Midge murmation

[slowworm]

We've just experienced and rather strange experience in the garden tonight. We often get clouds of small flies/midges, very noticeable in the evening sunshine, but tonight we've had a dozen or so cloudy spirals of a large number of midges. They are behaving just like a murmation of starlings, twisting and turning, and when you get close you can hear quite a loud high pitch buzz.

I've never seen such behaviour before, anyone else?

 

[Tengu]

New hatching?

 

[Glow_worm]

I've seen that before a few times, surprising how loud it is when you're close!

 

[crosslandkelly]

Mating most likely.

'Mating midge' swarms invade Nottinghamshire villages

One academic suggests lack of human activity near waterways during lockdown has led to the problem.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Nice65]

Mating most likely.

'Mating midge' swarms invade Nottinghamshire villages

One academic suggests lack of human activity near waterways during lockdown has led to the problem.

www.bbc.co.uk

We had those things a couple of years ago, they’re not midges. I was hoovering literally hundreds off the ceiling every time I opened the front door in the evening.

 

[slowworm]

Mating most likely.

Mating does seem the most likely reason. I'm not familiar with midges but a quick google shows there are hundreds of different species in the UK with the majority non-bitey.

I assume they've hatched from the damp woodlands, streams and pools near us. The clusters were so dense my OH thought they were smoke. I've got some videos but can't post them up here.

 

[Paul_B]

Midge murmuration? Not sure if it counts but camping at great langdales we walked to the pub and decided to take a detour on the way along a path. Ahead of use I saw an absolutely massive cloud of midges and being a magnet for them we decided to scarper for the safety of a hot pub inside. Looking back and up as I left the area sharpish I saw a swarm of those midges in a 5m high column of the little biters trailing out from about a metre above my head in a swirling mass of insects.

I ran forward and noticed that my mate had about 4 midges looking lost swirling around his head. The cloud got a bit confused by my sudden burst of speed and went into a swirl around looking for me. Eventually they did detect my direction and that was my time to scarper double time to the pub!!

So I guess I have seen the murmurations of midges, but I wish I had never had that pleasure.

I am the guy who in 5 minutes got bitten so much that the next day in a breezy and sunny morning I stopped counting the bites at 42. I had not even moved up my leg from the calves!!! Seriously I was more bites than leg!! That was another occasion and that evening I passed my time drawing and writing in the midges swarming on my tent midge netting with a stick of autan repellant!! It was weirdly entertaining to see the clear line created byt the repellant!!

So I bet starlings and midges are not the only murmurators. We just have to be at the right (or with midges wrong) place at the right time.

 

[slowworm]

They're back tonight, more cloudy over the fields but starting to gather. Not easy to take photos, and they're just from my cheap phone, but you can make out the swirls.

 

[Nice65]

I reckon those are the flies Crosslandkelly linked to. I couldn’t walk the dog after dark with a torch without being in the middle of a cloud of them, and hundreds were getting in the house. I had switch all the lights off to empty the vac outside after hoovering them up.

Floods and low lying ground where we lived, I’m sure it was the first hot days that stimulated them to hatch en masse.

 

[slowworm]

I'm not an expert but the midges we have seem to match the definition of midge, the fact the larvae may live in muddy ground rather than ponds would also match up with our area. I've taken a photo of a dead one caught on a spiders web, I'd say the wingspan is only 2mm.