When hiking there are insects which will hover right in front of your face as you walk. They somehow manage to match your stride. They don’t bite, but are really annoying.
Can you provide a description? If they’re really tiny, they could be some kind of gnat. If they look like bees, they’re probably hoverflies. I’m sure there’s lots of other insects with this behavior out there that others could tell you about if you could tell us what they look like.
Also, what type of environment do you hike in? Pine or hardwood forests, mountainsides, prairie land, near rivers, lakes or oceans? What region are you in? Answering these could help us narrow down the possibilities.
Too late to add:
Also, knowing something about their habits may help. Do they visit singly (like hoverflies generally do) or in loose clouds of several dozen, or tighter clouds of maybe hundreds. If you look up, do you see them ten or fifteen feet in the air as well at your level, or do they hang out at generally face height only? Are they light colored or black or even show some iridescence when the light is right?
I suspect that you’re seeing different varieties throughout your hike, depending on your immediate environs. Probably a lot of them are in the gnat family. But I’m sure more knowledgeable Dopers could give you some specifics.
Eye floaters?
I’ve been bugged (ha!) by flies/gnats like this while hiking throughout the west. They like to fly around right in front of your face and seem content to stay right in the middle of your field of vision as you walk along.
They don’t really land on you–they’re just there, and they’ll “follow” you forever…bouncing up and down about 6 inches in front of your nose. You can wave them away, but they (or their replacements) will come back as soon as you stop flailing away at them.
We call them blackflies out here and they do bite! My mom and I went to Maine for my younger sister high school graduation and poor mom could bitten on the back of her neck by a blackfly. When she woke up the next day half her face was swollen ! Some people call them gnats .
Gnats. They are different than blackflies, they’re smaller and don’t seem to leave the welts that blackflies can.
At least that’s what I’m seeing here in SC. And I lived for 10 yrs in MAine and have spent chunks of most of my summers in the mountains of NYS, so I’m well acquainted with blackflies 