Spring yard clues

Spring is when winter's hidden activity gets revealed all at once. Snowmelt exposes vole runways and mole tunnels that formed for months under cover, animals emerge hungry and start digging, ground-nesting bees appear in thin turf, and freshly planted beds and seedlings become targets overnight. Most of what you'll find is seasonal and short-lived — here's what spring clues mean and which ones need action.

Common spring clues (64)

Yard Holes Dirt Mounds in Lawn: Mole, Gopher, or Ant? Read the Shape The shape of a dirt mound is the fastest identification tool in the yard: moles build round volcano-shaped mounds with no visible hole, pocket gophers build fan- or crescent-shaped mounds with a plugged hole to one side, and ants, earthworms, and digger bees leave much smaller piles. Match your mound to one of those shapes and you've usually named the animal. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Mud Tubes Near Your Foundation: The Termite Warning Sign Pencil-width mud tunnels running up your foundation wall are most likely shelter tubes built by subterranean termites — the single most important early warning sign of an active infestation. Mud dauber wasp nests and rain-splashed soil can look similar at a glance, but termite tubes follow continuous vertical paths from soil to wood. Of every clue on this site, this is the one that should never wait: schedule a licensed termite inspection promptly. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Scratching Noises in Walls at Night: What's Living in There? Scratching in your walls at night most often means mice or rats, since both are nocturnal — light, fast scratching suggests mice, while heavier gnawing and movement suggests rats. If the noise happens in daylight, especially at dawn and dusk, squirrels are the likelier tenant. The time of day, the weight of the sound, and where in the house it comes from will narrow it down before you ever see the animal. Read the guide → Yard Holes Small Holes in Yard With No Mound: What's Digging? Small holes in your yard with no dirt mound are usually caused by squirrels, chipmunks, foraging birds, earthworms, or ground-nesting insects. The size of the hole, how deep it goes, the time of year, and whether the damage appeared overnight can narrow down the cause quickly. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Tiny Yellow Eggs Under Leaves: Pest or Friend? Tiny yellow eggs on the underside of leaves usually belong to squash bugs, ladybugs, Colorado potato beetles, or whiteflies. Identify them before you do anything — ladybug eggs look almost identical to pest eggs, and crushing them destroys one of the best aphid killers in your garden. Read the guide → Yard Holes Two-Inch Holes in Yard: Chipmunk, Rat, or Something Else? A round hole about two inches across is classic burrow size, and the usual suspects are chipmunks, rats, and thirteen-lined ground squirrels. Chipmunk holes are clean with no soil pile, rat holes are worn and hug structures, and ground squirrel holes sit in open, sunny lawn — those three clues sort out most cases. Read the guide → Plant Damage What Is Eating My Tomato Leaves at Night? Tomato leaves that disappear overnight are most often the work of tomato hornworms, cutworms, slugs, or flea beetles — and if whole branches are gone, rabbits or deer. The size of the bites, whether there are slime trails, and how low on the plant the damage sits will point you to the culprit, and a ten-minute flashlight check after dark usually confirms it. Read the guide → Mushrooms & Growths White Mushrooms in Your Lawn: Why They Appear, What to Do White mushrooms popping up in a lawn are the fruiting bodies of fungi that are already living in your soil, usually feeding on decomposing roots, old stumps, or thatch. They surge after rain or heavy watering, and in most cases they're a sign of biologically healthy soil — not a lawn disease. The main job is keeping kids and pets from eating them. Read the guide → Tracks, Nests & Outdoor Clues Animal Burrow Under Your Shed? Who's Living There A burrow entrance under your shed most likely belongs to a groundhog, skunk, rabbit, or rat, and the hole itself usually names the digger: groundhogs leave a 10–12 inch opening with a fan of excavated dirt, skunks announce themselves by smell, and rat holes are only 2–3 inches across. Before evicting anyone, check the calendar — from spring into midsummer there may be babies down there, and sealing them in creates a far worse problem than the burrow. Read the guide → Lawn Problems Ant Hills All Over the Lawn: Which Ants, and What to Do A lawn dotted with ant hills is usually hosting turfgrass ants or field ants, which are more of a mowing nuisance than a threat. The critical exception is in the southern US, where dome-shaped mounds with no visible entrance hole can be red imported fire ants — an aggressive, painfully stinging species that changes the response from 'rake and relax' to 'treat and keep kids away.' Read the guide → Plant Damage Bark Stripped From Trees: Squirrels, Deer, Voles, or Birds? The height of the damage tells