Towering swarms of nonbiting flies called midges are blanketing Chicago: ‘A little disturbing but cool’

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Towering swarms of nonbiting flies called midges are blanketing Chicago: ‘A little disturbing but cool’
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No, you’re not imagining those 10-foot-high insect clouds hovering near Lake Michigan, each teeming with thousands of mosquito look-alikes. Chicago, we’ve got midges.

No, you’re not imagining those 10-foot-high insect clouds hovering near Lake Michigan, each teeming with thousands of mosquito look-alikes.They don’t bite, they don’t harm humans, and they emerge from lakes, streams and puddles every year like clockwork, but the cold gray spring of 2022 has spawned — wouldn’t you know it? — a noticeable population surge.

It’s unclear exactly why this is such a good year for midges, according to Allen Lawrance, an associate curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, who noted he was speaking from an office with a window screen covered in — you guessed it — midges. Midge populations can be affected by weather, climate, disease and predators.

In a phone interview from his deck in Evanston, Josh Engel, a professional birding tour leader, said he could see a cloud of thousands of midges hovering even as he spoke. He estimated that he’s seen millions over the last few days.Advertisement “There’s even a species that lives in Antarctica — so they’re pretty hardy creatures,” Lawrance said.

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