I've had to deal with huge swarms of these things every summer for the few years I've lived a mile away from a lake. I assumed they were mosquitoes until recently.

Is it some kind of midge fly? How can you tell? If I were to make an uneducated guess, I'd say it's not a mosquito because there's not a straight proboscis.

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[–] 40 points 2 months ago (2 children)

BTW, you don't need a lake to breed them. Any standing water will do. Rainwater barrels, cow troughs, ditches...

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    If you got mosquito problems then I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems but a ditch ain't one.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    My only mosquito problem is the noise they are making when they hit the electrical fly squatter.

    I activate it when getting ready for bed, and when I turn off the lights, it only takes a few seconds before the fireworks starts. No hits so far this year.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    It's a midge, you can tell by the feathery antennae.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    No, the feathery antennae is a way to tell males and females apart, not species. Male mosquitoes have feathery antennae, and so do males of many other fly and even other insect species.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Here in Toronto area it is easy to tell the genders. Male mosquitoes are about 10 times the size of the females. Big honking things that look terrifying but do not harm. Are the squitos different gender sizes in different other areas?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    So I'd consider myself a very amateur entomologist so am very open to being wrong here, but that's not a thing to my knowledge; if anything, the males tend to be smaller. You might be seeing two different species, or are misidentifying another insect for a male mosquito.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    I could be wrong. I have seen them for 60 yrs and anyone who sees them also calls them male mosquitoes. Now I am going to check it out and see. It’s summer now and there will be a few of them flying around that I can snap a pic of and see.

    I searched and got this for male mosquito. This looks exactly like what I am talking about. They are way bigger and have no long proboscis for drinking.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    That's a crane fly. They have lots of nicknames and folk identities so it's super common to call them something else. I've heard them called "mosquito hawks" (they don't hunt mosquitoes) but male mosquitoes is a new one to me. You could add it to the Wikipedia page lol

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    I'm not sure what it is exactly. It doesn't look like a mosquito. I'd suggest uploading it on inaturalist.org to get it identified.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Mosquitoes have a slender, segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hair-like legs, and a specialized, highly elongated, proboscis, adapted for piercing and sucking.

    Don't see that on the picture!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Scale would be helpful, but likely not a mosquito. Unless you have some decent macro setting or lens for your camera.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago

    Google Lens says midge fly.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 months ago

    Yes, it is.

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