Bob Mount: Fire ants not making it easy for nighthawks

Flocks of nighthawks, a.k.a. bullbats, have been passing through our area for the past two or three weeks on the way to their over-wintering habitats in the tropics.
They feed on insects, in flight, mostly in late afternoon and early evening. They are aerial acrobats, and on downward dives, just before they swoop upward, they extend their wings resulting in a sound I would describe as ‘whomp.’

Used to be, nighthawks were common breeding residents of our area, but are now seldom seen during the breeding season. Nighthawks nest on the ground, and their newly hatched young are helpless when their parents are foraging, which, unfortunately, corresponds to the time when fire ants are most actively foraging. Baby nighthawks would constitute ideal prey for foraging fire ants, and I am reasonably confident that fire ant predation is responsible for the virtual disappearance of the breeding population of nighthawks in our area.

On the subject of populations of birds that were once common breeding inhabitants of our area, I am old enough to remember when the calls of meadowlarks and Bobwhite quail dominated the aural ambiance of our countryside during spring and summer. Nowadays, I seldom hear the calls of either species. I believe the damnable fire ants have caused the decline.

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The New York Times recently contained an article on Florida and its shrinking population. From April 2008 to April 2009 the state’s population declined by 58,000 people, the first decline since 1900 except during the years around the two World Wars. A few years ago I wrote a column lamenting how the state’s population explosion was adversely affecting its natural environment and quality of life. It was captioned, “Florida, a Paradise Lost.” Later, in 2005, the University Press of Florida published a compendium of essays on the subject, edited by Jack E. Davis and Raymond Arsenault. The book’s title: “Paradise Lost?”

If the state’s population continues to shrink, perhaps in the distant future it will regain many of the features that once qualified it to be called a paradise.

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Twenty years ago I planted an apple tree on my property. A few years afterward it produced blooms that attracted only a few small bumblebees, but no honeybees. The tree yielded only one apple. The next two years were similar to the first, but in the fourth year, honeybees were present in abundance and the tree produced a bumper crop of apples. Since then there have been no honeybees and no apples. I assume the colony succumbed to parasitic tracheal mites or varroa mites, which arrived in North America in the 1980s.

The October issue of Discovery magazinedeals with the bees’ problems and the research underway in an attempt to solve them. In essence, the researchers believe our honeybees are malnourished, overworked, and lacking in genetic diversity, making them more susceptible to disease and behavioral abnormalities.

Bob Mount is emeritus professor of zoology and entomology at Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.