- Author: Anne Schellman
![House mouse. [J.K.Clark]](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/UCIPMurbanpests/blogfiles/33326small.jpg)
Did you know that this week (November 15-21) is Rodent Awareness Week? The goal of the week is to bring awareness about the risks that rodents can pose to your health and the problems they can cause to your home and garden.
In and around the home, Norway rats, roof rats and house mice can be problematic by consuming and contaminating food intended for you and your pets. These rodents often enter structures in winter and can also carry several diseases and parasites.
In the landscape and garden, tree squirrels, ground squirrels, gophers, moles and voles can be a nuisance and feed on many garden...
- Author: Cheryl Reynolds
Are you looking for continuing education units (CEUs) to complete your renewal application this year for the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR)? The UC Statewide IPM Program has several online courses available that can help you get those last few needed credits.
DPR license and certificate holders with last names beginning with M – Z renew this year. Renewal packets must be submitted to DPR before November 19th to ensure that licenses are renewed by January 1, 2016. After that, applications may take up to 45 calendar days to process.
The online courses available from UC IPM that offer...
![Bat in flight with grasshopper. [M.D. Tuttle]](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/UCIPMurbanpests/blogfiles/32928small.jpg)
Halloween is the perfect time to talk about bats, since many people hang spooky bat decorations depicting them as black, blood-sucking, mysterious creatures flying over a haunted house.
But did you know that bats are actually beneficial and eat insects? Here are a few myths about bats that you likely have heard:
Myth #1: Bats are blind
You've heard the term “blind as a bat.” Bats actually have excellent vision, but also use echolocation to help them pinpoint the exact location of an insect so they can more easily find it while flying at night.
Myth #2: Bats are vampires that suck blood
Most of the bats that live in California eat night-flying insects, and...
![Sticky honeydew and whitish hackberry aphids on hackberry leaves. [J.K.Clark]](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/UCIPMurbanpests/blogfiles/32788small.jpg)
If your neighborhood has Chinese hackberry trees, chances are you've noticed a sticky substance on cars, parking lots and sidewalks. The sticky substance is called honeydew, and might be caused by a pest called the hackberry woolly aphid.
Hackberry woolly aphids appear as fuzzy, bluish white masses on leaves and other tree parts and are about 1/10 of an inch or less in diameter. Not all the aphids have wings, but those that do have distinct black borders along the forewing veins and their antennae have alternating dark and light bands. As the aphids suck out plant juices, they excrete the sticky honeydew. Sometimes blackish sooty mold grows on the honeydew and creates a sticky mess on leaves and surfaces beneath infested...
Drought is decreasing but not defeating the pathogen that causes sudden oak death, according to a citizen science-assisted survey conducted this spring by a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources forest pathologist.
Results of the 2015 Sudden Oak Death Blitz survey reveal coastal mountain infestations in areas such as Big Sur (19% infection), the Santa Cruz Mountains (13% infection), and western Sonoma County (12% infection) remain high despite an overall decline in infection rates from 4.4% to 3.7% across California's 15 infested counties.
Sudden oak death (SOD) symptoms have been seen in Alameda, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano,...
