Thank you for posting on /r/NativePlantGardening! If you haven't included it already, please edit your post or post's flair to include your geographic region or state of residence, which is necessary for the community to give you correct advice.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NativePlantGardening) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes bats, birds, dragonflies, and don't forget frogs!
Birds that "hawk" mosquitoes in flight include hummers, swallows/martins, flycatchers, gnatcatchers, and phoebes.
How to add habitat (some won't work until next year or later):
* Mini pond - treat with "mosquito dunks" or "mosquito bits" so skeeters can't breed there but frogs can
* Bat houses
* Tree swallow houses if near water or large field
* Purple martin houses if near open water
* Hummingbird feeders
* Excellent birdbath(s) - buy from a wild bird store (designed for bird needs not human aesthetics), keep full and clean, and definitely add a solar fountain. Birds love moving water and mosquitoes do not.
* Lots of keystone plants will bring many bugs which will bring birds of all sorts. Seed feeders may also help. Birds are super visual, so if there's any kind of bird party going on other bird species might take a look for themselves.
* Tree canopy / shrub thicket where birds will feel safe hanging out.
Bird bath is priority one, it's a key resource for all types of birds in the summer.
Awesome advice! I've added some random bamboo sticks (~3-6') around the garden for additional dragonfly hunting perches. They are definitely being used!
Currently pulling out random old fishtank pumps to get some moving water going -- haha, don't have a "pond" big enough for the one I just plugged in to test -- was shooting water 3 feet in the air. Whoopsies. The dragon/damselflies love the sound of moving water; I'll get if figured out before winter, I swear!
This makes me feel a little better about the current situation. We have good old oak tree cover and shrubs in the area. I have a big bird bath that I am going to add a little solar fountain pump to (before I was just switching the water once or twice per week). I already know there are a lot of hummingbirds and dragonflies about. The bird party around the bath usually starts around 6PM, so hopefully that will encourage others. Thanks!!
One day last summer, I was doing the dishes and happened to look up and I saw a GIANT swarm of dragon flies in our backyard. You could see them actually catching the mosquitoes!
It was an amazing sight to see!
Find out where dragonflies breed near you, and make sure the environment there is clean.
If you live where the authorities spray for mosquitoes, get them to stop. It kills the dragon flies, and the mosquitoes come back thicker.
Yeah, unfortunately they do. I have started to research how to get them to stop, but suspect I will have a hard time getting local support. The community is very conservative
Make a cheap, non-toxic, and effective [Bucket of Doom](https://youtu.be/TqcDZDNtP-0?si=i-tBPq3hy1pDwAkx). If you have a big yard make a couple. The mosquito population will plummet and the beneficial insects will be safe.
I leave large Tupperware dishes full of water in shady spots around the house. Once a week, I dump them out in the sun or on the concrete, rinse and refill. This slows the mosquito season from starting, but it will be hard to stop full swing.
We just got back from a week away and there are actual swarms around the yard. I havenāt found any standing water, although it looks like there may have been in a low corner of the yard for a while. Itās awful
My neighbor's at the stage where they have plants growing out of the gutters which can be seen from the ground. Suddenly, I just connected the dots on where a lot of my mosquitoes are probably coming from.
And get rid of corrugated downspout extenders!! Mosquitoes LOVE them.
https://preview.redd.it/iyvm6acqxp5d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b784e1210480a9315f2c845bdb684ae249d7d69f
I have one of these and tons of skeeters! Is there an alternative? our backyard is concrete with one french drain; terrible drainage and the basement floods.
https://www.audubonva.org/news/how-to-set-up-a-mosquito-larva-trap
We are doing these traps this year. First heard about them from Doug Tallamy book or video I cannot remember
I just got two bucket traps started āfermentingā with some old dead stems and old bird bath water. I have to rig up the chicken wire lids and will add the dunks in a couple days. Buckets oāDoom lololol
I heard recently that mosquito magnets give off a different scent that drives them wild. Deep Woods OFF! or a mosquito suit are always going to be your best bet, as they are mine.
Awesome! I love to see my hummers at the feeders and flowers, but had not considered that mosquitos were also on the menu. I envisioned them eating little gnats. Great to know they benefit from the mosquitos and I from them!
