There seems to be no obvious pattern in the location of the hatches this year. I was desperately hoping there would be.
There are no obvious links to climatic differences. Again I was hoping there would be something!
I’ve spoken to a few people who are reporting seeing nothing on the golf course but seeing swarms of them whilst walking their dog in a field a few miles away.
This points to one of the challenges. There is no guarantee of high or low cranefly pressure on your course and there is very little you can do to influence the the quantity of them that fly onto your site.
2019 I visited two neighbouring courses - one with high LeatherJacket Pressure and one with low pressure.
Visited the same courses again in 2020 and saw the pressure had switched with the Low pressure course now seeing high pressure and the reverse next door.
This isn't like disease, we can't reduce thatch levels or alter our fertility to to reduce pressure we have to sit back, wait and keep our fingers crossed.
However, even on low pressure sites you don’t need of them to do many to do significant damage, each Cranefly will lay around 400 eggs which assuming they all survive the winter means one Cranefly could easily mean 1 leatherjacket per square meter.
LeatherJackets will move from high population density to low density, they're smart little critters. I have taken many samples from greens looking at these and I've never seen two down the same aeration hole. They spread themselves far and wide to ensure they have a good food source and minimise their chance of being attacked by animals.
Managing this challenge isn't easy but keep your eyes open for Cranefly - the next few weeks are your opportunity to reduce the LeatherJacket population.
Keep logging your sightings of Cranefly. It doesn't matter if you have already logged a sighting, if you're still seeing them - keep logging them.
Just visits the Syngenta PestTracker page .