Still Bugged

I'm bugged about a lot of things. My sagging skin. My thinning hair. My inability to pedal the exercycle for 30 minutes. The new month's bills that come in just as I've paid the old ones. My neighbors' lawn mowers or lawn services making a lot of noise in the early morning when I seek quiet on my porch.

Right now I'm really bugged about bugs.

Back in 2018 I wrote a post about bugs. It started, "If there is one thing I dislike more in summer than heat, humidity, weeds and deer, it is insects."

That hasn't changed. That post talks about all the insects, the importance of them in the cycle of life and how we must dress to deal with them.

What I didn't discuss was DEET. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 

DEET (chemical name, N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is the active ingredient in many repellent products. It is widely used to repel biting pests such as mosquitoes and ticks. Every year, an estimated one-third of the U.S. population use DEET to protect them from mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile Virus, the Zika virus or malaria and tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Products containing DEET currently are available to the public in a variety of liquids, lotions, sprays, and impregnated materials (e.g., towelettes, roll on). Formulations registered for direct application to human skin contain from 5 to 99% DEET. Except for a few veterinary uses, DEET is registered for use by consumers, and it is not used on food.

Recent haiku: 

Here I sit,

Home from my birding.

Smelling of DEET.

At this time of year, besides the heat and humidity, it is more difficult for me to find any interesting birds, aside from the types of birds I'm likely to find in my backyard all year. In August the foliage is denser than in spring, the migrant birds less brightly colored and they are not singing territorial or nesting songs. When I go into the field in the days after one of the many global-warming-enhanced torrential downpours, I must look up in the treetops to see if anything is flying around.

That exposes the area of my neck under my chin to hungry flies, gnats and mosquitoes. And they've been biting.

So now I spray DEET on the backs of my hands and rub the smelly liquid on my neck, face and ears. It is very effective. The bugs don't bite. But they don't go away either, they hover and try to find a vulnerable area, like the deer that found a weakness in my fencing and took a few bites out of one of my sedum plants a few weeks ago.

The DEET smell stays with me when I drive home and I must wash it off, unless I plan on going out again to bird, so I add more.

98% DEET. I don't mess around when it comes to protection.
(Margo D. Beller)

The areas by standing water, of which there is a lot on both sides of the paths I walk after a major rain, are mosquito breeding grounds. They are bad, and so are other areas in the woods. Out in the sun, on a paved sidewalk, they are not so bad. But then I am in the sun, and on a humid day the combination is deadly.

DEET is found in a number of spray and liquid products under a variety of names including Off! and Repel, exactly why you would want to buy a chemical like this.

Says the Cleveland Clinic: 

Some people experience rashes or irritated skin after using DEET. It can also irritate your eyes if sprayed too close to your peepers.

More alarming, there have been rare reports of seizures associated with DEET. But according to the National Pesticide Information Center, most of those cases followed people drinking products with DEET or otherwise using them in ways that don’t follow recommended guidelines.

But overall, reactions are few and far between given the hundreds of millions of users.

I would not be stupid enough to drink DEET but I do know about the eye irritation.

At least this year I have not had an infestation of fungal gnats, carpenter ants or drain flies anywhere in the house or on the enclosed porch, at least not yet.

When I see people blithely walking or running through a known mosquito area while wearing shorts, open shoes and nothing on their arms, while I have on a shirt or jacket with the collar up, my hat pulled down, my light gloves on and my stink of DEET, I think, "Better you than me." But they keep moving while I stand and scan, a perfect target.

Adrift in the Dog Days

The "dog days of summer" refers to the hottest, most miserable part of the summer, when the high heat is matched by the high humidity. You can't cool off. You can't breathe. If you are my age you find yourself going out in the early morning and then being stuck inside by mid-afternoon.

The Old Farmer's Almanac says: "The Dog Days of Summer run from July 3 to August 11 each year. Far more than a modern saying, the phrase comes from ancient skywatchers who noticed that the brightest star, Sirius, rose with the Sun during this period."

(Sorry, Old Farmer. In this global-warming world we're now in it would be great if the bad weather ended today, Aug. 11. But the forecasts I've seen say otherwise.) 

Old-school birding (RE Berg-Andersson)

Back to the almanac: "The term “Dog Days” has been used for millennia to describe the hottest, most sweltering weeks of the Northern Hemisphere summer. Ancient peoples linked it with both astronomy and folklore, often viewing it as a time of drought, disease, or unrest."

