Cottage Q&A
QUESTIONWe use mothballs to deter groundhogs from raiding our flowerbeds at the cottage. One day I noticed grackles picking up small pieces of mothball and rubbing them under their tails and wings, as if to perfume themselves. Why did they do this?
ANSWER
Your grackles were probably less interested in L'Air du Temps than in L'Air du Naphthalene - the insecticidal ingredient in most mothballs.
Ornithologist Michel Gosselin, bird collection manager for the Canadian Museum of Nature, suggests it's likely they investigated the mothballs first as a food source. Finding them unpalatable but with a characteristic penetrating taste and odour, they may then have intuited, correctly, that the mothballs would be useful against parasites and fleas. Similar behaviours are widespread and well documented among icterids (the New World family that includes grackles, blackbirds, orioles, and cowbirds) and also among other "backyard" birds such as crows and robins. These species have adapted well to living near humans, and tend to be quick learners. Many have been observed rubbing themselves all over, using ants, in the same way the grackles were using mothballs - presumably because the ants have an acrid taste the birds expect will discourage insect pests.
* Published in the June 2003 issue of Cottage Life
