April & May: a peak time for moose - winter tick hair loss

Let us know if you see any moose with patchy hair!

Winter tick infested moose look their 'patchiest' throughout April and May. This is when the ticks that have been attached to them all winter have finished feeding on their blood and are now dropping to the ground.

There are 5 categories of hair loss, ranging from 1 = no hair loss, through to 5 = very severe (ghost moose). You don't have to be able to label the hair loss class to submit an observation, these categories are to help anyone identify when a 'patchy moose' might be a 'ticky moose'.

Similarly, please do share observations of winter ticks on the ground! These are likely to be adult female ticks, getting ready to lay their eggs, and are grey and shiny, roughly the size of a large grape.

image credit: David Legros 2018, via iNaturalist

Submitting a photo to Yukon Winter Tick Monitoring project on iNaturalist is the easiest way to record these observations
--> just upload directly to our project here, or tag 'winter tick'.

Posted on April 18, 2019 01:33 PM by emilychenery