Please help me identify and eliminate these flies?

bw123 · #1 (**permalink**) 25-11-2011, 09:44 AM

Hi
I would be eternally grateful to anyone who can help me identify and eradicate these pesky flies that have been appearing in my house at the rate of about 10 a day for the last 4 weeks!
A little more about the flies. They don't appear to hover around food particularly. They seem to like to sit on windows and float around fairly randomly. They are not very smart - if I move my finger slowly towards them, 9/10 I can kill them just by pressing them into the window. Not sure if it's relevant, but while I don't have any plants in the house, the flat downstairs has a large garden with lots of potted plants, that look like they might have quite a lot of mulch in them. My suspicion is that these flies are getting in from somewhere outside, but I can't find out where. I've tried bleaching the drains, I don't leave any food out. They're driving me mad! Thank you so much and sorry about the poor photos - it's the best I could do with my camera. If you need better shots, please let me know and I'll try to find a better camera..
Many thanks! Pics below..

triops · #2 (**permalink**) 25-11-2011, 04:11 PM

Your flies may be Sciaridae (one of the Fungus gnats). Harmless but annoying. Possibly from plant material................Did you bleach down the sink overflow? Somewhere there is a tiny amount of decaying stuff for the larvae to live on.

bw123 · #3 (**permalink**) 25-11-2011, 04:49 PM

Thank you for your reply! I will definitely bleach all the drain overflows.. Someone on another forum also posted probably fungus gnats, so I'm excited that there seems to be a consensus - thanks again!

bw123 · #4 (**permalink**) 25-11-2011, 11:16 PM

Thank you so much! After your identification and your info on fungus gnats, I figured there must be some source of organic material they were breeding on, rather than getting in from outside. I only moved into the flat a month ago, and there's lots of someone else's stuff in there still, but eventually I found what may well be the culprit - I pulled out the cooker, and behind it there was what looks like an ancient potato maybe - it's hard to tell - but it definitely looked like it might have been housing flies. I didn't want to look at it too closely to be honest :-) So I'm sure that will either eradicate the problem entirely or at least it's a big step in the right direction - so a huge thank you for all your help! :-)