I’ve had to deal with huge swarms of these things every summer for the few years I’ve lived a mile away from a lake. I assumed they were mosquitoes until recently.
Is it some kind of midge fly? How can you tell? If I were to make an uneducated guess, I’d say it’s not a mosquito because there’s not a straight proboscis.
That’s a crane fly. They have lots of nicknames and folk identities so it’s super common to call them something else. I’ve heard them called “mosquito hawks” (they don’t hunt mosquitoes) but male mosquitoes is a new one to me. You could add it to the Wikipedia page lol
All those years. I stand corrected. Love to learn new shtuff.
Can confirm this is a crane fly, aka Tipuloidea sp.