After my last find of a beautiful tick on a beach (an unusual place I had thought); I have been spotting ticks almost everywhere.

My last post about ticks is here:

How ticks come for a ride?

This time, I was enjoying a lazy afternoon with my kids in my own grass backyard (Glenn Canyon, SF); and decided to look down in the grass. And very quickly, I found a very small insect running around. I was excited and picked it up by hand; and let it crawl on me for a few minutes – but soon moved it to a glass slide before it made any tries to bite me.

Here is a “live” video of what I saw. Very similar to my old post; I again saw specialized tarsal structures at the leg – possible specialization to attach to mammals over long periods of time.

If anyone can help identify and put a definite “microscopic” key to identifying ticks – that would be very handy. So far, everything I found was very “macroscopic”. With this level of detail from the foldscope – I know we can do better.

Here are a few pictures:

Keep your eyes open and always look for ticks during peak season. If you happen to know any websites where “tick” sightings are recorded and mapped; I would love to see that.

Keep exploring.

Manu