[NatureNS] Cluster Flies inside

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From: Bev Wigney <bkwigney@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 19:56:59 -0300
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Donna, and all,

On the matter of flies being attracted to one colour over another.
When my younger brother was about 8 years old, he discovered that if
he tied a certain colour of eraser onto the end of a long string, and
then swung it in big circles over his head -- sort of like a cowboy
spinning a lariat, any fly in the room would zoom out and get on the
eraser and go for a ride.  I can't remember which worked best -- a
dayglo lime green, or a hot pink eraser.  Trust my kid brother to
discover something so weird.

bev
Round Hill

On 4/19/20, Donna Crossland <dcrossland@eastlink.ca> wrote:
> Well if you are going to go 'religious', I'll admit to being more
> entertained by the great masses of cluster flies than the rather dry
> sermon once the wood stove warmed up the little Anglican church.  (I was
> a kid then, but I might still be quite distracted by this great din of
> cluster flies that darkened a stain glass window high in the peaks,
> noting that they were drawn to some colors over others... etc.  But I'm
> unlikely to return.)
>
> Donna
>
> On 2020-04-18 9:18 p.m., Fred Schueler wrote:
>> On 4/18/2020 6:22 PM, David Webster wrote:
>>
>>>      Neither Cluster Flies nor Asian Lady Beetles contribute to
>>> Climate Change and that, if not taken seriously, will wipe out
>>> everything. I suspect Cluster Flies are good pollinators of early
>>> flowering plants. And when they die their bodies likely sustain some
>>> organisms.
>>
>> * I was going to remark on Cluster Flies as biocontrol agents of
>> invasive alien Earthworms. It's very interesting how some folks freak
>> out when any Insect - Cluster Flies, Box Elder Bugs, Ladybirds, or
>> Polistes wasps - want to share their house for the winter. I was once
>> present when a clustered cabin was warmed up for the first time in a
>> winter, and the Cluster Flies buzzed out about 3 metres, and then fell
>> onto the snow where they fed quite an assembly of Chickadees and other
>> birds.
>>
>>>  Some decades ago (about 1970 ?) we were overrun by Earwigs and they
>>> are inclined to climb. Open a door and a shower of earwigs would
>>> fall. So I looked into the feasibility of control by shocking.  A
>>> liquid had seeped from many joints and they proceeded to carefully
>>> clean all of this away, by moistening a tarsus with mouth parts and
>>> then wiping down all joints in legs and antennae. So I scrapped that
>>> project because I realized that in many ways they resembled humans
>>> and should not be tortured.
>>
>> * Earwig (english substantive for Forficula auricularia): an
>> omnipresent reminder that humanity is not acclaimed as the dominant
>> species on the globe, a conclusion recorded in the Earwig’s neatly
>> folded dorsal Scriptures and revealed by its inscrutable appearance
>> wherever it is not wanted. "The earwig can, at the end of its ‘earthly
>> course’ rise up to kinship with God and eternal life." Friedrich
>> Nietzsche, 1881, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, p 47.
>>
>> fred.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
>>          Fragile Inheritance Natural History
>> 'Wildlife on Roads' -
>> http://doingnaturalhistory.blogspot.ca/2018/03/upcoming-book-wildlife-on-roads-handbook.html
>> 'Daily' Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
>> 4 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
>>   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain  44.87156° N 75.70095° W
>> (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> "Feasting on Conolophus to the conclusion of consanguinity"
>>  -
>> http://www.lulu.com/shop/frederick-w-schueler/feasting-on-conolophus-to-the-conclusion-of-consanguinity-a-collection-of-darwinian-verses/paperback/product-23517445.html
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
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