#ornithonyssus

[every-day-creechur]

Northern Fowl Mite Ornithonyssus sylviarum

A parasite of domestic chickens found in North America.

image by zakool21

[drhoz]

#2150 - Ornithonyssus sp. - Fowl Mite

About 0.5mm long. It's crawling on the narrow edge of my phone case, there.

I thought it looked vaguelly familiar, and It's taken me a while to confirm the ID - plenty of websites (usually pest conrol companies) talk about bird mites, but not many of them bother to give the scientific name, or have adequate photos.

The three best known Ornithonyssus species are bursa and sylviarum, the Southern and Northern Fowl Mites respectively, and bacoti, the tropical rat mite. That last one is particularly notorious for the painful bite, but it's not like infested chickens are very happy about it. There's a good number of other species, too - I presume Ornithonyssus pipistrelli is a parasite of small bats.