Backyard Pest Identification & Prevention

Get Started With Quality Pest Control

Use this guide to learn about the many types of pests that call our Morristown, New Jersey, backyards home.

What are backyard pests?

Backyard pests are insects, rodents, arachnids, and other pests that turn your outdoor space into a place they call home. While these pests may benefit from living in our backyards, we don’t benefit at all. Backyard pests have the potential to be destructive, dangerous, and annoying.

Two of the Morristown area's most common backyard pests are the mosquito (winged insects) and the tick (wingless arachnids). Both are external parasites that feed on the blood of their human and animal hosts from outside their bodies. Ticks are tiny, oval, and, like other arachnids, have eight legs. They consume blood meals using their biting mouthparts. The mosquito is a type of small fly that uses its specialized piercing mouthparts (proboscis) to feed.

Are backyard pests dangerous?

Ticks and mosquitoes are dangerous pests to have in your backyard. Both pests feed on people's blood and can transmit diseases that can make us quite ill. In our region, ticks are most well-known for spreading Lyme disease, and mosquitoes for spreading the West Nile virus and encephalitis.

In addition to the health risks these pests pose, they are a nuisance. No one wants to be in their yard gardening or eating dinner while being attacked by biting backyard pests. Mosquito bites specifically leave behind red, itchy welts.

Why do I have a backyard pest problem?

Mosquitoes, ticks, and other backyard pests become a problem in our yards because they offer them plentiful amounts of food, water, and shelter as well as breeding sites.

Mosquitoes use their wings to travel to any property that benefits them. Ticks enter our yards more passively. They move onto our properties on the backs of their animal hosts. The more animal activity you have in your backyard, the more likely you will experience a problem with ticks.

Where will I find backyard pests?

Properties offering a lot of moisture and shade allow mosquitoes and ticks in Morristown thrive. In addition to our backyards, places people regularly come into contact with these outdoor pests are wooded areas, walking paths, fields, athletic fields, and campgrounds.

Mosquitoes are backyard pests that gather around areas of standing water. Females lay their eggs on top of standing water, and the hatched larvae develop into new biting adults within that water. The more standing water in or surrounding your backyard, the more issues you will have with mosquitoes.

Ticks prefer to live and lay their eggs in areas with a lot of vegetation. Ticks require a blood meal at each life stage (larva, nymph, adult). When a tick is ready to eat, they climb to the top of grass, weeds, or other vegetation and wait for a host to brush past them. Once they are done feeding, they drop down to the ground from their hosts to digest their meal.