In article , Janet Baraclough
writes
The message
from Malcolm contains these words:


In article , Janet Baraclough
writes

Some bars and hotels here have run them in their summer beer gardens
for a couple of seasons, catch bagfulls and say it makes a noticable
reduction in the midge population but doesn't eliminate all biting.
Since the smoking ban I imagine a whole lot more will be buying and
using them this summer.

I don't think there's a ban on smoking out of doors (yet!), so surely
more people will be smoking outside than formerly!

I meant, many more hotels and bars will be using midge-eaters, for
the benefit of their forced-outdoors smokers. ( All the pubs here have
put up some flimsy little flysheet to keep the rain off them (smokers,
not midges). Of course, being eaten alive by midges is probably the
world's most powerful incentive to give up smoking.

On the contrary, the more you smoke, and the more smoke you create, the
more it keeps the midges away, so the more people outside that are
smoking the fewer the midges :-)

I think we're all
secretly hoping that eventually someone else's investment will suck up
the very last pregnant midge :-)

In which case, you will see the serious deterioration of whole
ecosystems dependent on the midge for food!

What eats midges, and why aren't there more midge predators in west
Scotland? Have they all died of obesity?

Everything eats midges! Bats, birds, other flying insects and,
especially, other soil-living invertebrates eating their larvae, though
it has to be said that that's what midge larvae feed on too, if smaller
species! Carnivorous plants, like sundew and butterwort.

The most important ecological effect of midges, though, is probably that
they prevent herbivores staying too long in one place and so damaging
the fragile moorland, upland or tundra habitats.

Has anyone thought up a use for the midges caught by the machines?
Compress them into pellet form for goldfish food, perhaps?

Feeding ruminants.

Now, now, we all know what happens if you feed animal protein to
ruminants!!

Stuffing pillows ( especially if birdflu makes
goosedown less desirable)
Loft insulation.

Cat litter.
Midge soup.
Garden mulch/fertiliser.

--
Malcolm