Black flies surge in Maine's clean rivers

Boston Globe ^ | 06/23/2008 | Beth Daley

[wendy1946]

The basic reality about falcons is that when people stopped shooting them for shotgun practice, they came back.

[kempo]

Exactly, farmers use to shoot them to keep them from eating their chickens and other farm animals. Hunters shot them for sport to keep them from killing and eating rabbits, squirrels, and game birds.

[dbwz]

If those black flies are like the pine flies in South Jersey, I feel sorry for 'em.

It sure sounds like the same fly. Nasty little buggers.

There is another fly here in South Jersey that I am really allergic too. It has yellowish color wings. When one of those b@st@rds bite me I swell up like a balloon.

Hmm. I don't think I've ever seen one like that here. I know we have the green-heads that swarm when the breeze comes off the bay during the summer months, and those things are just evil. But are you sure the bug that's biting you isn't some sort of small bee?

[mware]

Not sure what they are called but they come out towards twilight.

When they lit on you that almost immediately take a nip out of ya.

They sting like the dickens.

[dragnet2]

duct-taping pant legs and wearing screened hoods to keep the deceptively small bugs from delivering bloody bites or crawling into seemingly every body crevice.

Note to self...Maine off vacation list.

[mware]

Just found a photo of one. They are deer flies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_fly

[blam]

[mware]

That's them.

Those buggers can hurt like the dickens. Worse than pine flies, and I swell up for a couple days wherever the point of contact is.

[21twelve]

The only two states I haven’t visited yet are Louisiana and Maine. I always figured it was because they were a bit out of the way - maybe subconsiously there is another reason. (Although the black flies in Northern Minnesota can drive a person nuts.)

[blam]

They’re terrible that’s for sure. They are attracted by movement...I used to have to go to the mailbox in my truck to avoid them. I noticed that they attacked the truck when it was moving...when it stopped moving, they disipated....they’d come screaming back when I turned on the windshield wiper blades. LOL.

[Madame Dufarge]

For the love of God.

They come, stay a few weeks, and then they go.

Quick, everyone run around waving their hands and screaming.

I swear, we need a good typhoid outbreak to dynamite people into some perspective.

[mware]

I did not know the evil stuff they carry around. That Rabbit fever looks rather nasty.

[dbwz]

Those buggers can hurt like the dickens. Worse than pine flies, and I swell up for a couple days wherever the point of contact is.

Deer fly, huh? I've definitely never noticed one like that here on NJ's northern barrier island, but if there are any here, they'll find me. Mware, I'm sorry the bites affect you like that. Sounds like what happens to me with mosquito bites every once in a while. And summer's just begun... ;-)

[wendy1946]

I’ve never been in New England in black fly season but I’ve spent several summers in Vermont and you always have one or two of the things left over. And when one of them comes after you, you absolutely have to stop whatever you’re doing until you manage to kill the black fly. As is the case with bees and hornets, a tennis racquet does a nice job on them.