UKH

heading up on the train to a Achnashellach for a couple of days bumbling - rapidly dialling down my kit list based on SAIS blogs and forecast - is there any point at all in packing axe and crampons? Looks like snow cover similar to June....

No snow  apart from a few patches in corries and gullies. 16 degrees in Kinlochewe yesterday.

Sunhat it is then!

Someone was telling me yesterday that they have seen their first midges of the year! You might want to pack repellent and a net!

FFS.

still with any luck, a premature emergence and then a March/April cold snap could knock the little feckers back for a bit. Silver linings and all that......

That never seems to work.

Probably not biting yet though. </wishful thinking>

I doubt it. It was probably something else

My wife thinks any small flying insect is a midge. Its the default identification in Scotland, but in Feb??

I've seen them in November so why not February.

I doubt they were midges, but apparently ticks are out and about. See the News this morning https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-47332240

This was another outdoor instructor who saw them, so I'm inclined to believe him, sadly!

Excuse me for splitting hairs , but there is a vast difference between seeing midges and being attacked by them.

It is soon obvious if they are the genuine article .

They usually come out for a couple of weeks before they start biting, but I didn't press for details. He said there were midges out where he was, and I responded in a suitably appalled manner and we moved on. 

I hope he's wrong!!

Don't worry - there are a number of species of non-biting midge that emerge much earlier in the Spring than the main biting species (Culicoides impunctatus).