My experience of flies is that during the past 20 years or so there has been a significant decline in numbers – Highland midges not included of course (‘It makes you feel you’ve got a really dirty house’: what’s behind the UK’s plagues of flies?, 30 July).
Memories of childhood summers in the 1950s and 60s are of endless sticky flytraps, typically placed near doorways in the house. Any foodstuffs left out on a counter would immediately attract a variety of coloured flies within seconds.
Summer picnics could be a constant tussle against flying insects, including wasps. Sandwiches, even wrapped, presented a challenge that flies and wasps couldn’t resist. Pints of beer would encourage wasps to take up swimming until they became intoxicated. The swarms of butterflies this year are a different matter – and delightful sight to see.
Mal Jones
Cardiff
While I do not diminish the efforts of the people behind Buglife and the expertise of Erica McAlister quoted in your article, as we do need insects, I found the ideas presented to ameliorate fly infestations quite out of touch with a large number of people suffering from this plague.
What about those of us who live in flats with no access to a garden to create a wildlife pond? Or those without the means to turn their outside space into a haven for wildlife? Placing a bucket on the veranda might work for those with the space, but those of us in flats must suffer without resolution.
Jonathon Moloney
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
The best solution is to fit permanent insect screens to all windows and doors. It can be expensive, but it’s a one-off cost. A major benefit is that it allows windows to be open at night for ventilation, while still preventing insects, especially mosquitoes, from entering. A problem in the UK is that most windows open outwards, so while screens can easily be fixed to the outside frame of the inward-opening windows here in Switzerland, the same would not be true in the UK.
Let’s hope some smart, enterprising people can come up with a solution for UK windows.
Dr Janet Dawson
Bennwil, Switzerland
Here in the French Basque Country, our house is next to a sheep farm where several hundred sheep are housed, largely indoors, and in the summer we are usually beset by dozens of flies indoors. We have several barn swallows’ nests in our barn, which I carefully protect, but despite the swallows’ best efforts, the number of flies has always been annoying – until this year when we have had very few flies. The (inhumane) fly papers hanging in the kitchen are almost bare of prey. My first reaction was one of relief, although this was relatively short-lived as it was not long before I saw the decline in the fly population as an indication of the enormous and worrying decline in the overall insect population.
Phil Rusling
Saint-Jean-le-Vieux, France