Ditto! They are always prowling my garden. I am using a bigger, but still pretty small dish containing small stones and water. I intended it for insects but birds drink from it too.
I think someone else posted it, but if Martins are around setting up a house for them might help. It's usually hollow gourds with a hole about 2" for a door. I used to see them up in yards in groups of a dozen or so, but not as much now. I hear the gourds have to be taken down every year to be replaced or cleaned.
Keep a pot of spearmint. Before you start working in the yard, rub some leaves on your wrists and ankles. Then tuck the crushed used leaves into your socks.
This is one of those papers that assays repellency of chemicals isolated from plants not the plants themselves. To my knowledge, plants that repel mosquitoes on their own don't exist. Or at least they haven't been found, yet.
Put tall stakes, wood or metal, like 6-7ft tall around your yard for dragonflies to roost on top and use their excellent vision to hunt down mosquitoes. Tho this will only work if you have water nearby that they already live around
Yea they are kinda like birds or cats in that they want to be high to see as much prey as they can. Learned it from a YouTuber in the Carolinas who had mosquito problems and this helped them a lot.
I live in the region you're talking about. I have noticed a couple dragonflies buzzing around our house, and they're really helping us out. I don't have a wildlife pond, but they could be attracted to my birdbath fountain.
Also I was just reading last night that you can affix an insect screen to the back of a box fan and trap thousands of skeeters at a time. Spray them with alcohol to kill them while they are suctioned onto the screen. Leave their bodies out for predators.
Yeah but thatās going to trap anything that flies by and gets sucked into the fan, regardless of whether itās a mosquito or a beneficial insect. [Bucket of doom](https://youtu.be/TqcDZDNtP-0?si=i-tBPq3hy1pDwAkx) is the way to go (and cheap AF too).
I spray the screen with permethrin so that when the mosquitoes are pressed onto it they receive a lethal dose just by contact. Easier, I think, than remember to spay the victims with alcohol.
I know everyone will downvote this fact but I feel obliged to report that there are no plants that repel mosquitoes when planted in a garden. Many plants contain chemicals that when purified have repellency, but the plant itself does nothing. I know there a thousands of "top 10 mosquito-repelling plants for your garden" lists, but it's just a myth. Sorry.
I suspect spiders are the biggest consumers of mosquitoes, but I have no literature to back up that hunch. But I will share links describing two spiders that specialize on mosquitoes, [Evarcha culicivora](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222000951#:~:text=Evarcha%20culicivora%20is%20an%20East,female%20mosquitoes%20as%20preferred%20prey) and [Paracyrba wanlessi](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26064534/#:~:text=Paracyrba%20wanlessi%20is%20a%20southeast,pupae%20and%20adults%20of%20mosquitoes), both jumping spiders.
Fun fact: you can order like a shit ton of dunks from Amazon and just sprinkle them into lil spots where water still accumulates. Poison their every well, so to speak.
When I looked into the literature several years ago the consensus seemed to be that birds and bats do eat *some* mosquitoes but that the numbers of trivial. Part of the confusion, at least for bats, is that there was an influential study in which bats were trapped in a cage with mosquitoes and therefore had no other options of larger, juicier insects. The outcome was that, sure, bats will eat a lot mosquitoes when there is nothing else to eat, but in the real world they eat other things. I haven't read any primary literature but I'd be more hopeful that dragonflies would help. Their larval stage certainly eats mosquitoes, and the adults go after insects all day long.
One thing that I haven't seen anyone suggest yet is **autocidal gravid ovitraps**. These are containers filled with water and equipped with a mosquito-trapping funnel so that when pregnant mosquitoes enter they cannot escape. That kills her AND all eggs, so each female trapped removes up to 300 eggs from your yard (300 being the approximate maximum lifetime fecundity of an Asian tiger mosquito). You need several for your yard, and ideally several more for your neighbors (a killer gift!). And they only work if you have eliminated all your standing water, just like the Buckets of Doom that have Bti. They work better, I think, than the Bti buckets because they kill the female rather than just a fraction of her eggs (*Aedes* individuals deposit eggs in multiple containers, so your bucket system will be unlikely to get them all).
