Rats! 🎯
Sign this petition to encourage more sustainable rodenticide practices.
Big-city owl deaths in the past year have brought the problem of anti-coagulant rodenticides into focus. First it was Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl that passed away earlier this year after many months on the lam in New York City. Then in the spring, three Great Horned Owls in Chicago’s Lincoln Park passed away suddenly due to rodenticide poisoning.
Chicago has been the rattiest city in the United States for a decade, according to Orkin. Now there is a push from Chicago Bird Alliance and other organizations to encourage the City of Chicago to pursue alternative methods for controlling the rat population. One of the more promising options, being tried out in Seattle, is rat contraceptives. You can sign a petition here.
Longtime birder Bob Hughes wrote a piece for his blog about the use of rodenticides. Bob’s one of the best birders around. He’s also a certified pest control technician and has a wealth of experience in trying to control the rat population.
Most of us have seen the gray or black rodent control bait boxes around the sides of buildings. These are the primary means of controlling rats. Bob writes:
This method of rodent control is inexpensive, easy to set up, and easy to maintain. More importantly, a bait box program covers a large area. When I worked for a pest control company in Chicago and for the Village of Niles, part of my job involved setting up and servicing these bait stations for our clients. I would determine where the best locations for placing the stations were, fill the stations with bait, and on return visits replace missing or old bait with fresh bait. The bait consists of a food attractant and a very small amount of poison. The poison is an anticoagulant that interferes with blood clotting and leads to death through uncontrolled bleeding. This use of anticoagulant baits is effective in killing rats and other target rodents, something I witnessed while working in Chicago and Niles.
While the bait boxes are effective, the major drawback is what happened to the owls: predators eat the poisoned rats and then become poisoned themselves. Bob cautions that banning anticoagulants “would face stiff opposition” from pest control companies and the city government itself. As an alternative, one solution may be encouraging people to be less messy.
Using rodenticide baits to control rats only addresses the symptoms of the problem and not the underlying causes, which are usually sanitation issues. Getting enough people to clean up after their dogs, clean up spilled bird seed, pick up fallen fruit from their fruit trees, and address other contributing factors is a tall order, especially in a city as large as Chicago. Proper sanitation would reduce the need to use rodenticide baits to control rodents, reducing the incidences of secondary poisoning of wildlife. This isn’t difficult to understand but getting everyone, or at least enough people on the same page won’t be easy. Hiring a pest control company to set up a baiting program to control rats is easier, which is why so many landlords and property management companies choose this option.
Spilled bird seed hits a bit too close to home for this author. But, yes, general tidiness likely would benefit us in myriad ways. Rats are a non-native species that are nearly solely dependent on humans for food, water, and shelter. There’s a long list of human activity that attracts rats, including some favorite pastimes like gardening.
Big raptors already face numerous obstacles to surviving in our highly altered urban environment. It’s more than fair to take the birds into account when thinking about rodent control. Let’s hope the city and pest control companies find some humane and safe ways to target rats.
Humming along
There’s long been a debate about whether it’s best to leave hummingbird feeders up well into the fall. On the one hand, people are concerned about keeping hummingbirds from migrating by making sugar water available. On the other hand, western hummingbirds will show up at feeders into late November.
The Illinois Audubon Society newsletter dampened any concern about the former recently. The tiny flyers just aren’t really dependent on the feeders:
To the best of our scientific knowledge from watching hummingbird migration for hundreds to thousands of years, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are obligate migrants; meaning that their daily and annual rhythms are driven by an internal clock. Changes in some internal mechanism tell the birds when it is time to move on. Fear not as an abundance of food will not deter them from completing their migration. They will know when the time is right.
Then right on time a western specialty, the Anna’s Hummingbird, showed up at a Princeton, Illinois, feeder. It was the second state record of the species and was still present as of this weekend.
So, why not leave the feeders up? The water doesn’t turn to syrup at this time of year or result in ant infestations. Further, your yard might be the next one that attracts a mega-rarity.
TWiB Notes
Longtime friend of TWiB, Rob Swindell, has been named the recipient of the Alan Dolan Great Lakes Conservation Advocacy Award. Swindell is the Executive Director of Black River (Ohio) Audubon Society. The regional award recognizes exceptional leadership in environmental advocacy, community service and dedication to the conservation of the Great Lakes region, including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin…..A Northern Saw-whet Owl became the first bird detected by a radio tower installed at Chicago’s Big Marsh by Chicago Ornithological Society. The bird also was detected at Ryerson Conservation Area in Illinois and at Lake Petit in Wisconsin…..Block Club Chicago reported that a Texas company has been baiting and trapping Rock Pigeons in the Chicago area, which has led to alarm from some advocates.
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