Aw, Gnats!, or When the Outside Comes In

A lot of people like summer. They want the heat, they want to wear as little in the way of clothes as possible and they want to go to the beach. They enjoy working in the garden, harvesting their vegetables and cutting flowers. 

I do that, too, but I do not like summer. I do not like heat and humidity, I stay covered to avoid skin cancer and, after once nearly drowning in a pond, I stay away from the water unless it is to stand on the shore and look for seabirds on or over it.

A fungal gnat that crawled through the screen but
could not get through the glass on the back door.
(Margo D. Beller)

Also, I don't like most insects, especially the biting kind. When I went to Troy Meadows the other week, during the waning spring migration time, I was set upon by black flies as I tried to step carefully around lakes of muddy water in the middle of the main, unpaved road. This week was no better at Great Swamp, when I took a friend there on her day off. When we weren't roasting in the sun we were waving away insects in the shade.

And I'm not even talking about mosquitos, the unofficial state bird of New Jersey. After all the rain we've had the mosquito eggs should be hatching just about now and the young will be hungry. 

But what I especially do not like is when certain insects make their way onto my enclosed porch, where I sit in my chair with my coffee and enjoy the breeze (including from a fan) without worrying about being bitten - unless something gets inside.

Mosquitos that get in are caught and killed. Large flies are shown an open door and encouraged to leave. Spiders are left alone because their webs catch the smaller bugs. Lady bugs are put outside where they can eat the aphids that bother some of my flowers. But the black blister beetle, which unlike the many other types of beetles in this state I find on the porch, are removed in one way or another. No-see-ums? Well, there's not much I can do about them except keep the fan blowing on me.

And then there are the fungal gnats.

Until last August I had never heard of these flying pests. They don't bite but they do lay eggs - a lot of eggs. I would catch a gnat and put it outside. Then I'd find more. Finally, I discovered an infestation of gnats in the bag of sunflower seeds I'd been using when I had feeders out. This caused a lot of bother. I stopped releasing the gnats and turned to smashing them. I dumped soil out of the plants I had put on the porch for the summer and repotted them before taking them into the house. (I did not do this for one unwieldy plant I put outside, then took inside, then had to decide whether to kill it, then cut it down after it put out new growth from the bottom.)

Going to extremes last year.
(Margo D. Beller)

Finally, I turned to chemical warfare. That did the trick, but I could not sit on the porch for a week.

So imagine my dismay when, a day after putting my plants on the porch earlier this month, when it was finally warm enough to do so, I started finding gnats again. How were they getting in?

When I had bought fresh bird seed I had also bought a pail with a lid that locks, so they weren't coming from there. Any pot that had even a trace of soil in it was in a corner of the porch under a tarp. Could they be squeezing through the mesh screens where I had windows open? That was likely. I closed all the windows and took the plants back into the house after spraying them with a solution to kill any possible eggs.

There is not much more I can do now except to kill what I can reach or hope they get stuck in a spider web. 

Last year's spiders helping me out with the gnats.
(Margo D. Beller)

Why are the gnats trying to come onto the porch, months ahead of when they infested my porch last year? Are they trying to get away from hungry birds like the house wrens? Has it been too hot or too wet for them this year? Is it global warming? We're not even in the heat of July yet.

When we had an infestation of carpenter ants in our bathroom in 2022, which I wrote about in September, that had been a particularly dry season and the ants were looking for water. This year we've had plenty of water, maybe too much so, and twice I've caught an ant in the bathroom. My husband has put out poisoned bait and we've had no problems since then.

With the plants safely inside I didn't feel the need to nuke the porch again. But when one of the gnats somehow came inside the house and into my den the other night I went nuclear, making sure the den doors were closed so I could kill it before it could go to where I keep the plants. I thought I was successful but a night later what I hope was the same one flew across the room, attracted by the lights. This one I know I caught, with a well-aimed paperback book. But I'll be spraying the plants and using yellow sticky tape for the rest of the summer.

How did the gnat, or gnats, get into the house? Probably hitched a ride on me. I'll have to be vigilant about that now, too.

