Sand Flies

I imagine they go a long time between feeds. Maybe they breed and die at a rate too hard to comprehend.

I heard the males feed on vegetation, but the blood thirstily females require blood to produce eats. They might to feed on vegetation until a suitable blood source appears.

Hi everyone, it is a good idea to take antihistamine TABLETS with you (not cream), those that you get over the counter against hayfever work. Sometimes - even if you normally don't react like that - sandfly bites can swell and react really badly within minutes or half an hour, doubling the size of your arm or similar - been there myself. Antihistamines, taken orally, deal with that pretty quickly; without, you might be in for a bad experience, up to helicopter rescue. Also, drinking kerosene will definitely help against sandflies, as in the hospital's emergency department there are hardly any sandflies. 100% pure kerosene is actually not going to kill you right away and will "only" give you all sorts of serious digestion problems or irreversibly damage your lung if you inhale any micro droplets - but 100% pure kerosene is next to impossible to buy. Almost all kerosene that you would be able to purchase contains various ingredients that indeed are VERY toxic and CAN kill you pretty quickly. So unless you want to apply for a Darwin award, do not drink kerosene! Hardly any sandflies on the North Island is a great joke, I have to remember that one. Almost as good as the one a raft guide that I saw once played on his tourist customers by telling them that sandflies are a protected species and that they were not allowed to swat them when landing on their skin. Have you ever been to the North Island? If so, you were just lucky, as can happen - but you can also get eaten alive on the North Island, it just depends on their mood. One moment they are not to be seen, the next you can't see anything BUT sandflies. Sometimes they are merciful too though. We've been tramping under epical clouds of sandflies that actually, no kidding, made the sky a bit darker, for a day and a half this summer. They never came down to take a bite out of us. Still, we didn't feel very well, it was like a bomb that could have gone off at any time. G'nite! Matt

Sand Flies are protected within a National parks and technically we should not be killing them.

$100,000 fine or one year imprisonment per sandfly isn't it?

The simple way to avoid discomfort is to never scratch the bites with your nails. Its the bacteria in them that causes an infection and then long term itching. Also sandflies are barely an annoyance compared to the Scottish midge.

I agree with that. I'd take a sandfly over a midge any day.