I am certainly unrested. I can't sleep at night when it isn't cool but I hate running the whole-house air conditioner for just one bedroom at night. So I sleep, wake, turn, sleep, wake, etc.

Many birders follow the beachgoers "down the shore" because shore birds are at the ocean-facing shore or in protected places such as the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. (I live too far from the shore but when I need to see water I much prefer going to the bay where the Delaware River on NJ's western shore empties. Plenty of birds over the bay's calmer waters and not so many people.)

Birds are only starting to head south in August. I see reports of many types of warblers and flycatchers in New York's Central Park, for instance. In my backyard the robins and grackles continue to eat the ripe cherries from my tree. A flicker or two pokes at the ground for insects. I have not seen or heard catbird in weeks and the house wrens are a distant memory.

Today, already tired out from our trip to the supermarket to fill our larder - and how expensive food has become! - I finish what library books I have and try to do something useful. I've been rearranging closets and dresser drawers but today that is done. So what do I do now?

I write a blog post about the odds and ends I've been collecting since the last post.

I found two pictures from January, when we got the most snow in years. When you are hit with so much snow you think of the spring, when the trees leaf out and the birds fly through. But now, when it is too hot and humid, I look at the picture with a longing for cold, forgetting how miserable it is to be buried in snow.

January, when the plow guys cleared the driveway and the yew hedge
was completely bent over. At this moment I miss the cold.
(Margo D. Beller)

I hung my hummingbird feeder out again, hoping for visitors. Ever since I took in the wren box I have not been out on the porch as much so I don't know if any hummers have come. It's been ten years since I've seen hummers battling over the food. This year's flowers bloomed and busted early thanks to a ton of rain and high heat. At Great Swamp recently I watched as four hummers - including one adult male - battled and occasionally fed at the two feeders out. I watched wistfully.

One thing I won't be doing is installing an app that would allow me to get a ping on my phone every time something like a hummingbird came to the feeder so I could watch, the same way people with doorbell cameras do.

This product - and there are many because feeding birds at home and watching them is a huge industry supporting everyone from nonprofit NJ Audubon to commercial chain Wild Birds Unlimited - is an app from some company called BirdWeather. I saw it on my Facebook feed because I put up bird-related comments, as well as my latest blog post, there. This app is everything I can't stand about the new technology - aside from Merlin, which I eventually downloaded to use because of my deteriorating hearing. 

The birding groups love this. Anything to get people interested in birding and either become members of their groups, or buy their products, or donate, or provide data in the name of Citizen Science is great, even if it means promoting an app where you never have to break a sweat walking outside your door. To me this is not birding, it is another form of watching TV. Instead of walking in nature, you're glued to your phone. 

Here is what the app promises. I have no idea what PUC stands for. My comments are in brackets.

Most birdwatching takes time, patience, and a whole lot of expertise. PUC takes about 30 seconds to set up, and does everything else for you. [So you can be a complete idiot and still call yourself a birder.]

Just plug it in, open the BirdWeather app, and walk away. [Forget waking at dawn, walking in an area with your binoculars and actually using your eyes, ears and brain to find birds passing through.]

From that moment on PUC is listening around the clock, identifying every species by sound, logging every detection with the time and date, and building a live picture of the wildlife in your garden. No cameras. No binoculars. No manual effort. No technical knowledge required. [In other words, birding for idiots.]

Hundreds of BirdWeather users have discovered species they never knew existed in their garden, just by plugging in and letting PUC do the work.
Nature was always this active around you. Now you'll finally know it.

Sorry, but you'd "know it" if you got off your keister, went outside and listened.

Even during the Dog Days.

*******

Update: Here's another app I won't be using.

Introducing the Chirpful Smart Bird Feeder! A smarter, more connected way to enjoy backyard birding.

With Chirpful you can:
- Watch birds live right from your phone in 4k
- Capture and download photos and videos of every bird visit
- Get real-time notifications
- Identify over 10,000 species of birds
1.5L easy refill capacity means more time for birdwatching!

Bird feeding meets smart technology. Enjoy interactive, up-close birdwatching experience from anywhere!  [ I don't want a bird feeder that is smarter than I am.]