On Insects

"The Creator has an inordinate fondness for beetles."

-- J.B.S. Haldane

In suburbia we do a lot to protect our homes. We cut down tall trees before they can fall on them. We put in lights along the front walk, the garage and the front door to deter (or blind) any potential burglar and increase curb appeal in case we want to sell them. We put up fences to keep children and pets in and strangers out. We mow our lawns within an inch of their lives and then use our leaf blowers to get every last speck of substance off our property and into the street, where it miraculously disappears.

Lethal method 1: yellow sticky strips in the house plants
(Margo D. Beller)

Inside we clean germs - real or imagined - from surfaces. And if we see insects, we want them out ASAP.

That can be a tall task because there are a lot of insects.

According to my copy of the "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America," there are over 24,000 types of beetles in 113 families in North America north of Mexico alone, so Haldane knew what he was talking about. They include leaf-cutters, ground beetles, ladybugs, dung beetles, scarabs, water beetles and long-horned beetles, among many others.

There are other insects including wood borers, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths. Some insects are beneficial, such as aphid-eating ladybugs and pollenator bees and butterflies. Some are bird food, such as the carpenter ants favored by pileated woodpeckers. 

And then there are the flies. Kaufman says there are 17,000 types on this continent, and they include pesky gnats, mosquitos and maggots. 

Lethal method 2: extension dust mop
(Margo D. Beller)

There are companies that make their living killing rodents, spiders and insects. There are also a lot of products homeowners can use to kill mice, spiders, flies, cockroaches and other space invaders, including ways that won't make you sick using them. 

Two years ago, during a drought, we were faced with an invasion of carpenter ants that had somehow gotten into one of our bathrooms. To get rid of them my husband (MH) went to a big box store and bought traps that contained poisoned sugar water. The hungry/thirsty soldier ants took the bait back to the queen and fed her. She died. Soon the colony started dying. Problem solved.

This year we have had lots of rain but we've also had another type of bathroom invader - drain flies. I would find what looked like a small fly hopping around the sink or on the wall. MH looked them up and we learned about drain flies, which, despite the name, are in the flea family and feed on organic matter in sink drains. (Organic matter? In my sink?)

Getting rid of them was as easy as using drain cleaner followed by pouring in a pot of boiling water. Problem solved.

But when it comes to insects the battle is never really over, it just moves elsewhere and with a different combatant. Currently, it is on the enclosed porch against fungas gnats.

"Fungus Gnat - Rondaniella dimidiata, Woodbridge, Virginia"
 by Judy Gallagher is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I'd be having my morning coffee on the porch and something would flutter by. It would land on a surface and I'd catch it in a container and put it outside. Soon I started to see more of them, which is when MH again looked it up and I learned the name of this invader. (I'm guessing eggs had been laid in a plant I had outside and then moved to the porch.) I've since learned watering my plants has made the problem worse because wet soil helps them breed.

So I've stopped my catch-and-release policy and and have taken to elimination with extreme prejudice.

To my shame I first considered the flying insect spray we had in the garage, but that might (or might not, depending on the website article I read) harm the plants (and me). Then I went to the big box store and bought some yellow sticky strips to put on posts placed just above the soil in the pots to catch any adults. I'm letting the plants dry out and will then soak the soil with hydrogen peroxide to kill any eggs or larvae. I've also put out vinegar traps.

I hope all this works because winter will be here soon enough and the plants will have to go back inside. But so far I have found no dead gnats and the live ones are still flying around on the porch. 

My friend the spider caught at least three gnats. I'm hoping it gets more.
(Margo D. Beller)

So now I've gotten back to basics: smashing them with an extension dust mop. It gives me reach, exercise and the illusion I am doing something about the problem. 

I've also discovered I have an ally - spiders. Yes, those same critters others want to kill and get out of the house are spinning webs on the porch and catching some gnats. According to Kaufman there are 4,000 types of spiders in North America and I have found many of their webs in the house, on the lawn, in the trees and in various areas of the porch.

I am not crazy about spiders in the house because their webs show me where I have been lax and really need to clean. But they are catching insects, and on the porch spiders are more than welcome to spin their webs and gather as many gnats or anything else as they want.  

