If you go down in the woods today...

We were still in Royal Deeside again today and went a-wandering in the Caledonian pine forest around Loch Davan. I found this fantastic/ nightmare/ large* (* delete as appropriate) fly sitting head-down on the craggy bark of a Scots pine tree. That head-down position was a good clue to the possible identity of this big fly. I'm a marine biologist by training and never learned much about terrestrial insects but I think this is a "downlooker", also known as a snipe fly of the "true fly" (dipteran) family Rhagionidae. I think this might be of the genus Rhagio and could be (according to a couple of online sources) the species Rhagio scolopaceus. But I might be wrong! Whatever, it is a big, scary, beautiful, long-legged predatory fly and I felt privileged to find it and photograph it in a lovely Scottish pinewood.