Itch official: Record midges

IT had all the ingredients to be the perfect swarm.

And so it has turned out to be, with midges plaguing Scotland in record numbers this year.

Experts say above-average temperatures and rainfall exactly when the first hatch of the insects emerged proved a perfect combination.

The result was that the three main midge-counting traps – in Wester Ross, Argyll and Galloway – between them recorded more than 800,000 midges in May when they barely caught a couple of hundred in the same month last year.

By the second week of June, with the midges out in full biting force, the Wester Ross trap alone clocked 915,000 in seven days. Even in the past two weeks, numbers have been on average more than 12 times last year’s.

Dr Alison Blackwell, director of Dundee-based APS Biocontrol Ltd, runs the Scottish Midge Forecast. She said: “The mild winter meant more of the larvae survived into this year, so all it needed was the wet and warm weather to come at the right time for them.”

NINE hundred thousand midges caught in one midge trap in one week: that is officially an awful lot of biting insects. News that this year’s above-average temperatures and rainfall has resulted in a bumper crop of midges – with numbers up three times on last year overall – will come as no surprise to anyone who has set foot outside their car, tent or other refuge in Argyll.

Grown men have been brought close to tears on the golf course because of the swarming creatures.

There is something almost heroic about Scotland’s midges at their peak, but they are not exactly a great boon to tourism, which is why it is a little unfortunate the wee buzzy beasties are having a field day just as Visit Scotland launches a bid to attract more tourists to the Highlands on the back of a new film starring Billy Connolly and David Tennant.

What We Did On Our Holiday is released on September 26 and Scotland’s tourist agency is teaming up with film company Lionsgate to tempt visitors to Scotland for family holidays using the movie.

For those who decide to come, hopefully it will not be a case of once bitten, twice shy.