Mayflies!

Add your pictures, it's that time of year again!

I work about 10ft from lake Erie, and our building/cars are covered. Every door looks like this and you can't walk outside without crunching a million of them. The doppler radar last night was really cool, everything west of Cedar Point to Michigan, and up to Canada was green/yellow/red because of the mayflies hatching over the lake.

Holy crap! I was going to comment that it's now June, so they can stop berkeleying on my porch anytime now, but there's usually like three or four hanging out there. The worst is when they're doing it on the front door. I hate to disturb anything that's gettin' it on.

Glad you called them "May flies". Drives me crazy when people refer to them as "June bugs". June bugs are those bumbling beetles that look like dried dates with legs.

I was in downtown Port Clinton yesterday morning. They had been hit but not too bad compared to previous years, yet!
Not a single on at my house and as the crow flies, i am about 1 mile off Sandusky Bay.

In reply to JohnRW1621:

You guys get hit pretty hard, too. I'll take more pictures as they get worse. I've heard the roads get covered so bad out there cars slide off the road. Here, at the power plant, they clear the dead ones with snow shovels.

In reply to Lesley:
here they are also commonly known as Canadian soldiers since they seem to invade from across the lake

Lesley wrote: Glad you called them "May flies". Drives me crazy when people refer to them as "June bugs". June bugs are those bumbling beetles that look like dried dates with legs.

My friend and I always called June bugs "dumb bugs" as they would fly around, run into something, get up (after much struggling) and fly into it again. And again.

Glad we're too far south to get those things. Looks like a mess.

In reply to JohnRW1621:

I've heard them called fish flies as well. Considering they're the primary source of food for fish from about mid-May to July, I'm not surprised.

We don't have those in Georgia, but we do have June Bugs, scourge of screen doors everywhere.

Around here we call these june bugs.

We have the smaller, orange ones too, but I don't know of a common name for them. Maybe they should add a map for the question "What's a june bug look like?" on that page about accents and colloquialisms.

Japanese beetle?

We get those, too. The biting lady bugs are the worst.

Downunder they are "christmas beatles" as that is when they come out to play.

We get mayfly hatches every so often along the Mississippi River in SE Minnesota, where they have to bring out snowplows to clean off the bridges. I drove through a mayfly hatch on my motorcycle once, it wasn't pleasant...

http://www.mayflynews.net/weekly_photo.html Photo taken by: Diane Location: Pelee Island, Lake Erie, Canada Date: June 25-26, 2011 Comments: These pictures were taken on Pelee Island last weekend. This is our deck, we are located on the northeast side of the island. Our house was literally alive with mayflies, they covered everything.

Two weeks ago, I did The Mills Race, a 78 mile, ovenight sailboat race from Toledo, finishing on South Bass Island and the city of Put-In-Bay. Luckily, the flies came late this year. Other years, we have not been so lucky.

We are about due for our Shadfly invasion - that is what we call them up here.

They don't occur in many places in the world but Lake Nipissing is one of those places. They are attracted to light.

Trivia - They have no digestive system - they exist for only 1 purpose, procreation. They live for 48 hours and then die, that is if they don't get crushed first.

http://past.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=Shad_flies_descend_on_North_Bay_20_06_2012

16vCorey wrote: Around here we call these june bugs. We have the smaller, orange ones too, but I don't know of a common name for them. Maybe they should add a map for the question "What's a june bug look like?" on that page about accents and colloquialisms.

Yup, both kinds here too. The big green June beetles are more noteworthy just because they're huge and numerous, but I dare say, not so numerous as those mayflies! Good grief!

And around here they usually emerge in early July.

Kinda like lovebugs then?

we have the brown junebugs, but never to the extent as the pic in the OP

Ugh god they smell today now since most of them are dead. And they're covering every square foot of real estate here at work.

Doesn't help I'm sorta hungover.