We don’t feed the birds in summer and we were away in June, so I’m not too aware of any changes in number. We haven’t seen dead ones in our corner of PA. What has been weird though is that we have been under assault by carpenter ants. We live at the edge of the woods, so we’re used to occasional skirmishes with them. In May we returned from a weekend trip to find hundreds or maybe a thousand of them in the basement in my husband’s shop. The exterminator reduced it a lot, but we’re having him come back to re-treat. The family built the house in 1963, and we’ve never seen anything like it. Fireflies seem down too, and perhaps butterflies.
Carpenter ants had infested my shed, so I took to sprays, powders, etc. The little buggers hatched special winged scouts that took off for greener pastures. In other words, here I am, top of the food chain, with all the technological prowess at my disposal, etc., outsmarted by an ant.
I think our fireflies were up this year. Usually they peak around Father’s Day, but this year it was a little bit later, maybe a week. We still have a good bunch of them.
ants are a big problem for us..