you the most: bark gnawed at ground level is usually voles or rabbits, shredded bark from 1 to 4 feet up is deer rubbing their antlers, and stripped patches on upper branches point to squirrels. Neat horizontal rows of shallow holes are a sapsucker's work — and any damage that circles the whole trunk (girdling) puts the tree at real risk. Read the guide → Tracks, Nests & Outdoor Clues Bird's Nest in Your Porch Wreath? Here's Who Moved In A nest tucked into your front-door wreath was most likely built by a house finch or an American robin, two species famous for choosing porch decorations. If the nest holds eggs or chicks, federal law protects it — moving or destroying an active native bird nest violates the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The good news: the whole event, from first egg to empty nest, usually takes only four to five weeks. Read the guide → Mushrooms & Growths Black Spots on Siding Near Mulch: Artillery Fungus Explained Tiny black dots speckling your siding just above a mulch bed are most likely spore masses from artillery fungus, a mulch-dwelling fungus that literally shoots its sticky spores toward light-colored surfaces — siding, cars, downspouts, and windows. The dots look like flecks of tar, stick like glue, and are notoriously difficult to remove once cured. Importantly, it isn't a mold growing on your house: the fungus lives in the wood mulch below, and the fix is changing the mulch, not treating the wall. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Black Streaks on Your Roof: Algae, Moss, or Something Worse? Black streaks running down your asphalt shingles are almost always a blue-green algae called Gloeocapsa magma — a cosmetic problem, not mold and not roof failure. The streaks show up first on north-facing and shaded slopes where moisture lingers, and they darken as the algae colony spreads year after year. Moss, lichen, and chimney soot can look similar, but each behaves differently and only moss actually threatens the shingles. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Brown Egg Sacs on Branches: Mantis, Lanternfly, or Moth? A brown egg case on a branch is either very good news or very bad news: praying mantis egg cases (oothecae) are beneficial and should be left alone, while spotted lanternfly and spongy moth egg masses are invasive pests you should destroy — and in many states, report. Texture and shape tell them apart, so identify before you scrape. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Clusters of Orange Eggs on Leaves: Crush or Leave? Clusters of orange eggs on leaf undersides most often belong to Colorado potato beetles on potatoes and tomatoes, or squash bugs on vine crops — both worth removing. But ladybugs lay very similar-looking yellow-orange clusters, and theirs should stay. Check the host plant and the egg shape before you crush anything. Read the guide → Lawn Problems Dark Green Circles in Your Lawn: Fairy Rings and Other Causes A dark green circle or ring in your lawn is most often a fairy ring — an underground fungus releasing nitrogen as it grows outward — or grass feeding on something buried: a decomposing stump, old roots, spilled fertilizer, or a septic drain field line. Nearly all of these are cosmetic rather than a threat to the lawn. Read the guide → Yard Holes Deep, Narrow Holes in the Yard: 5 Likely Causes A narrow hole that drops straight down and seems to go forever is usually a crayfish burrow, a cicada killer wasp tunnel, a vole shaft, or an old rodent burrow now used by a snake. Whether there's a mud chimney, a soil fan, or nothing at all around the opening is the fastest way to tell them apart. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Droppings on Your Deck Railing: What's Running the Rails? Droppings on a deck railing are most often from mice, which treat railings as elevated highways between the yard and your house, leaving 1/4-inch pointed pellets scattered along the route. White splotches point to birds perching overhead, and a small pile of crumbly dark pellets beneath the eaves suggests a bat roost above. Where the droppings sit — spread along the rail versus piled in one spot — is your best first clue. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Droppings That Look Like Coffee Grounds: Frass or Guano? A pile that looks like spilled coffee grounds is very often not droppings at all — it's carpenter ant frass, the sawdust-like debris ants push out of wood they're excavating, and it's a warning sign worth taking seriously. The other candidates are drywood termite pellets (hard, uniform, six-sided), bat guano (crumbles into shiny powder), and ordinary mouse droppings. Where the pile sits — under a window sill, beam, or roost — usually tells you which one you have. