A man will rise, a man will fall

So had the moth trap out again last night as it wasn't supposed to dip below 15 degrees. I was hoping that it might bring some beetles too. It seemed to be cooler than that in the end and the wind had really picked up by dawn.

Going through the catch I only found a single beetle a Anotylus rugosus but there were a tonne of flies in there. I have in the past professed a desire to have a go at diptera and even went so far as to join the rather good Dipterist's Forum.

So looking at the mass of flies sat politely in the trap I picked the two that looked the most distinctive. One had big boxing gloves on its front legs and the other had massive eyes and (to my mind) odd looking wings.
I sat down and got out the Diptera key to families and then promptly got stuck and muddled. Well that's not quite true. The first fly (with the gloves) keyed straight (with some assumptions on my part) to Empididae but I didn't trust my self. The second, just couldn't get anywhere.

So I posted on the dipterists Facebook page and asked for help.

The first fly is this one

Look at those fore legs. Massively swollen with lots of hairs. Seemed like it should be easy. Well it turns out it is an Empid. Yay for me! I'm told that it's in the genus Hilara which apparently is a bit of a bastard. So I guess it will remain at Genus for now.

The second fly was also something of a looker, with rings of golden hair on various parts of its body.

I utterly failed with this one but apparently it is in the family Simuliidae. Also a bit difficult according to others. Looks like I picked the wrong flies to make a start on! But I'm fine with that. This is going to be a learning curve so I'm happy to get it that far.

The most important thing is that I'm having a look and if I can get things to family then I 'might' be able to familiarise myself with the most often encountered ones. Who knows. Might help keep me out of lockdown trouble if the beetles dry up...

Obvious inspiration for the post title and one of only a handful of U2 songs that I like, and I do really like this one.