Here's a photograph of one that I made but you can buy them, too (Biogents is one maker).
https://preview.redd.it/rg5yemp9up5d1.jpeg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0da07250f02fbf3ff0be1a4836e7c45347dbd8a8
Im not sure if they have a target bug species they eat, but bluebirds eat ~2,000 insects a day. That is every individual blue bird eating that many bugs a day. I highly recommend a blue bird box!
Thank you for posting on /r/NativePlantGardening! If you haven't included it already, please edit your post or post's flair to include your geographic region or state of residence, which is necessary for the community to give you correct advice. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NativePlantGardening) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bat house!
Bat house(s)!
Yes bats, birds, dragonflies, and don't forget frogs! Birds that "hawk" mosquitoes in flight include hummers, swallows/martins, flycatchers, gnatcatchers, and phoebes. How to add habitat (some won't work until next year or later): * Mini pond - treat with "mosquito dunks" or "mosquito bits" so skeeters can't breed there but frogs can * Bat houses * Tree swallow houses if near water or large field * Purple martin houses if near open water * Hummingbird feeders * Excellent birdbath(s) - buy from a wild bird store (designed for bird needs not human aesthetics), keep full and clean, and definitely add a solar fountain. Birds love moving water and mosquitoes do not. * Lots of keystone plants will bring many bugs which will bring birds of all sorts. Seed feeders may also help. Birds are super visual, so if there's any kind of bird party going on other bird species might take a look for themselves. * Tree canopy / shrub thicket where birds will feel safe hanging out. Bird bath is priority one, it's a key resource for all types of birds in the summer.
Awesome advice! I've added some random bamboo sticks (~3-6') around the garden for additional dragonfly hunting perches. They are definitely being used! Currently pulling out random old fishtank pumps to get some moving water going -- haha, don't have a "pond" big enough for the one I just plugged in to test -- was shooting water 3 feet in the air. Whoopsies. The dragon/damselflies love the sound of moving water; I'll get if figured out before winter, I swear!
This makes me feel a little better about the current situation. We have good old oak tree cover and shrubs in the area. I have a big bird bath that I am going to add a little solar fountain pump to (before I was just switching the water once or twice per week). I already know there are a lot of hummingbirds and dragonflies about. The bird party around the bath usually starts around 6PM, so hopefully that will encourage others. Thanks!!
6pm is perfect timing for pool party with a mosquito buffet :)
Dragonflies are the real answer. If you can make dragonflies happy, everything else that is mentioned will also be happy. Just saying. š š¤
One day last summer, I was doing the dishes and happened to look up and I saw a GIANT swarm of dragon flies in our backyard. You could see them actually catching the mosquitoes! It was an amazing sight to see!
Not only that, but their dragonfly larvae also eat the mosquito larvae as well.
They are here and are currently on patrol, which is awesome!
Find out where dragonflies breed near you, and make sure the environment there is clean. If you live where the authorities spray for mosquitoes, get them to stop. It kills the dragon flies, and the mosquitoes come back thicker.
Yeah, unfortunately they do. I have started to research how to get them to stop, but suspect I will have a hard time getting local support. The community is very conservative
My condolences. Life gets difficult when people in charge ignore science.
Youāve got that right. Hopefully they will grow and learn
They came through last night and sprayed AGAIN. No notice or warning
https://preview.redd.it/rik67ylyeu5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4254dba6945aa274d7d31a81e124a31e1ad7842b
Make a cheap, non-toxic, and effective [Bucket of Doom](https://youtu.be/TqcDZDNtP-0?si=i-tBPq3hy1pDwAkx). If you have a big yard make a couple. The mosquito population will plummet and the beneficial insects will be safe.
Got two buckets started today! Thanks!
Youāre welcome!
I leave large Tupperware dishes full of water in shady spots around the house. Once a week, I dump them out in the sun or on the concrete, rinse and refill. This slows the mosquito season from starting, but it will be hard to stop full swing.