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Droppings Under Your Deck: What Animal Is Denning There? Droppings under a deck usually mean an animal is using the space as a den, not just passing through — most often a skunk, opossum, feral cat, or raccoon, and occasionally a groundhog. Skunk droppings are crumbly and full of shiny insect parts, opossum droppings are large and curved, cat droppings are often buried in loose soil, and a pile of tubular droppings in one corner is a raccoon latrine that needs professional-level caution. Timing matters: from spring into midsummer, most of these animals have babies down there. Read the guide → Plant Damage Flowers Eaten Overnight: Who Raided Your Garden Beds? Flowers that vanish overnight are most often deer or rabbits, and which flowers were taken narrows it fast — tulip and hosta blooms nipped off whole point to deer, while low plants clipped at a clean angle point to rabbits. Petals riddled with ragged holes but still attached usually mean earwigs or slugs working after dark, and shredded rose blooms are Japanese beetles feeding into dusk. Read the guide → Yard Holes Golf Ball-Size Holes in Your Yard: What Dug Them? A hole about the size of a golf ball — roughly 1.5 to 2 inches across — is classic burrow-entrance territory, most often chipmunks, ground squirrels, or rats. Where the hole sits, whether there's a soil pile beside it, and what part of the country you live in will usually settle which one it is. Read the guide → Tracks, Nests & Outdoor Clues Grass-Lined Nest in Your Lawn? It's Probably Baby Rabbits A shallow, grass-and-fur-lined depression in your lawn is almost always an eastern cottontail rabbit nest, and it is very rarely abandoned — mother rabbits visit only at dawn and dusk to avoid leading predators to their babies. A nest of speckled eggs on open ground, by contrast, usually belongs to a killdeer or another ground-nesting bird. In both cases the right move is to leave it alone and protect the spot for a few weeks. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Green Caterpillars on Plants: Which One Is Eating Yours? The green caterpillar on your plants is most likely a cabbage worm if it's on broccoli or kale, a tomato hornworm if it's large and has a tail spike, or a sawfly larva if it's on roses. Which plant is being eaten narrows it down fast, and handpicking plus row covers handle most of them — no spraying required. Keep in mind that some green caterpillars grow up to be butterflies worth keeping around. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Green Droppings on Your Lawn: Geese, Rabbits, or the Dog? Green droppings on a lawn are almost always from Canada geese — their waste is tubular, about 2 to 3 inches long, and green to greenish-brown because their diet is nearly all grass. Small round pellets with a green tint point to rabbits feeding on fresh spring growth, and a green-tinged pile of normal dog waste usually just means a dog that's been eating grass. If you live near a pond, lake, golf course, or park, geese are the answer most of the time. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes Around Tree Roots: Squirrels, Voles, or Wasps? Holes at the base of a tree usually belong to squirrels burying and retrieving nuts, voles working the mulch line, or rats denning in the sheltered pocket under the root flare — and sometimes to nothing living at all, since decayed old roots leave open channels in the soil. The one to identify before you get close is a yellowjacket colony nesting in a hollow among the roots. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes in Flower Beds Overnight? Meet the Night Shift Flower beds dug up overnight are almost always animals hunting food, not making homes: skunks and raccoons dig for grubs and worms in the soft soil, squirrels bury and retrieve nuts, cats use loose beds as litter boxes, and across the South armadillos root through beds nose-first. Each leaves a different style of hole, so one careful morning inspection usually names your visitor. Read the guide → Plant Damage Holes in Hosta Leaves: Slugs, Earwigs, Hail, or Deer? Holes in hosta leaves are most often slug feeding — hostas are the slug's favorite plant in the American shade garden, and silvery slime trails confirm it. Earwigs chew similar ragged holes in hot dry spells, hail punches holes with bruised edges all on the same date, and deer skip the holes entirely and eat whole leaves down to the stalks. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes in Lawn With Dead Grass Around Them: What It Means When holes and dead grass show up together, the dead grass is usually the underlying story: grubs kill turf roots and then skunks, raccoons, and birds dig holes going after them, while vole runways, yellowjacket ground nests, and dog urine spots each pair dying grass with their own style of hole. Figure out whether the grass died first or the digging came first, and the diagnosis usually follows. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes in Mulch Beds: Who's Digging Through Your Mulch? Disturbed mulch usually comes down to a simple distinction: mulch flipped and scattered on top means squirrels or birds foraging through it, while an actual hole punched down into the soil beneath means a chipmunk, rat, or cat. Squirrels and chipmunks are the everyday culprits; the pattern of the mess tells you whether you're looking at snacking, caching, burrowing, or a litter box. