Photo courtesy of bohdabinket at Flickr.com.
Stop throwing away that cold coffee and tepid tea! It’s great for controlling the local mosquito population.
Research shows that caffeine makes mosquito larvae so uncoordinated than they can’t make it back to the surface to breathe — and so they drown. It doesn’t take much caffeine to do it, either: all you have to do is add enough coffee or tea to your rain barrels, ornamental pools, or water features to make the water noticeably change color. If you want to get really ambitious, you can use powered tea or coffee instead of dregs from the coffeepot. Don’t worry — this concentration of caffeine won’t affect your birds or any water-dwelling plants.
Update: After posting this note, we discovered that caffeine may have harmful effects on birds. So, we would suggest not using caffeine to treat birdbaths or bird feeders. Thank you Jennifer for pointing this out.
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How do we *know* that caffeine is safe for birds???