This problem could be specific to my part of the neighbourhood, but does anyone else find their garden becomes overrun with biting insects at dusk? I've just been bitten to smithereens by midges, then squashed this brute. Look at the size of it - looks like something that should be in the rainforest not North London! The little blighters are stopping me from enjoying my garden later in the day - any top tips gratefully received. The midges seem completely oblivious to repellents...
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Yes, that one in the picture is definitely a mossie. I also get tiny black flies that, unlike mosquitos, have a painful bite which is extremely itchy afterwards. I suspect someone locally has standing water in their garden acting as a nursery. Glad to hear it's not just my garden that has this problem!
Yes, Grant, I agree with Geoff that it looks very like a mosquito. This year I have noticed some jumbo mosquitos that look especially fierce. By jumbo I don't mean the size of daddy long legs, but just rather larger and darker than the usual variety we have here.
I keep a very close eye out for all kinds of mosquito as I swell up in a big red and highly itchy patch round the bite that lasts for several weeks. I avoid being outside in the garden in the evening, and regularly search internal walls for them.
To catch them indoors, it helps to wet ones hands so there's a better chance of them getting stuck. If on a wall, approach very slowly from behind, and only move a tiny bit faster when about two inches away. Wetting hands is even more helpful to catch them when they are flying: open the fingers of the hand wide and close them round it veery slowly; if you move the had fast, the draft it makes blows the little beast away! Opening the fingers reduces the size of the hand generating the draft. Having plain light-painted walls makes finding them easier.
At night you are warned of the approach of a mosquito by the threatening hum they make as they fly. If you wake up and flap them away before getting bitten, they go away for about 15 minutes and then return. So the only hope is to switch on the light and have a serious search – very tiresome and time-consuming.
That's a mosquito isn't it? We get plenty and they are little sods. Our little garden pond had a HUGE crop of mosquito larvae a few weeks ago, so we trawled them out with a fine fish net - that keeps the numbers down in the following weeks. Alternative is to have fish, but they grow and they would end up too big for our pond. If you don't have a pond I'm afraid they're coming from a neighbour's pond nearby. I suspect the weather was perfect a few weeks ago for the laying of mozzie eggs in ponds hence the huge number. Populations go in cycles though and next year may be the opposite. And birds and bats love them.