Bugged

If there is one thing I dislike more in summer than heat, humidity, weeds and deer, it is insects.

The huge amount of rain that fell in August spawned a bumper crop of mosquitoes that, along with the biting flies, hornets, gnats and no-see-ums, make walking difficult, even without heat and humidity. I walk in the bedewed grass in the morning and I come to the porch with bare ankles burning from bites. I walk along my favorite path and where there is standing water a cloud of mosquitoes follows, biting my arms despite flailing them around, or swarming around my knees, smelling the blood from veins near the surface.

State bird of New Jersey (a free picture courtesy of Pixabay)

The estimated ratio of insects to humans is 200 million to one, say Iowa State University entomologists. In the United States, the number of described species is approximately 91,000, according to the Smithsonian Institution. One site that catalogs the bugs found in New Jersey says there are 584. They include the pretty butterflies, the not-so-pretty cockroaches, beetles, spiders, the aphids that will suck the life out of your plants, the ladybugs that will eat the aphids, the almost prehistoric-looking praying mantis and the ticks that are the bane of hikers who go off-road or travel through long grass and rough terrain. The cicadas call during the hot days, the katydids during hot nights and the crickets at all times.

There are also the many types of wasps, hornets, yellow-jackets and bees plus the midges known as no-see-ums, sandflies and chiggers. Travelers to the shore must contend with biting green-headed flies, whose numbers can force birders to look from inside their cars, windows rolled up.

When it comes to mosquitos we are told to remove all standing water. In my case that means frequent changing of the water in the dish I keep out for the birds, the ant moat that keeps insects from covering (and drowning in) the hummingbird feeder and emptying out the excess water from saucers underneath potted plants. But the other bugs I can't see or hear are worse. I push aside the large leaves of the potted canna to water the soil and something bites my arms. I walk in the grass to pick up brush and something bites my ankles. I cut back the overgrowth of the multiflora rose or a vine and something bites my elbow. 

Yes, I know, bugs are part of the circle of life. They are food for birds. While some have been cutting chunks out of the leaves of my plants and shrubs, others have been eating the offenders. Many pollinate the flowers. A bite once in a while I can tolerate, but the increase in the number of bites I am finding on me (some of which don't start getting very itchy until hours after the fact) is, with the intense heat, forcing me indoors more than I'd like, and that has me bugged. 

MH rarely wears short-sleeved shirts in summer. He usually wears long sleeves to protect his arms, particularly when he mows the lawn and disturbs the many insects in the grass that don't appreciate the intrusion. Many of these insects also hide in my garden plants, such as the hornets I discovered using my pot of perennial geranium for their nest last year when I attempted to water it. 

So when the next cool-down comes and it is time to start cutting back the garden - very soon, I hope - I will have to do more to protect myself, too.

Oddities

Roseate spoonbill, Rte, 94 NJ (RE Berg-Andersson)

What you see here is a roseate spoonbill, a bird normally found in such places as the Florida Everglades. According to the bird people at Cornell, the spoonbill forages "in the shallows of fresh, brackish, and marine waters including bays, mangroves, forested swamps, and wetlands." 

You do not expect to see this bird on the property of a New Jersey stone company along Route 94 in western Warren County. 

And yet there it was, reported by many on the various online bird lists, using that large spoon-shaped bill to root out worms that had come to the surface after recent flooding rains created a large pond in the middle of the stone company's lawn. MH and I saw this bird on May 30 in the afternoon, after we had spent many hours driving along Old Mine Rd. in the northwestern part of the state, seeing or hearing 50 different types of breeding birds including 12 types of warblers.

It's fun to find birds you normally don't see, such as we do along Old Mine Rd. once a year, but when I see a bird that was somehow blown way out of its territory, it makes me sad. I wondered where the spoonbill would go once the water receded. Would it fly south and seek another spoonbill? Would it stay where it was and die? I don't know. Most winters someone reports a hummingbird in New Jersey. Hummingbirds need a lot of food to power their wings, which beat thousands of times a second. One year a hummingbird normally seen in the west was lucky enough to find its way to a nature center in western NJ. The staff quickly rigged up a heat lamp and a feeder for the bird, which survived into the spring when MH and I saw it.

