A ghost in the garden: winter gnats dance in the evening gloom

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/29/ghost-garden-winter-gnats-insects-country-diary

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Anyone who ever put in a hard stint of gardening knows the moment. The tasks are at a natural end. Tools are all stowed. There is even a satisfying link between your heavy limbs and the sense of rough order pulled out of the hedge and lawn and gathered up in the fresh-edged woodstack. The loss of light, the swelling damp and the quietness of the air after all the brisk morning – even the day and season seem to join in this aura of things completed.

You pause to enjoy all of it. And in a corner, where the holly breaks the last dim daylight there is a wandering smoke billow of tiny insects. There are no more than a score but you wonder have these flies emerged just, or have you acquired the peace of mind to see them only now? And rather like the garden’s pleasing order, are they a gift only of hard work?

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This silence-spiralling formation has a wonderful name – a “ghost” – while the creatures themselves have a technical label. They are in the family Trichoceridae, and are related to crane flies, although they lack the daddy-long-legs’ extravagance of limb. They are smaller and while they are commonplace in autumn and spring, it is this emergence now that gives them a common name. Winter gnats. They will ghost even with snow on the ground.

The immatures feed upon plant decay so this brief vapour of flying adults is really leaf litter made into a dance. It coils through the gloom and offers a final thought. Winter gnats belong to an order that is central to all biodiversity: the flies. They may include disease carriers, bloodsuckers and crop destroyers but flies number more than 7,000 species in Britain (that exceeds all the varieties of bird in Africa and South America). Worldwide there are 150,000 named forms, which is at least a 10th of all recognised species. Collectively, flies and their like drive the natural order of life. In transmuted form they are the salmon’s leap, the otter’s splash, the sparrowhawk dive and the song thrush song from our holly tops once April comes.

Twitter: @gdncountrydiary