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes in Yard After Rain: Why They Appear Overnight Holes that appear after a good rain are usually not new digging at all — rain exposes earthworm burrows, washes open old animal tunnels, and collapses settling soil, while wet weather brings crayfish and emerging cicadas to the surface. Most rain-revealed holes are harmless; the size and what surrounds each hole tells you which kind you have. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes Near Your Foundation: Causes and When to Act Holes right along a foundation usually come from chipmunks, Norway rats, or voles, all of which like the shelter a house wall provides — but water pouring from downspouts and settling backfill soil carve foundation-line holes too. Sorting burrow from washout matters, because a rat burrow against the house is the one that needs fast professional attention. Read the guide → Yard Holes Holes Under the Fence: What's Digging In (or Out)? A hole under a fence is usually a travel gap scraped out by rabbits, skunks, or a neighborhood dog — or the edge of a real burrow if a groundhog has moved in along the fence line. The key distinction is pass-through versus home: a shallow trench under the boards means something is commuting through your yard, while a deep hole with a big dirt pile means something is living there. Read the guide → Yard Holes Large Holes in Yard: Groundhog, Fox, Skunk, or Armadillo? A hole 6 inches across or bigger is a den entrance, and in most American yards the owner is a groundhog — an 8- to 12-inch hole with a big dirt mound is their signature. Foxes, armadillos, and skunks dig or borrow similar burrows, especially under sheds, decks, and porches, so smell, mound size, and location are what separate them. Never fill a large hole until you know it's empty. Read the guide → Plant Damage Leaves Chewed From the Edges: How to Read the Bite Marks Leaves eaten inward from the edges are usually caterpillars, grasshoppers, or — if the edges show neat crescent-shaped notches — adult weevils feeding at night. When whole leaf sections or stems are missing, the cut itself is the clue: a clean angled snip means rabbits, while ragged torn edges mean deer. Read the guide → Yard Holes Many Small Holes in the Lawn? Here's What's Behind Them When the lawn is peppered with dozens of small holes rather than one or two big ones, the cause is almost always foraging birds, earthworms surfacing after rain, or ground-nesting bees in spring. And before you blame wildlife at all, rule out the most overlooked explanation: leftover plugs from a recent core aeration. Read the guide → Tracks, Nests & Outdoor Clues Mud Nests Under Your Eaves: Swallows, Wasps, or Daubers? Mud structures under your eaves were built either by swallows — barn or cliff swallows, which are federally protected birds — or by mud dauber wasps, which are docile solitary insects. A gray papery umbrella-shaped comb is neither: that's a paper wasp nest, and it's the only one of the three that stings defensively. Identify the builder before you reach for a scraper, because the right response is different for each. Read the guide → Yard Holes One-Inch Holes in Lawn: Identify the Digger by Size Holes about an inch wide in a lawn are most often the work of voles, young chipmunks, ground-nesting bees, or — in wet, low-lying yards — crayfish. An inch is a telling size: it's too big for most insects and too small for rats or full chipmunk burrows, so checking depth, soil, and location will usually name the digger. Read the guide → Plant Damage Plant Stems Cut Near the Ground: Cutworms or Rabbits? A seedling toppled with its stem severed right at the soil line is the classic signature of cutworms, night-feeding caterpillars that curl in the soil by day. Clean 45-degree cuts a few inches higher point to rabbits, while stems gnawed through at the base — often with the plant left uneaten — suggest voles or, less often, squirrels. Read the guide → Yard Holes Quarter-Size Holes in Yard: Wasps, Cicadas, or Voles? Holes about the size of a quarter — roughly an inch across — most often belong to cicada killer wasps, emerging cicadas, ground-nesting bees, or voles. The soil is the fastest clue: a big horseshoe of excavated dirt means a cicada killer, a clean hole with no soil means a cicada came out of it, and a small crumbly rim means bees. Watch briefly from a distance before getting close, in case wasps own it. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Red and Black Bugs on Your House: What Are They? Red and black bugs clustered on your house are most likely boxelder bugs, which gather by the hundreds on warm, sunny walls in fall while looking for winter shelter. Milkweed bugs, firebugs, and tiny red velvet mites are the usual look-alikes. None of them bite, sting, or damage the structure — the real nuisance is the ones that slip inside, and the ones you squash can leave stains. Read the guide → Plant Damage Round Holes in Leaves: Bee, Beetle, Slug, or Caterpillar? Perfectly circular holes or half-moon notches cut from leaf edges are almost always leafcutter bees, which are beneficial pollinators that do no lasting harm. Rounded but irregular holes in the middle of leaves point instead to slugs, caterpillars, or — if the holes are tiny and numerous — flea beetles. