Backyard Springtime Nature in New Jersey.

While checking a portable solar generator I found six ticks. All of them on the orange or yellow power cables near the solar generator. This spring I have been finding them almost every day throughout the backyard. I try my best to avoid letting a tick get on me and start sucking my blood. I use 100% DEET spray and treat my outdoor work cloths with Permethrin. I wanted to test if the Permethrin treatment really worked so I placed the ticks on a cloth treated with Permethrin in a covered glass petri dish. The ticks stopped moving within half an hour.

Four of the ticks I captured were Dog Ticks, with the lighter colored shield on their backs. I am assuming the other two ticks with dark backs were Deer Ticks. The macro image of the Dog Tick was taken with a Hasselblad X2d camera and 38 mm f/2.5 lens with a 9 mm macro extension tube. The Deer Tick image was taken with a Nikon D850 camera and Loawa 24 mm f/14 probe macro lens.