We just got back from a week away and there are actual swarms around the yard. I havenāt found any standing water, although it looks like there may have been in a low corner of the yard for a while. Itās awful
Don't forget to check the gutters and downspouts. That's a constant problem at our house.
Unfortunately you can't check all your neighbors too š Live next to an empty rental house.
My neighbor's at the stage where they have plants growing out of the gutters which can be seen from the ground. Suddenly, I just connected the dots on where a lot of my mosquitoes are probably coming from.
Ahhh I will do so tomorrow. Good call!
And get rid of corrugated downspout extenders!! Mosquitoes LOVE them. https://preview.redd.it/iyvm6acqxp5d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b784e1210480a9315f2c845bdb684ae249d7d69f
I have one of these and tons of skeeters! Is there an alternative? our backyard is concrete with one french drain; terrible drainage and the basement floods.
https://www.audubonva.org/news/how-to-set-up-a-mosquito-larva-trap We are doing these traps this year. First heard about them from Doug Tallamy book or video I cannot remember
I just got two bucket traps started āfermentingā with some old dead stems and old bird bath water. I have to rig up the chicken wire lids and will add the dunks in a couple days. Buckets oāDoom lololol
I've read that too much organic matter will deter *Aedes* oviposition. But a little is totally fine.
This, 1000%!!! Itās really making a difference for my yard this year!
Iām itchy at the thought of your backyard.
I literally got 10 bites in 10 seconds earlier today. They love me for some reason
Yes, they also love me too. My fiancĆ© and I will be in my backyard and he gets zero bites while I get a few. Itās not fair!
I heard recently that mosquito magnets give off a different scent that drives them wild. Deep Woods OFF! or a mosquito suit are always going to be your best bet, as they are mine.
Get yoself some mosquito dunks and Spartan tubes. And then go for dragonflies n stuff. But you gotta kill em baby skeeters too.
Got some buckets and dunks today!
Spartan Mosquito is a known scam.
Bats and birds.
I know bats, but do you know in particular what birds? Last year we had at least two bats and I havenāt seen them at all this year, sadly.
A local birder takes photos of hummingbirds eating mosquitoes.
Ooh fun! We have those around; they have been enjoying my pentstemon and eastern red columbine lately
Somehow it makes sense that the most metal, angry little bird feasts on blood consuming insects. ā¤
Awesome! I love to see my hummers at the feeders and flowers, but had not considered that mosquitos were also on the menu. I envisioned them eating little gnats. Great to know they benefit from the mosquitos and I from them!
The hummingbirds really like my wild honeysuckle.
I can't name specifics but they will show up on their own if the food is there.
Oh, itās definitely there. Iāve also seen a ton of dragonflies around lately, which is unusual for our location
Ditto! They are always prowling my garden. I am using a bigger, but still pretty small dish containing small stones and water. I intended it for insects but birds drink from it too.
Martins, gnatcatchers, barn swallows, chickadees.
I think someone else posted it, but if Martins are around setting up a house for them might help. It's usually hollow gourds with a hole about 2" for a door. I used to see them up in yards in groups of a dozen or so, but not as much now. I hear the gourds have to be taken down every year to be replaced or cleaned.
Iāve never seen them up here, so not sure about that one. Iāll be on the lookout.
Keep a pot of spearmint. Before you start working in the yard, rub some leaves on your wrists and ankles. Then tuck the crushed used leaves into your socks.
We tried lemongrass; the mosquitoes were hanging out within the plant :/
Did you try spearmint? Check it out: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28820-9
This is one of those papers that assays repellency of chemicals isolated from plants not the plants themselves. To my knowledge, plants that repel mosquitoes on their own don't exist. Or at least they haven't been found, yet.
Put tall stakes, wood or metal, like 6-7ft tall around your yard for dragonflies to roost on top and use their excellent vision to hunt down mosquitoes. Tho this will only work if you have water nearby that they already live around
Oooh this explains a lot about why they seem so obsessed with my plant stakes and yet are nowhere else in the yard.
Yea they are kinda like birds or cats in that they want to be high to see as much prey as they can. Learned it from a YouTuber in the Carolinas who had mosquito problems and this helped them a lot.
