After all this hot, dry weather this season, it seems that the ticks aren’t as active as in previous years. Because of that, we decided to extend the Tick Blitz by a week, meaning volunteers could collect ticks up until Friday, July 8th.
On Wednesday, Emily and I left Ithaca at 6:30am and drove east towards Sullivan county. Our goal was to collect some data for areas that volunteers weren’t covering, and we ended up tick dragging at eight parks in Rockland and Sullivan counties. Our Sullivan locations didn’t yield much except a handful of dog ticks, but Rockland was crawling with Asian Longhorned tick adults, nymphs, and larvae. Emily and I noticed some unique behaviors from this species; neither of us had collected Asian Longhorned ticks before so it was a first for both of us. When they felt threatened (i.e. when we were trying to pull them off the drag cloth with tweezers), they tucked their legs in instead of trying to run away like blacklegged and dog ticks.
