I do Not want to be Lord of the Flies!

March 16, 2019 7:04 PM

The “parrot house” suddenly has an annoying new species....small flies ( not fruit flies but ones I think people call helicopter flies). I suspect they arrived in a bale of straw that has been moved outside. Spring bounced on Oregon this week, creating the swarm and giving me the chance to open windows and doors for thorough cleaning.

But most of them stayed inside......arrrgh. Have bug zappers and fly strips engaged - hoping for some more suggestions. Will need to be mechanical versus chemical, coz, birds. There will always be poop and I am being more proactive in getting fresh food leftovers dealt with in a timely manner.
Thoughts? Thanks
Oh yeah, parrot tax 2 of 7 🙂

posted by ZenMajek to Pets & Animals (5 answers total)

Try fly traps. Make your own with a narrow necked bottle and a yeasty/fruity liquid for them to drown in.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:22 PM on March 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Vacuum them out of the air. It’s also the quickest and best way to get rid of fruit flies. I park my canister vacuum in the kitchen for a day or so when fruit flies appear and suck them right out of the air.

Channel your inner Mr. Miyagi. It may take several sucking sessions over the course of a day or so, and some tasty bait probably isn’t a bad idea.
posted by defreckled at 7:48 PM on March 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

Yes to sticky insect traps. "insect electric traps" (UV fluorescent tube based version) can also be effective.

The benefit to sticky insect traps is that you can enumerate - so you can have metrics associated with your flying insect pest amelioration protocols/ attempts on a year-to-year basis, with monthly/ weekly. daily granularity.

We have a nice UV electric trap at work, just outside my office door, but whenever a bug gets zapped, there's a LOUD 'zap.'

The electric ones a quite effective - the UV draws many biting insects - but the loud ZAP! gets on my nerves. But if I have one in the living room, I can still stay asleep through the night in the bedroom.
posted by porpoise at 8:47 PM on March 16, 2019

For fruit flies, I've had great success with a little bit of apple cider vinegar in a glass left out for a few days. I add a drop of liquid soap to reduce the surface tension for more certain drowning. Maybe that would work similarly for other types of small flies?
posted by abeja bicicleta at 4:14 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The glue from those sticky traps is basically impossible to get off of feathers, so unless you know your birds won't go near them. So if your 'toos have clipped wings and you hang the sticky traps near the ceiling, that's probably be fine (we've done this in the past with our non-flighted parrots), but if your birds are flighted then I wouldn't use them.

The vinegar traps are a good idea, though. Knowing cockatoos, they'll probably try to find some way to get inside, but there's nothing in there that can actually hurt them.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:20 AM on March 17, 2019