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Neighbor said my birdbath was 'basically a mosquito farm,' so I started dumping it every 2 days
My next door neighbor Karen walked past my fence last Tuesday and made some comment about my birdbath being a mosquito farm, and I gotta say it got under my skin at first. But then I actually looked it up and yeah, standing water for more than 3 or 4 days is a breeding ground, so I started dumping and refilling the thing every other morning before work. The weird part is the birds did not even care that I was messing with it. Robins, a pair of house finches, even a blue jay showed up within like 20 minutes of me refilling it with the garden hose. My old routine was topping it off once a week, which I now know just kept the same gross water cycling around. I also moved it from the shady spot under the oak to a sunnier corner, and the activity has basically doubled. So now I do a full dump and scrub with a stiff brush every 2 days, takes me 4 minutes, and I have not seen a single mosquito larva since. Anyone else got a birdbath routine that keeps the water clean without turning it into a daily chore?
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colesanchez3d ago
Wonder if the mosquito thing is really as bad as people make it out to be, since a birdbath is such a small amount of water compared to like a clogged gutter or an old tire in the yard. Dumping it every 2 days seems like a lot of work for something the birds probably drank from either way, and I'd bet the shade had more to do with the bug problem than the water itself. Maybe the sun is what actually cut down the larva, not the scrubbing.
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