No offence, but I can't imagine living in an area where trucks drive around neighbourhoods spraying insecticide in the air.
I'm not aware of that method being used in Canada.
Does Canada have much of a mosquito problem? Here in the south, they are unofficially the "state bird" for many states, plus we have a longer "season" than more northern areas, sometimes not even having enouth of a winter to effectively kill them off -- depending on the temps., I've seen skeeters just about any time of year.
oh great, now I have to worry about the city spraying and there is nothing I can do about it.
No offence taken Mitch, it just comes with living in certain areas. We get mosquitos bad here due to Lake Erie.
Maria, I wouldn't worry about the spraying. It might be toxic, but the use is so widespread that I feel we'd hear more about it if it was causing problems. And usually, here, they won't spray if it's windy.
What about encouraging development of ecosystems for the mosquito's natural predator the dragonfly?
If we do have a lot of moquitoes here, my wife and I can go out for a walk and be surrounded by swarms almost of darner dragonflies. We don't have to put on any mosquito repellant. It can be mezmerizing.
That's a very good point, but other than spraying and encouraging people to avoid being out at certain times of the day, LA, or at least my area doesn't seem to be very pro-active when it comes to environmental issues. Go figure! Fortunately, with our current dry spell, I haven't seen many mosquitoes lately -- I can work outside without without using repellant. But I'm also diligent at emptying "mosquito farms" in the yard. The other day I picked up a bottle or jar cap that I'd used to put turtle food in. I'd run the sprinklers a few days prior and it had water in it. You couldn't tell it until I dumped the lid, but it was
teeming with mosquito larvae -- and this was less than a 1/4 cup of water that was maybe 1/4" to 1/2" deep. It doesn't take much.
@MitchM
Unfortunately in our part of the state we also have lots and lots of natural ponds, streams, creeks, lakes and wetlands which are breeding grounds for our blood sucking friends. We are going to have mosquitoes no matter what we do. The only variable is how many. We can go weeks without being bothered if it's dry, but one rainfall and they hatch by the billions. The eggs can dry up completely and then hatch as soon as they are wet again. The annoyance factor is bad enough, but the health risks are what concern most people, even us nature lovers.
People suggest purple martins, bats, dragonflies among other things as natural predators - all great consumers of mosquitoes, but there will ALWAYS be mosquitoes. Otherwise we would also not have purple martins, bats and dragonflies! You take the good with the bad in this old world, right?
That more or less summarizes our situation. There are people here who keep maritn houses, but I haven't noticed many in recent years. Sometimes, at or just after dusk, I'll hear [and occas. spot] a bat or 2. Love bats! And I haven't seen as many dragonflies this year, now that you bring that up. Wonder why?
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So, back to the original issue regarding airborn toxins...... Not that this is the problem with
@bettasngoldfish's and my pond, but what measures can we take to protect the fish? Would it be enough to perform water changes more frequently during skeeter-spraying season? But, Maria has always done frequent [probably more so than I do] water changes, and still had fish deaths......
