less moths less birds

less moths less birds. I have been wondering why 90% of the Scrub jays and Acorn woodpeckers are just gone this year. It took me one week of sitting in my hot tub an hour during the day outside in my back yard among the trees and shrubs looking for them and other birds and insects. I finally realized today that the acorn woodpecker mostly eats bugs except during the winter when they eat the acorns the pack into dead trees. Scrub jays I'm still trying to find out what they eat. Okay I found that,begin quote:
# The Western Scrub-Jay feeds on parasites on the body of mule deer, hopping over the body and head of the deer to get them. The deer often help the jays by standing still and holding their ears up.

# Western Scrub-Jays in areas where acorns are abundant have deep, stout, slightly hooked bills. Those in areas with lots of pinyon pine have long, shallow, pointed bills. The shape of the bill helps the jays open their preferred foods: a stout bill is good for hammering open acorns and the hook helps rip off the shell; a thinner, more pointed bill can get in between pine cone scales to get at the pine seeds.
endquote

So I guess scrub jays eat bugs and seeds out of pine cones and acorns from oak trees.


The other thing I realized today is that there are no moths above the size of a dime at all here now. So most of the moths are gone since the apple moth pheromone spraying locally. Also, I have seen only one monarch butterfly this season and that wasn't at my house that was several miles away.

The pheromone spray reduces the population of all moths and butterflies because the same pheromone that confuses male Australian Brown Apple moths also confuses all moths and most butterflies too. As a result there are no moths at all bigger than a dime. zero. At least where I live. There are, bumblebees and wild bees, however. They don't seem to be affected like the moths and birds.

Since insects are near the bottom of the food chain, less insects means less birds who eat insects which means less predator birds and less of anything that eats bugs or birds on up the food chain up to and including mountain lions which also live locally along with a few bears. Although unless the bears eat a whole lot of bugs I don't see at this point how they would be affected.