By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editors note: Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series.
BIRD BATTLES
Match 1: Brown-headed Cowbird vs. Mute Swan
The Silent Foul and The Warbler’s Woe went head to head last week in the first match of the Great Lakes SmackDown! Terrestrial Terror.
And the winner… is the Mute Swan!
This matchup was a landslide, according to readers. In the polls, 63 percent voted for the aggressive waterfowl. But in the brackets, it was close: 56 percent of bracketeers chose the swan over the smaller parasitic bird.
The Silent Foul may be beautiful but what it does to submerged aquatic vegetation is not.
“They consume so much of this vegetation … they can devastate a bed of this aquatic vegetation quickly,” said Barb Avers, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources waterfowl and wetlands specialist.
And native species rely on those plants, she said.
The swan’s aggressiveness towards other birds and toward people also made it a front-runner in this match.
“Every day we get reports of mute swan attacks not just on the water… but people getting attacked on land,” Avers said.
The Warbler’s Woe isn’t aggressive towards people, but it does pick on smaller birds like the rare Kirtland’s Warbler. It lays its own eggs in their nests. The brown-headed cowbird young are physically larger than their hosts and successfully hog food and resources. .
This bird has spread beyond its original range in the central plains states.
Now there are cowbird populations all over the country, said Anne Hobbs, a public information specialist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
As a native species it’s harder to get a permit to control it, she said. But when implemented, control methods are effective.
Just because its parasitic doesn’t mean its bad, Hobbs said.
“[You may] find they’re breeding behavior distasteful and that’s absolutely true, but that’s not for you or me to decide whether it’s alright or not, it just is. There’s an awful lot about nature that’s not very pretty and we tend to ignore those parts and focus on the pretty,” she said.
The Great Lakes Echo referees have called the fouls, and the mute swans moves on to Round 2.
Match 2: European Starling vs. House Sparrow
Shakespeare’s Darling swarmed The Egg-beater in the second match of Round 1. Natives of Europe, these songbirds are known to flock and hoard food sources and nesting areas from native species, especially cavity-nesting birds.
But which one is fit to move on to the next round? Well, readers called it: The European Starling!
At 80 percent, bracketeers overwhelmingly chose the starling over the sparrow. In the polls, the starling flew ahead with a 67 percent approval rating.
But both contenders have strong skill sets.
House sparrows are highly adaptive and enjoy using or taking next box habitats that native species depend on, Hobbs said.
They’re also known to hog bird feeders and getting rid of them can be a tough deal.
“There’s no magic bullet if you’re trying to get rid of house sparrows at your feeders,” Hobbs said.
Though numerous in North America, this sparrow population is declining in their motherland: the United Kingdom.
The British originally brought the house sparrow here because they missed it, Hobbs said. “It can kind of be an endearing species.”
But the starling is a competitor of another feather.
These birds have a knack for damaging fruit and grain crops like blueberries and cherries, which could be especially damaging to Great Lakes states like Michigan that produce large quantities of fruit. A 2000 study estimated that starlings cause $800 million of damage to U.S. crops per year.
“They are considered a major agricultural pest,” Hobbs said.
Plus, these avid poopers are known to leave fecal prizes in various places and make people and livestock sick.
“They drop feces all over,” Hobbs said.
These droppings carry diseases like: Chlamydiosis, Johne’s disease, meningitis and salmonellosisn.
Eww.
INSECT WARS
March 3: Emerald Ash Borer vs. Sirex Woodwasp
The Green Menace and Miley Cyrex fought the battle of the bug last week. Which one bored its way into Round 2?
Well, Andrea Diss-Torrance, the gypsy moth and invasive forest insect program coordinator of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources summed it up nicely.
The Sirex Woodwasp is not really in the same league as the Emerald Ash Borer, she said.
That makes the Emerald Ash Borer a big-hitter pro!
Seventy-three percent of bracketeers and 77 percent of pollsters agreed.
While little-leaguer Miley Cyrex has similar skills as the Green Menace, like the ability to bore into trees, there are effective and cheap controls to keep it in check, Diss-Torrance said.
And Miley might have positive effects on the Great Lakes ecosystem.
It’s been known to clear out Scotch pine, Diss-Torrance said. That’s an invasive tree from Europe and Asia planted because it makes a nice, cheap Christmas tree.
But there doesn’t seem to be any homeruns for the Emerald Ash Borer.
“One, we can’t find it, two, when we do, we don’t have any tools to use against it,” Diss-Torrance said..
The devastating and innocuous insect kills ash trees by boring through its bark and disrupting the tree’s water and nutrient systems.
The death of black ash trees in swamps raises the water table converting it to a habitat of mostly cattails, Diss-Torrance said.
This is why this money-suck of an insect, the green menace, moves on to Round 2.
Match 4: Gypsy Moth vs. Stink Bug
The Extreme Defoliator and The Stale Wind were quite a match-up. But one species got caught downwind and the other will move on to Round 2.
Both bring diverse fighting skills to the table, but neither seems capable of mortal combat. Still, the Gypsy Moth’s “deleafing” skills rise above the stink.
“[The Gypsy Moth] does do a lot of damage. In an outbreak it can defoliate small areas or really large ones .… it’s not necessarily a mortal blow,” Diss-Torrance said.
And for the stink bug:
“Is it a nuisance? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No,” she said.
Stink bugs pose a threat to fruit orchards that dot the Great Lakes region, but Diss-Torrance’s cuts this contender’s time on the Great Lakes SmackDown! short:
“That one is small potatoes,” she said. “…they don’t actually stink that bad.”
As for The Extreme Defoliator:
“I think it’s quite a manageable problem. I tell people…you can choose to take damage from this pest or not,” she said. “With time money and effort we’ve come to a point where we can deal with that. It’s not the end of the world.”
Even though both don’t seem to be apocalyptic let’s not forget the damage gypsy moths have caused in the past and the amount of money, time and research its taken to get to this point.
So the judges picked the Gypsy Moth to move on to Round 2.
Seventy-four percent of pollsters also picked the moth along with 77 percent of bracketeers.
So we’ll send the stink bug to the wind and move on to Round 2.
Congratulations to the following brackeeters for correctly calling the matches:
