Chemical Warfare

 "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

-- Comment by an unnamed major to correspondent Peter Arnett after the battle of Ben Tre during the Vietnam War.

The war against the fungus gnats is over. I hope.

The remaining houseplant was put outside, minus the small cups that held the vinegar traps. I put my unused plant pots in a corner and covered them with a sheet of thick plastic. Items I didn't want contaminated were covered or taken into the house. 

I pulled out the vacuum cleaner to go piece by piece through the items on the top shelf of the wheeled stand where the seed containers had been. I sucked up living and dead gnats and years of soil, seed and other mess. Many things that should've been thrown out years ago were dumped. Then I pulled the stand aside and vacuumed the bottom shelf and all of the carpet. My vacuum cleaner doesn't use bags so I took it outside to pull out the container. There was one living gnat. I dumped the contents into my compost pile.

(Margo D. Beller)

Then I put on my hazmat suit - two masks, bandana, old rubber raincoat with hood up, rubber gloves - and got to work.

The Raid container said "outdoor scent" but the spray had a nauseating lemon chemical smell. One gnat that flew up dropped like a stone when sprayed. I sprayed everywhere I had seen gnats, which was just about everywhere. I had many windows open wide. Then I retreated inside for a while and washed raincoat, mask and rubber gloves.

I thought of the jungles of Vietnam as Agent Orange was sprayed on crops, foliage and people. I thought of destroying the porch to save it. Maybe I was overreacting but I could not let these insects contaminate my houseplants. 

Later in the day I put on a mask, went on the porch and put the floor fan on high. I could smell that "outdoor fresh" and wondered how long it would last. Later, I closed some windows and put the porch items back out. That afternoon we discovered at least three gnats in the den that had gotten in and were drawn by the light of the television.

Of course there were. I shut the two doors to the den and we again killed gnats.

I left the porch windows open all night. In the morning, when I put out the feeder, I closed a few of them but put the fan on.  We had planned to grill that afternoon and MH discovered dead gnats in the grill cover and some live gnats, which then tried to get back on the porch. A few succeeded. So again I was killing gnats. I thought I was finally done with it all until one came on the porch for the night when I came back inside with the feeder. 

This morning the gnat flew straight at me. It was easily killed.

So today was the first time in weeks when I did not have a gnat buzzing around me. If I think about it I smell the spray. I wasn't wearing a mask. 

And yet, things now feel strange. The porch seems emptier after the cleanup. No plants, no bird seed. I have a continued dread a gnat I somehow missed will suddenly appear. There's a tickle in my throat and a heaviness in my head that could be an after-effect of the spray itself or the stress I've felt for the weeks I've spent battling this infestation. 

War is hell.

Meanwhile, an assortment of birds continues to mob the feeder despite all the gnats and other insects flying around the yard. At some point, when it finally gets cold, I'll have to make that final decision about the houseplant now outside. 

Winter can't come fast enough.

The Season of Quiet

During the summer I sit on the enclosed porch, look around the colorful and leafy yard and try to imagine the winter scene of bareness and gray. Now it's the opposite. I sit on my porch wearing a down coat and warm hat, my legs covered by a blanket, and try to imagine the leaves are still on the trees.

I am finally at the point in the year where the lawn services are done for the season, the town is no longer collecting leaves (which doesn't stop some neighbors from putting to the curb whatever last leaves may have fallen) and the majority of the trees and shrubs are bare. I am happy to have the quiet, but the continuing cold and grayness of many days plus the darkness at 5 p.m. make me restless, tired and, sometimes, down because my gardening is done and migration is long over. I feel shut in, and it does not help that we are close to the end of another year and there is a more contagious form of COVID-19 that affects even fully vaccinated people like me. That means another winter of avoiding people in the streets and not visiting friends or family. 

But at least there is no snow, at least not yet.

New Hampshire, November 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

To some it is soothing to have a blanket of snow on the ground, the white providing a nice contrast with the gray skies. Those who depend on snow for revenue from winter activities are very happy to have the snow. Those with the strength and energy to snowshoe, ski or snowmobile are also very glad to see the white stuff.

Not me.

It is when the snow falls that I feel my age and am at my most vulnerable. I think of last year when we had two feet of snow on our property. Will that next shovelful of snow from the back path make me breathless or have some sort of attack? How long will it take my husband (MH) to find me if I keeled over? My neighbors look after their own properties and are not inclined to help the people next door they don't know so well. We have no children or grandchildren so we hire someone to plow our long driveway. We do the rest, carefully, on the off-chance someone would want to visit. That has yet to happen.

