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I've been trying to key out this fly to family, but have got stuck, any help would be much appreciated. It's small (c. 3mm long), and has an attractive bright yellow face, with blue-grey dusting elsewhere on the head. The abdomen has become detached from the specimen and is not shown in the photo (I do still have it though!). Caught last weekend among grass at the edge of a sandy beach in Cornwall, south-west UK.

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Hi Martin
I think it might be Muscidae; Schoenomyza litorella.
http://www.dipter...d_id=26147 or something similar.

Regards Roger

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Looks right to me.

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Many thanks Roger and Paul, with your prompting I can key it out to Schoenomyza littoralis (it is of course much easier to key it out now I've been told what it is!). I had misinterpreted the katepisternal bristles, they didn't look like an equilateral triangle to me.

And once again I need to revise my mental image of what muscids can look like!

Martin

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Nothing to add. ;)

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You could add what a star Roger is turning into: that's two tricky ones he's got right in two days (go on, encouragement costs nothing !)

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Hi Phil....sounds like a severe case of "extracting the urine" but thanks for the thought.
How can this one be considered tricky with a bright yellow face that requires the wearing of a good pair of sunglasses just to look at it. I remembered seeing it will going through old postings. The name I couldn't remember, but I remembered that it was found in muddy tire (sic) tracks on a construction site...so I typed in those words in Forum Search and found the thread.
Paul and Stephane would have got this easily without my input. I intended to say so in reply to Stephane's..."Nothing to add".

Diplomatically Yours :D
Supernova B) To the North of Scotland....Invisible from the Western Isles ;).