Most "accidentals" aren't so lucky if they show up at the wrong place in the wrong season. Others discover things ain't so bad. For instance, for the last several years, including this year, a white pelican has shown up at DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, NJ., hard by the NJ Turnpike. It is hanging out in a large pool with double-crested cormorants, great blue herons and other marsh birds. There is lots of food or these birds wouldn't be there. At the same time, brown pelicans has been reported as coming farther north, too. I've seen these stately birds in San Francisco Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, following the fish. On occasion they are sighted as far north as southern New Jersey.   

Why are formerly southern birds either showing up in the north more often or have now become year-round residents, such as the Carolina wren or the mockingbird? Strong winds can blow a migrating bird off course. Global warming could make a bird comfortable in a new region. Evolution could be helping a bird adapt to a new climate. Warm waters could force fish farther north, bringing those that eat them north, too. 

There are all sorts of explanations. Pick your own. Most birders, eager to tick off an unusual bird they don't need to travel far to see for their Life Lists, don't care.

Here's another oddity.

Witch hazel leaf (Margo D. Beller)

I was taking a walk the other morning when I walked into a branch of this sapling hanging over the road. I noticed what looked like horns on all the leaves. I'd never seen anything like this before.

I asked my brother-in-law, the naturalist. He said this was a witch hazel and that the "horn" was caused by an insect boring into the bottom side of the leaf to lay its eggs - so many eggs they had come through the other side to create the "horn" I was seeing.

Many people go into the woods to look for frogs, insects, animals, plants and butterflies. I prefer birds but MH has been known to show me something interesting, such as an American toad off the path or a wooly bear caterpillar.

Tulip poplar on the road. (Margo D. Beller)

I guess I have to broaden my horizons and look down more often. For instance, it was by looking down I found this tulip poplar flower a squirrel must've snapped off - I hadn't realized the tall poplars had put out flowers to attract pollinating insects. When I was growing up my parents' neighbor had a huge tree that eventually shaded out the sun-needing flowers in our backyard. However,  the tulip flowers were at my eye level from the back porch.

According to one source I found, the tulip poplar is one of the largest of the trees native to the eastern U.S. It can grow as high as 190 feet but is more typically 70 to 100 feed. The trunk can be 10 feet in diameter. 

When I see them in my town they are usually in so-called waste areas. Few keep this as a yard tree anymore, apparently. A couple of years ago one person a few streets away cut down his stately, old tree, thus creating his own waste area.

Three Types of Summer's Winged Wonders

Butterflies

This is the time of summer when I go out to the woods and if I see any movement in the trees it is usually a butterfly. The butterflies I see most commonly are tiger swallowtails, dark swallowtails and the occasional monarch butterfly.

Tiger swallowtail (Margo D. Beller)

August into September must be when the caterpillars break out of their cocoons as butterflies. Adult butterflies lay their eggs, the eggs hatch caterpillars, the caterpillars (after eating a lot of leaves, I think) crawl up trees or shrubs to become cocooned pupas and then they hatch as butterflies, which then head south for the winter.

The nice thing about butterflies, besides their many different colors and the way they seem to float in out of nowhere, is they aren't that picky about where they feed. Yes, they have special needs in terms of where they lay eggs, such as the monarch butterfly needing milkweed, but when they need food they will go to any flower, shrub or roadside weed. They will even come to puddles to drink.

I once walked along a road in a strong wind. There was a tiger swallowtail on a Rose of Sharon flower, hanging on for dear life. You would think something so small and delicate would have a problem in wind but this is one strong little creature. 

Butterflies have a lot of fans, which is why you can do a simple search and find all sorts of butterfly clubs to learn more.

Hummingbirds 

When I last wrote about rubythroated hummingbirds, I mentioned the two that were coming regularly to my feeder. I named them Alpha and Beta. Alpha was the more dominant of the two, hence the name. Beta was rather dusky and very skittish at the feeder, hovering over the portal to drink rather than perch as Alpha did.