Cardinal in winter (Margo D. Beller)

It has not been the best year for me. I look back on my health issues and am thankful I survived them and the subsequent treatments, and that MH has been here to watch over me and chauffeur me to medical appointments. I have been regaining my strength, trying to make up for lost time. But I can never be 100% again. I can't go back in time, much as I'd like to do.

So I sit bundled on the porch, refusing to confine myself to the house, watching the feeder birds, enjoying the quiet and looking ahead to the return of spring.

 

Bird Eat Bird

One of the handy books I keep on my shelves of birding guides is "Birds at Your Feeder: A Guide to Feeding Habits, Behavior, Distribution, and Abundance." It was one of the first books I bought when I got interested in birding.

It gives species accounts for dozens of birds that are likely to come to feeders including northern cardinals, white-breasted nuthatches and white-throated sparrows along with birds I'm not likely to see in New Jersey such as black-billed magpies and pyrrhuloxia. Want to know what kind of seed will attract a goldfinch? This guide will tell you.

Immature Cooper's hawk that missed a meal.
(Margo D. Beller)

This is what it says for sharp-shinned hawks, the first species in the book:

Favorite feeder foods: Mourning dove. blue jay, European starling, dark-eyed junco, pine siskin, house finch, house sparrow.

Infrequent choices: 21 additional prey species, similar in size to those listed above.

Or as MH likes to say, "What's a sharpy's favorite food? Birds at your feeder."

Yes, it's a bird eat bird world out there, particularly in winter when birds must flock to feeders for food when they can't find berries or bugs. They become more visible and so do the predators that eat birds to survive.

This morning I came out with the feeders to find a dusting of snow on the patio and the lawn. I sat on the enclosed porch in my coat to await the male cardinal that always seems to know when I have put out food. He came, taking a seed and then chasing away the white-throated sparrow on the baffle below it. Aside from these birds there was very little activity as the snow continued falling lightly. Two titmice came to grab seeds and fly to the pear tree to eat.

Then, as I looked ahead, something large and brown came up from the ground to the roof of the porch where I sat. A mourning dove? Then why is the titmouse suddenly giving its high-pitched alarm call? I soon saw the answer when the sharp-shinned hawk flew from the roof to a nearby branch. Juvenile accipiters (including the larger Cooper's and northern goshawk) are brown but become gray as they mature. This one was a juvenile - brown and empty taloned. I have seen sharpys fly close to the ground to pick off a meal so this one must have flown into my yard low and, for whatever reason, flown up to the roof where it could be seen by other birds and avoided.

Immature redtail hawk observed in my backyard. (Margo D. Beller)

Eventually, the sharpy flew off to the trees on the next street but then passed over my yard on the way to the woods on the edge of the community garden behind the houses across the street. Not long after, the jays began hitting the feeder and the titmice, house sparrows and house finches came to eat, not be eaten.

In time, the juvenile will learn it must become a better hunter if it wants to survive the winter. Accipiters are built for speed and agility. Their wings are such they can fly between trees, which larger hawks such as a redtail can't do. I have chased sharpys out of my hedge. I have been buzzed by sharpys while in the woods. In my yard alone I have seen an adult literally pick a junco out of the trees, crushing the life out of it with a nauseating pop. I caught one sharpy after it had grabbed a chickadee, which it took into a neighbor's shrub to finish. Catching a big, plump bird such as a mourning dove will feed a crow-sized female sharpy very well (female hawks of all types are always larger than the males).

Mature sharpy finishing off a mourning dove in the backyard.
(Margo D. Beller)

No raptors will turn down a bird meal if it can't catch anything else. Great horned owls will eat the much smaller screech owl. Turkey vultures have been known to push young birds from a nest to kill and eat them (which is why you will often see crows and other birds attacking vultures that get too close). Both northern and loggerhead shrikes have the nasty habit of killing smaller birds and impaling them on a branch to snack on later. (The shrike is known as the "butcher bird" for this reason.)

I know, all birds have to eat, even the ones that feed on the birds at my feeder. I get that. Still, not in my yard. This is why when a raptor appears in my yard trees I stand outside near the feeders, to study it while protecting the feeder birds. The raptor eventually flies off to look for its meal elsewhere.