It continues to be an extraordinary summer. While the Highlands haven’t seen the extreme temperatures of London and the south, here at Aigas, south-west of Inverness, we have had no significant rain since early May, and many days have been exceptionally hot – to the surprise and delight of visitors – and reliably bright and sunny, with light breezes week after week. Like most of the rest of Britain, our grass stopped growing in June and has been biscuit brown for two months; the burns and rivers are dry or dribbling low, and the moorland bogs are firmer underfoot than I can ever recall.
One apparent benefit is the welcome lack of midges. The pinhead-sized females of these very aggressive arthropods have to have blood before they can breed, and the Highland midge’s scientific name, Culicoides impunctatus, broadly translates as “little puncturing bastard”.
Throughout the mountains and moorlands – they seem to love boggy ground – in normal years they can plague the mornings and evenings in relentless hordes. On the west coast I have seen people fling themselves into the sea to escape their torment. Here, only a few miles from the much more arable Black Isle, we have never experienced the west-coast swarms, though we do usually have a pestering few. Not this year. Midges do not like direct sunlight or wind, and for many weeks now we have enjoyed both.
The buzz in the glens is that perhaps the weather has dealt them a mortal blow. Alas, not so. The midge larvae bury themselves in peaty mires and damp patches of soil where the sun never reaches – and there they wait through several instar phases before emerging in favourable overcast and humid conditions.
The midges will be back, I’m certain of that, but a worrying development this summer, and perhaps a sign of climate change, is more mozzies. The exact species I’m not sure, but on hot nights the dreaded tropical whine has awoken me many times. While endlessly tolerant of most invertebrates, this naturalist has no compunction in dealing death to mosquitoes. I cannot go back to sleep knowing one is lurking nearby. At the risk of marital disharmony, on goes the light.
