08/28/2026
This Farm Friday focuses on our wilder critters that have jobs around here! 🐦⬛🪰
Our brown headed cowbirds, barn swallows, and purple martins each spend some of their day controlling the fly population. They are helped by a variety of dragon flies (hard to capture in pictures)! Even so, our fly population still needs some active control, and in our desire to not use poison, we are trying this sticky tape on our water supplies. 💦
Each herd mate visits this barrel for water, and some days it's wrapped in sticky tape. It's monitored for species counts; not counting the flies, but the bees and beetles of different variety. The white bucket had been left behind after the herd moved away. After 4 days it started catching more bees and far less flies, so we won't be leaving it behind for more than 3 days! 🐄🐝
