copy. We perhaps need to take more control of products.

Stuart and I are intending to produce a supplement to Stubbs and Falk this Autumn. We will publish it under the HRS and DF banners and will make it available only through us. My feeling is that we will need to issue it as a pdf for free download and maybe do a small print run to meet the needs of those who want a bound copy. We can probably do this via 'print on demand' and keep the costs to a modest level.

In the longer-term, we are also intending to write a replacement for Stubbs & Falk. We have a few ideas, but again it would be our intention to find ways of taking more control of the product. For reasons I will not expand upon, it is time to consider a new format and a different publishing arrangement.

For those who have got hold of the book, I do hope you enjoy it. For those who still await your copy - I will be chasing the distributors tomorrow (especially as I have not received my copy either!).

Winter hoverflies

Despite rather unpleasant weather a few photos of recent sightings have been posted on the web. This has included two records of Scaeva selenitica from gardens in Worthing (West Sussex) and Farnham (Surrey) yesterday!

This got me thinking about the benefit of establishing a network of non-specialists who are keen photographers of insects in their gardens. At the moment we have data from Jenny Owen's garden in Leicester and Alan Stubbs' garden in Peterborough. Jenny recorded over 90 species using a malaise trap for 30 years or more. Alan has recorded over 60 using a modified transect approach over about 20 years.

Apart from these, we also have data on a single garden in southern England that is effectively monitored by regular photography of its animal visitors. In terms of hoverflies, this garden has yielded 45 species over eight years. I wonder if there are other photographers who might be interested in developing a photographic investigation into garden hoverflies? The great thing about this sort of study is that skill as a photographer can greatly influence the outcome, whereas identification skills are less essential.

Frequency of occurrence of the 21 commonest hoverflies in photographs from a southern English garden.

Developing trainers

I attended Eric Philp's funeral at Deerton Natural Cemetery today. It was of course a sombre occasion but was greatly brightened by the many excellent reflections of Eric's contribution to Natural History. For me, the most telling point was just how many people reflected on his unassuming but considerable contribution to encouraging natural historians from all walks of life. He will be greatly missed but his legacy lives on. He produced two fantastic floras of Kent that stand as a testimony to his dedication. Perhaps more importantly he clearly influenced a further generation of naturalists. The world needs more people like Eric who can motivate and enthuse people.

That brings me on to the main point of this analysis. I had a short chat with Richard Jones about training initiatives and how to teach invertebrate identification skills. There are no 'right' and 'wrong' ways. Everybody is different and of course different insects require different skills. However, it did strike me that there is much to be learned from other people's experience and that maybe we need to share our experiences? Stuart Ball and I have often mused over the need to run a 'Training for Trainers' course. We have plenty to offer and we hope that other people have experience that they might want to relay too.

I am therefore using this blog as a way of asking - is there a call for such a meeting? I would like to get people from various disciplines (not just Dipterists) to get together. If there is interest I will happily look into such an idea and try to organise an event next autumn. So, do let me know. I imagine we might look at the Natural History Museum as a possible venue, but alternatively maybe we could get some funding support for a meeting at one of the FSC centres?