Echo of myself talking about flies

In response to a story she emailed last week about the mysterious death of bats in New York, I remarked to my sister how dipterans of all sorts are in evidence right now. For the past month or so what I take for fungus gnats (or something in the infraorder Bibionomorpha) have been finding their ways inside our house (it's not too hard as we leave the unscreened back door open most days when it is nice out) and have been attracted to the windows (during the day) and the flat screens (when in use at night). There have also been larger than average numbers of very small flies--midges of some sort--attracted to the lights. I found a smallish pile of them dead on top of the Apple mini case which is located directly under the bulb of a floor lamp, and what looked like an entire hatch of them fried by a green holiday light bulb. Crane flies (nephrotoma wulpiana) erupt from under foliage in the morning, little house flies (fannia canicularis) circle aimlessly but annoyingly at face height in the shade of the patio cover, and yes the midges and gnats buzzing by at odd moments inside the house. All of these breed in moist rotting organic stuff which I guess we must have but I hadn't thought in excessive or gasp!, unhygienic quantities.

Anyway, I had made that remark (Crane flies and gnats and midges! Oh my!) several days before I found myself reading a echo of myself remarking about the abundance of dipterans in this article from the OC Register with a lovely pic of the ever-photogenic crane fly! People talking about flies are gathering in annoying swarms throughout Orange County . . . story at 11.