Plague small flies

[Still Farming]

Everywhere ,corn,corn shed floors everywhere.
Any more around the Country?

 

[Bogweevil]

Are you sure they are not flying ants?

Flies have but one set of wings.

 

[primmiemoo]

They look like flying ants. I walked through a swarm home here not long ago. It's the hot weather that's causing them to sprout wings and fly. We don't get them unless it's been unusually warm and dry, in fact, I don't remember seeing great numbers here before.

For some unfathomable reason, herring gulls eat them.

 

[deleted user 837354]

Flying ants they only fly the nest on odd days. Be there and gone in an hour. Mostly fly away and die I think.

 

[Cab-over Pete]

They will fly and attack colonies of non flying ants. We witnessed that at our front door one year, flying ants swooping down, killing a crawling ant and flying off across the garden to their own pad. It was mental, absolutely thousands of them and fascinating to watch.

 

[DaveGrohl]

We've got masses of something else. I don't know what they're called but they are small, about 2mm long but really really thin. They've been crawling over everything and everyone here the last 3 or 4 weeks. Feels like you've got 50 spiders crawling over you at times. You wouldn't think you'd be able to feel something that small on your skin but you do.

 

[Lofty1984]

We've got masses of something else. I don't know what they're called but they are small, about 2mm long but really really thin. They've been crawling over everything and everyone here the last 3 or 4 weeks. Feels like you've got 50 spiders crawling over you at times. You wouldn't think you'd be able to feel something that small on your skin but you do.

Thunder bugs they are and they are barsteward annoying

 

[RushesToo]

They look like flying ants. I walked through a swarm home here not long ago. It's the hot weather that's causing them to sprout wings and fly. We don't get them unless it's been unusually warm and dry, in fact, I don't remember seeing great numbers here before.

For some unfathomable reason, herring gulls eat them.

Totally agree. Watched a mono ped [fishing net?] herring gull stand over a nest and pick them off one by one as they went to take flight. He looked very happy.
Wonderfully bizarre that it is seen elsewhere.

 

[Still Farming]

Thunder bugs they are and they are barsteward annoying

Bigger than that and not ants.

 

[Lofty1984]

Bigger than that and not ants.

I was replying to @DaveGrohl

 

[Still Farming]

Think place in Cardiff ,Pengam? got these too but because of the food and recycling not collected weekly?

 

[Bogweevil]

I am thinking soldier flies: https://www.naturespot.org.uk/taxonomy/term/22226

 

[primmiemoo]

Totally agree. Watched a mono ped [fishing net?] herring gull stand over a nest and pick them off one by one as they went to take flight. He looked very happy.
Wonderfully bizarre that it is seen elsewhere.

Last week, I watched a small flock of herring gulls pitch down onto a very close mown area of lawn and tuck in to the ants. Wondered whether there's a medicinal value to eating them. I've seen blackbirds and thrushes "anting" - standing on bare earth, opening their wings, ruffling, and letting ants run through their feathers - before, which is something to do with maintaining health.