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Round Holes in Wood With Sawdust: Bees, Ants, or Beetles? A perfectly round hole about 1/2 inch across with a pile of coarse sawdust beneath it is the signature of carpenter bees, especially on bare or weathered wood. Fine sawdust-like debris coming from cracks and seams rather than a drilled hole points to carpenter ants, while clusters of much smaller holes are usually old wood-boring beetle exits. The hole's size, the texture of the sawdust, and whether you see insect traffic will tell you which one you have. Read the guide → Plant Damage Seedlings Disappearing Overnight: What's Taking Them? Seedlings that vanish overnight are usually felled by cutworms, eaten entirely by slugs, pulled up by birds, or clipped by rabbits — and sometimes they were killed by damping-off fungus rather than eaten at all. What's left behind decides it: a toppled stem means cutworms, slime trails mean slugs, a pinched wilted stem means fungus, and nothing at all usually means slugs or a bird. Read the guide → Yard Holes Shallow Divots in Lawn: Foraging Damage Decoded Shallow divots — little scoops that stop within an inch or three of the surface — are foraging marks, not burrows: squirrels caching and retrieving nuts, skunks drilling for grubs at night, birds probing at dawn, or a dog freelancing. Because three of those four are hunting grubs, a lawn suddenly covered in divots is often really a message about what's living under the turf. Read the guide → Plant Damage Skeletonized Leaves: What Eats Everything but the Veins? Leaves chewed down to a lacy network of veins are usually the work of Japanese beetles or sawfly larvae such as rose slugs and pear slugs. Japanese beetles feed in plain sight in daytime swarms during midsummer, while sawfly larvae hide on leaf undersides and 'window-pane' the leaf from below — and stippled, bleached leaves that aren't actually eaten point to lace bugs instead. Read the guide → Mushrooms & Growths Slime Mold in Mulch: The Gross-Looking Blob That's Harmless A foamy yellow, tan, or orange blob spreading across your mulch is almost certainly a slime mold — most often the species nicknamed 'dog vomit slime mold.' Despite the revolting look, it's completely harmless to plants, pets, and people, it usually rides in on fresh hardwood mulch, and it needs no treatment: rake it out, hose it apart, or just let it dry up on its own. Read the guide → Tracks, Nests & Outdoor Clues Small Animal Tracks in Your Yard: How to Read Them Small animal tracks in your yard most often belong to rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, skunks, or a neighborhood cat or dog. Counting the toes, checking whether claw marks show, and looking at how the prints are grouped will identify the visitor faster than the shape of any single print. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Small Pellet Droppings in Yard: Rabbit, Deer, or Squirrel? Small pellet droppings scattered across a yard are most often left by rabbits, deer, or squirrels. Rabbits drop round, pea-size pellets in loose clusters on the lawn, deer leave larger oval pellets in concentrated piles of 20 or more, and squirrel droppings are barrel-shaped and scattered under trees. Where the pellets show up — open lawn versus garden edge — is as telling as their shape. Read the guide → Plant Damage Something Digging in Potted Plants? Here's the Likely Culprit Something digging in your potted plants is most often a squirrel burying or retrieving nuts — the number one cause by far — followed by chipmunks, birds taking dust baths, raccoons hunting grubs at night, or a cat using the pot as a litter box. Daytime digging with small neat pits points to squirrels; pots trashed overnight point to raccoons. Read the guide → Plant Damage Sticky Residue on Leaves: Honeydew and What's Making It A sticky, shiny film on leaves is honeydew — the sugary waste excreted by sap-sucking insects like aphids, soft scale, whiteflies, or mealybugs feeding somewhere above the sticky spot. Look up and check leaf undersides to find the source, and don't be surprised if ants are patrolling the plant: they farm these insects for the honeydew. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Swarm of Flying Insects in Yard: Termites, Ants, or Gnats? A sudden swarm of flying insects in your yard is most often flying ants, termite swarmers, mating clouds of midges or gnats, emerging ground bees, or mayflies near water. Most swarms are harmless and gone within days — but a termite swarm coming from the soil near your house means you should schedule an inspection right away, so the first job is telling termites apart from everything else. Read the guide → Animal Droppings Tiny Black Specks on Your Deck: Frass, Fungus, or Droppings? Tiny black specks on a deck usually turn out to be caterpillar frass raining down from trees overhead, artillery fungus spores that glue themselves to surfaces, spider droppings, or mouse droppings. The quickest test is whether the specks wipe away: frass and droppings brush off, while artillery fungus dots are stuck fast. Where the specks appear — under a tree canopy, near mulch, or along the house wall — points to the source. