There are these insects that fly around my front porch every evening that drive me nuts.
Typically after work I like to come home and spend an hour or 2 reading on my front porch just to unwind. Lately though there have been these flying insects (they kind of look like large gnats) that hover and fly patters over the slab of concrete I call my porch.
They apparently don’t do anything except fly around in tight patterns and occasionally furiously pursue one another like a little, mini-dogfight before going back to their previous hovering.
They will only do this over my porch and its really distracting. I can try to shoo them away and they will move away from me but they just return to the proch when I sit down. Can’t they do, whatever it is they’re doing, over the lawn or something? There’s plenty of concrete around, what’s so special about my porch?
Can anyone tell me what these things are and, if possble how to get rid of them?
Sounds like thy are indulging in a form of courting behaviour. The top males take up position in an area that suit them and display. The females select males form the group. the litle dogfights are either couples mating, or males chasing other males out of their flight paths.
Not much you can do about it without killing them. They obviously like your concrete. Maybe they like to have a large pale surface to display against.
I think Rob V has the right solution: aerosol insecticide.
Do you have lights on the porch? I’ve always heard that some flying bugs use the moon to navigate by and they mistake a lightbulb for the moon. The reason they fly in circles is because the bulb is so close and the bug is trying to keep the same orientation to it.
Another possibility is heat. Does the porch soak up sunlight during the day and give it off at night. If so, maybe the bugs are attracted to that.
I’ve had gnats or other bugs flying right around my head for a short time and I felt the same as you-they have the whole world to fly around in and they pick my face to fly around. Maybe a persons breath attracts bugs sometimes, the CO2 or an odor.
The most likely reason is that they are flying everywhere, not just on your porch, but you don’t notice them except where you are.
To get rid of them have you tried one or two of those Citronella candles? I don’t really know if they work or not, but they might. You can always screen in your porch and hope the little buggers can’t fit thru the mesh.