Much has happened since then.

First, I realized Alpha might have been a male. We had visited our niece in Connecticut and a male hummer had come to her feeder. The male had a dark head, just like Alpha. The next time Alpha visited I had binoculars with me and did not see a lot of red at the throat, although there was a pink tinge. That was the last time I saw Alpha.

A friend's juvenile hummer (Margo D. Beller)

Beta continued to visit much longer and was soon joined by a smaller, greener individual that was definitely a juvenile male. I named that one Delta. Beta would feed in her skitterish fashion and take off in one direction, Delta would feed and head in another direction.

With the heat and humidity I have not spent time on the enclosed porch, the only way I can see the hummingbird feeder, but it seems to me Beta has moved on and what I call Delta may be Epsilon, Gamma or any of a number of hummingbird visitors. Young are fledging and they have to eat. By now the adult males should've been heading south, and soon the adult females and the young birds will be doing the same.

All I know is, at least once a day a hummingbird comes to feed. I still have plenty of food for as long as they come.

Dragonflies 

One of the things that makes walking with MH so enjoyable is we usually look at different things. I will be looking up in the trees for any bird activity while he will be looking down for snakes, toads and other nonwinged creatures.

But one thing that interests him very much, and is now interesting me, are all the dragonflies.

Green dragonfly blending well into leaf. (RE Berg-Andersson)

You can be in a marsh, in a park, in your backyard and you will have a number of these insects buzzing around, picking off mosquitoes and gnats. If you have clean water, you have dragonflies and the smaller damselflies.

They come in a variety of colors. In the Great Marsh of Concord, Mass., we found a dragonfly that looked like it was red, white and blue. In the Franklin Parker Preserve in southern NJ, in the heart of the Pine Barrens, we found a very large dragonfly that was bright red. We're still trying to identify it.

Usually we find such exotically named creatures as 12-spotted skimmers, white-tailed skimmers, green darners and ebony jewel-wings. There is a state dragonfly association and several Internet sites devoted to field guides and identification. This one even tells you how many different types can be found in each county of New Jersey. In my home county of Morris there are 125!

Like the dragonfly I'm just skimming the surface here. But I am becoming as interested in their colors and diversity as I have been on birds for over a decade. Like the butterflies, these seasonal winged wonders can be easily overlooked, and that is unfortunate.

Other Winged Wonders

American toad (Margo D. Beller)

Over the years I have so trained myself to listen for songs and spot movement in trees for birds that I miss many other life forms.

Besides handling the camera while I spot things with my binoculars, MH is also very good at pointing out what he sees at eye level or on the ground while I'm busy scanning the skies.

So it is thanks to him I have learned about such dragonflies as twelve-spotted skimmers and common whitetails as well as the American and Woodhouse's toads.

Great spangled fritillary (RE Berg-Andersson)

I can't say I've been completely oblivious. When I look at pretty flowers I can't help but notice the various types of butterflies on them, even if I can't identify many of them. But just as I do with birds I can't identify, MH looks into one of his many references and usually can identify the creature.

Praying mantis (Margo D. Beller)

I also notice the praying mantis, which is a beneficial albeit scary-looking insect, especially when it is flying right at you. I can't say the same about the periodical cicadas that came out in huge swarms last year for the first time in 17 years, its usual cycle, and which have no benefit I can discern.

Periodical cicada (Margo D. Beller)

Kids are very good at finding snakes, frogs and bugs because they are closer to the ground, I think. Usually, these kinds of animals are more interesting to kids than a bird. Maybe it's the "ick" factor, or being able just to see (or photograph) them than a bird moving in a tree.

Wooly bear (R.E.Berg-Andersson)

When I go to the Great Swamp to look for birds, people along the boardwalks are looking down for bull frogs and snakes. On one morning bird hike at Scherman Hoffman, one of the younger members of our group looked down instead of up at the bird the rest of us were watching and found a female wood turtle, a threatened species in New Jersey.

So I have tried to look at more winged wonders at ground level.