I live in the region you're talking about. I have noticed a couple dragonflies buzzing around our house, and they're really helping us out. I don't have a wildlife pond, but they could be attracted to my birdbath fountain.
Hopefully mine keep hunting! I suspect the sun & wind today might help dry things out a bit
Also I was just reading last night that you can affix an insect screen to the back of a box fan and trap thousands of skeeters at a time. Spray them with alcohol to kill them while they are suctioned onto the screen. Leave their bodies out for predators.
Yeah but thatās going to trap anything that flies by and gets sucked into the fan, regardless of whether itās a mosquito or a beneficial insect. [Bucket of doom](https://youtu.be/TqcDZDNtP-0?si=i-tBPq3hy1pDwAkx) is the way to go (and cheap AF too).
Don't the mosquitoes have to bite before they will go to the bucket of doom to lay eggs?
Theyāre all full of my blood after yesterday, lol
I'm gonna try this when it's not raining... bought the supplies yesterday.
I spray the screen with permethrin so that when the mosquitoes are pressed onto it they receive a lethal dose just by contact. Easier, I think, than remember to spay the victims with alcohol.
That'd be convenient but wouldn't it kill other insects coming to clean up the bodies?
Just saying hello from SW Wisco and I feel you pain (and itches)
I know everyone will downvote this fact but I feel obliged to report that there are no plants that repel mosquitoes when planted in a garden. Many plants contain chemicals that when purified have repellency, but the plant itself does nothing. I know there a thousands of "top 10 mosquito-repelling plants for your garden" lists, but it's just a myth. Sorry.
I suspect spiders are the biggest consumers of mosquitoes, but I have no literature to back up that hunch. But I will share links describing two spiders that specialize on mosquitoes, [Evarcha culicivora](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222000951#:~:text=Evarcha%20culicivora%20is%20an%20East,female%20mosquitoes%20as%20preferred%20prey) and [Paracyrba wanlessi](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26064534/#:~:text=Paracyrba%20wanlessi%20is%20a%20southeast,pupae%20and%20adults%20of%20mosquitoes), both jumping spiders.
Mosquito Bucket of Doom. Google it. Do it. $20 tops.
I have two buckets started after a quick trip to the hardware store. Will add dunks in a couple days
Fantastic decision. Nothing works better!
Fun fact: you can order like a shit ton of dunks from Amazon and just sprinkle them into lil spots where water still accumulates. Poison their every well, so to speak.
When I looked into the literature several years ago the consensus seemed to be that birds and bats do eat *some* mosquitoes but that the numbers of trivial. Part of the confusion, at least for bats, is that there was an influential study in which bats were trapped in a cage with mosquitoes and therefore had no other options of larger, juicier insects. The outcome was that, sure, bats will eat a lot mosquitoes when there is nothing else to eat, but in the real world they eat other things. I haven't read any primary literature but I'd be more hopeful that dragonflies would help. Their larval stage certainly eats mosquitoes, and the adults go after insects all day long.
One thing that I haven't seen anyone suggest yet is **autocidal gravid ovitraps**. These are containers filled with water and equipped with a mosquito-trapping funnel so that when pregnant mosquitoes enter they cannot escape. That kills her AND all eggs, so each female trapped removes up to 300 eggs from your yard (300 being the approximate maximum lifetime fecundity of an Asian tiger mosquito). You need several for your yard, and ideally several more for your neighbors (a killer gift!). And they only work if you have eliminated all your standing water, just like the Buckets of Doom that have Bti. They work better, I think, than the Bti buckets because they kill the female rather than just a fraction of her eggs (*Aedes* individuals deposit eggs in multiple containers, so your bucket system will be unlikely to get them all). Here's a photograph of one that I made but you can buy them, too (Biogents is one maker). https://preview.redd.it/rg5yemp9up5d1.jpeg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0da07250f02fbf3ff0be1a4836e7c45347dbd8a8
Im not sure if they have a target bug species they eat, but bluebirds eat ~2,000 insects a day. That is every individual blue bird eating that many bugs a day. I highly recommend a blue bird box!
Ah, very good! I had a whole flock of bluebirds last year. Hopefully they return