I have what is apparently an unusual problem, from what I've been able to discover from google searches and talking to my neighbors. I live a "high desert" area; very dry and arid. We have a very large swarm of large flies that appear to be horse flies, except they've yet to bite anyone. We can't figure out why they're hanging out around our house - we have no horses or cattle. There is no standing water nearby. Our yard is very shaded, though, as we have a lot of trees. The flies stay in two very specific areas at the front and side of the house. There are some stinky bushes in the front and what I'm pretty sure is English Ivy. (We just moved in last year and all of this was here at that time.) We've been planning to pull out the stinky bushes in any case, but we'd like to keep the ivy if it's not attracting the flies. (I'm not sure what the stinky bushes are called but they are very popular landscaping bushes that tend to smell rather like cat spray.) The porch and patio are built with red paving stones. I can't think of anything else that might be attracting them. My husband says it's just because of the shade, but no one I've talked to in town has ever heard of them hanging out in the shade just to be in the shade. I can post photos of the area and plants if that would help.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Debbie

I would suspect that before any vegetation.

the ones here are medium to dark brown and sound like the side window is going to break when the fly into it. the eyes do not seem as prominent as the horse fly pics i found.