Female widow skimmer (Margo D. Beller)

Just the other day I was looking at a wild rose bush that was overgrown with creeper vines and realized I was looking at a striking insect that I photographed and then showed MH, who got out his reference book and discovered it to be the female widow skimmer.

We have gone to the Pinelands and found frogs and insects we've seen nowhere else, and dragonflies and darners in brilliant shades of red, green and blue. We still don't know what that red one was but it was huge.
 
We also can't identify this scary-looking object, which I missed as we hiked and MH, as usual, noticed. It blended in very well with the tree it was on. Just after MH took its picture it came straight at him and then flew off. Perhaps it had a nest nearby.

Mystery insect (RE Berg-Andersson)

As well it should. Survival is key in any creature's life, winged or otherwise. It has to survive to create another generation to perpetuate the species. And the insect world has been enormously successful. As MH reminds me, dragonflies and other insects have been around as species longer than we have.

On the Move

After the better part of a month visiting my feeder, the ruby-throated hummingbird (or birds; at one point there were two) has not been by. I put out fresh sugar water and if there is no activity in the next day or two I will be forced to conclude she is on the move southward.

The nights have been cooler this month, for the most part, and many of the flowering perennials have that tired look, as if they know summer is coming to a close and they want to rest. For now the butterflies - swallowtails, viceroys, cabbage whites and the mighty monarch among others - are all over the butterfly bush and the bees love the rose of sharon, joe-pye weed and the late-blooming sage.

They know summer is ending, too, and they have to get moving.

There has been a lot of goldfinch activity. Goldfinches breed later than other birds, needing the late-summer seeds for their young to survive. Suddenly, there are flocks of young birds of all types noisily investigating the plants and the water dish in my backyard. Because the thistle plants are now seeding in those (increasingly fewer) areas where wildflowers and weeds are allowed to grow, I have put out two thistle feeders. Some goldfinches have come, joined by chickadees and titmice.

Tiger swallowtail, a late summer visitor to the butterfly bush.

At Duke Farms the other day, the compost pile at the community gardens was covered with over 100 cowbirds, another sign summer is ending. Cowbirds, starlings, grackles, blackbirds form large winter flocks once mating and young-rearing are over. It always amazes me that cowbirds can create such large groups considering female cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of others. Somehow these young, growing up with surrogate parents of a different species, know to leave the nest and meet up with other cowbirds.

My peppers are finally growing but are slow to go red. My tomatoes, once again, are a disaster - no more! Most of the tomatoes I’ve used have been from farm markets and that will continue. I can only hope the peppers ripen before it gets cold. A friend has shown me how to keep basil going and I look forward, I hope, to having more herbs in winter.

There will be a lot of outdoor plants that will be on the move indoors soon.

Birds are on the move. There have already been reports of warblers seen in Central Park, and the hawk watch at Hawk Mountain has been open since mid-August. As of Aug. 25, the month’s total is 333!

Some people I know are already taking their college kids back to school, and soon their younger children will be heading back to classes, too. Vacation time is over.

The June bugs are gone and the cicadas, crickets and katydids are becoming more fervent in their mating calls. They can sense the days are getting shorter and their time is short.

Trees also sense the days are shorter. The leaves have been falling from my apple tree and the locusts for weeks, The dogwood’s leaves have red mixed in with the green. Soon enough the yellow will come to the elms, the red to the maples and the brown to the oaks.

Unlike those who want to live forever in their shorts and flip-flops, I don’t mourn the passage of summer. I like my weather cooler. It keeps me alert. It is easier to walk farther when I'm not weighed down by heat and humidity. I like looking for birds but it sure is easier watching them at the feeders than stomping through hot, muddy swamps and bug-filled woods.

But I must admit it is a shock to suddenly see it getting dark at 8pm, to wake to a darker 6 a.m., to hear my husband announce he just has to get in one last barbeque before Labor Day, and to realize I haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder in days.

August has been comfortable after July’s intense heat. September will be cooler still, and the hawks will soon be riding the winds out of the north along the ridgelines. I look forward to seeing some of them during this year’s southbound migration.

But sitting still on my porch in the dusk, I am also enjoying today.