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Tiny White Bugs Under Leaves: What They Are, What to Do Tiny white bugs on the undersides of leaves are most often whiteflies, mealybugs, woolly aphids, or spider mites. The quickest test is to disturb the plant: whiteflies scatter into the air instantly, while mealybugs and woolly aphids stay put in cottony patches. All of them respond to gentle controls — a hard spray of water and insecticidal soap — so there's no need to reach for harsh chemicals. Read the guide → Yard Holes Tunnels in Grass: Mole or Vole? How to Tell in Seconds Tunnels in a lawn come in two distinct styles: raised, spongy ridges you can feel underfoot are mole feeding tunnels just below the surface, while flat, worn trails clipped into the grass itself are vole runways. Moles hunt worms and grubs under your turf; voles eat the grass and bark on top of it — so telling them apart decides everything about what to do next. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Wasp Nest Under the Eaves: Which Wasp, and How Careful to Be A nest under your eaves is most likely paper wasps if you can see open honeycomb cells on an umbrella-shaped comb, bald-faced hornets if it's a fully enclosed gray papery ball, or mud daubers if it's made of dried mud tubes. Paper wasps and hornets will defend their nest, while mud daubers almost never sting. Identify the builder from a distance first — the right response ranges from leaving it alone to calling a licensed pest control professional. Read the guide → Bugs & Eggs Webs on Tree Branches: Tent Caterpillars or Webworms? Silky webs in your trees are most likely eastern tent caterpillars if it's spring and the web sits in a branch fork, or fall webworms if it's late summer and the web wraps the tips of branches. Both look alarming but rarely do lasting harm to a healthy tree — and whatever you do, never try to burn a nest out of a tree. Read the guide → Plant Damage What Is Eating My Pepper Plants? How to Identify the Pest Pepper plants are most often eaten by hornworms, slugs, flea beetles, aphids, or cutworms — and if entire tops or whole plants disappear, rabbits or deer. The pattern of damage tells you which one: tiny pinholes point to flea beetles, big ragged missing chunks to hornworms, slime trails to slugs, and clean angled cuts to a four-legged visitor. Read the guide → Animal Droppings White Droppings on Your Fence: Which Bird (or Lizard) Was It? White droppings on a fence are almost always from birds — the white part is uric acid, which is how birds excrete waste instead of urine. The size and pattern tell you whether it's songbirds using the fence as a perch, larger birds like doves or hawks, or, in the southern U.S., geckos and anoles, whose small dark droppings carry a distinctive white tip. Light deposits are harmless; large accumulations deserve careful cleanup. Read the guide → Plant Damage White Squiggly Lines on Leaves: Leafminers Explained Those winding white or pale tan trails are made by leafminers — tiny fly, moth, or sawfly larvae that hatch inside the leaf and eat a tunnel between its upper and lower surfaces. The damage looks dramatic but is almost always cosmetic on ornamentals; picking off mined leaves is usually all the control a home garden needs. Read the guide → Home Exterior Clues Woodpecker Holes in Siding: Why They Drill and How to Stop It Holes pecked in your siding usually mean a woodpecker is foraging for insects, drumming to claim territory, or excavating a nest cavity — and rows of small holes often signal that insects like carpenter bee larvae are already living in the wood. A single clean half-inch round hole with sawdust below it, on the other hand, is typically the work of carpenter bees themselves. Because woodpeckers are federally protected, the fix is deterrence and repair, never harm. Read the guide → Mushrooms & Growths Yellow Mushrooms in Potted Plants: Harmless or a Problem? Bright yellow mushrooms popping up in a potted plant are almost certainly Leucocoprinus birnbaumii, the flowerpot parasol — a tropical fungus that rides into your home in potting soil and fruits when conditions turn warm and moist. It won't hurt your plant at all; it lives on decaying organic matter in the mix, not on roots. The only real concern is that the mushrooms are toxic if eaten, so households with small children or pets that nibble should remove them. Read the guide → Lawn Problems Yellow Spots in Lawn: Urine, Fertilizer, or Something Fungal? Yellow spots in a lawn most often come from dog urine, fertilizer burn, lawn rust, iron deficiency, or overwatering. Scattered spots with green rings point to a dog; stripes or spots that match your spreader pattern point to fertilizer; orange dust on your shoes points to rust fungus. Read the guide →