Beat the Skeets! (Mosquitoes!)

Mosquito season has been hard-hitting so far this year. With a record-warm winter, along the Gulf Coast, we never got a break from the mosquitoes. And, while we may have enjoyed not having frozen noses, we also missed out on the benefit of it killing off some of those blood-suckers.

Here are somethings you can do to help prevent the propagation of even more mosquitoes.

• Check your home and garden for places that can collect rainwater and remains. (Be sure to check rain gutters, catch basins for potted plants, and discarded items such as buckets and old tires.)
• Clean out your birdbaths every week!
• Make your yard a safe place for mosquito eating birds, such as: common nighthawk, cuckoos, flycatchers, gnatcatchers, purple martin, owls, starlings, vireos, warblers, whip-poor-wills, chickadees, catbirds, mockingbirds, meadowlarks, orioles, robins, woodpeckers, and wrens. 
• Put bird feeders with different kinds of seeds into your yard to attract a variety of birds. Some prefer things like sunflower seeds and safflower seeds.
• If you like things a bit more on the dark side, try getting a bat house. Bats are great mosquito eaters.
• Remember the weeds I told you about recently? If you've got some shepherd's purse that have gone to seed, just pope a seed into a bucket of water. The seed will release chemicals that are toxic to mosquitoes and kill some off for you.

from steinerdonna.blogspot.com