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My brother was introduced to entomology first through an after-school club organized by one of his teachers, and it was not long before I also became a passionate insect collector. We both started first looking for butterflies and moths, and would go out together at weekends with nets and jars to find sunny meadows, and then come home and disappear into our own rooms to identify our catches. We each bought setting boards, papers and pins, and our parents bought us cabinets for our collections. We had a very good local natural history society, run by the city museum, and we went on field trips and meetings. It was there that my brother met a man who specialized in beetles, and from that point onwards, he developed an enduring fascination for Cleopatera.

I, too, found my specialism at a society meeting, when I was inspired by two men who had immense knowledge of flies. To this day, I love flies, and record my finds and send them in to a national biological records database.

I would never have thought there would be so many different species of fly, and that they would be so beautiful. When you look closely, it is amazing how much you can see in nature. I cannot imagine being outdoors on a fine day without looking for flies, and I’m sure that meadows are much richer to me than they would be without this extra fascination. Nowadays I use a camera to record my finds.

I never have to kill anything, which I am much more comfortable with. It is digital photography that has helped me do this, as I don’t think I could ever have been a good enough photographer with a traditional camera. I think my hobby is wonderful. Just to look at the flies costs me nothing, and I get so much from it. I don’t think there will ever come a time in my life when I would no longer call myself a dipterist.

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