Controlling ants with chemicals and the effect of insect eating birds in the US (1 Viewer)

Now before you all start shouting at me, this isnt me and i am asking for an american friend of mine.
i can guess that her ant problems are on a different scale to the birtish species we have so I can understand her desire to control them if she can.
She tells me she wants to put down something called Borax (I honestly dont know what this is) but she is concenred that although it will see to the ants she doesnt want any ant eating birds being affected or killed.
My instinct is that this isnt good but at the same time i can recognise her problem and her need to do something so any alternatives would be good for both bird safety and even ant welfare.
She lives in Minnesota so do they have nasty ants there or what birds would eat them?

Hi Bill

Everything I've read on borax and its effect on birds is not promising as to its safety. Even around household pets it is considered to be "mildly harmful" Not sure what "mildly harmful" means though. Even a slight chance is bad as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know of any nasty ants from Minnesota, just the normal garden variety. Carpenter ants are large and could be a problem for the wood of a house I suppose, but they are entirely native.

As for birds that eat ants, the one that springs to mind is the Northern Flicker. Others will probably eat them if they find them, but Flickers are known for it.

It is an age-old process to impregnate wood with borax in order to kill insects that start eating of it, and my guess is that is a much less harmfull thing than using more modern chemicals that develop dioxin if the wood is burnt afterwards. (I hope I have this part right)

In the US, it is possible to buy a product called Terro which is a solution with sugar and borax. The usual use of it is to put out a few drops at a time for sugar-eating ants, and as long as the liquid itself is not reachable by sugar-lowing birds, then I believe this is a relatively harmless process. We sometimes do that for the ants that come into our house.

Spreading large quantities of borax onto something outdoors such as a lawn with ants is a much different proposal, and one I would probably not engage in.

Niels