Black flies plague homes

A clutch of houses in Mourne Drive and Finn Gardens were effected, with the homes being coated in thick clusters of the beasties, which had chosen their homes to stretch their wings and warm themselves in the early morning sunshine.

One woman whose home was effected was Valerie Moore, from Mourne Drive, who got the shock of her life when she opened her front door. She initially thought her home had been descended upon by a swarm of wasps or bees.

“I went to turn the handle to open the front door, and I saw there was something on the window. I opened the door and just closed it again immediately and ran up stairs to close all the windows.

“On Sunday night my sister-in-law Lily, said she had a massive swarm of what she thought was wasps on the gable end of her house, and that the wall was covered in them, but they then disappeared. So they must have come back last night again and swarmed over my house and the house opposite.

“I thought they were wasps initially, but a member of staff from the council told me it was a fly swarm. There were thousands of them all covering the door, they were up around the porch, all over the fascia and soffit and the guttering. They were all over it. I have pillars at the front on the porch and they were even all over them. I suppose it was the heat that brought them out,” she said.

Thankfully, the swarm had moved on within the hour, having basked in the early morning sunshine and warmed themselves up after what was a chilly night given the lack of cloud cover.

Anyone who experiences a similar swarm at their homes and who manages to get a photograph of them is welcome to email them in to the Londonderry Sentinel or post them on the website at www.londonderrysentinel.co.uk.