Birds Beware: Unexpected Discoveries in Rand Park

For the past two weeks, my class and I have been working on clearing out the tulips planted against the wall of the Atrium in Rand Park and discussing what should be planted in place of the tulips. While we decided that rosemary would be a good addition to Rand Park instead of the tulips that had begun to brown and die, the process of cleaning out the tulip boxes and ensuring that the rosemary would be placed in soil sustainable to their growth has not been an easy task. Among the treasures I found while pulling out the tulips were various insects, weeds, candy wrappers, plastic bottles and dirty papers, but there was one unanticipated organism I came across that I had never seen before.

My first reaction to a small red creature that I saw in the soil was fear, then disgust, but eventually I learned that this arthropod is typically harmless to most mammals. While I am not totally sure what creature I found crawling in the tulips, I narrowed the possibility down to three different mites, small arthropods the belong to the subclass Acari. Mites prefer to live in an environment with high organic matter content and moist conditions. The three possible mites that I could have found in Rand Park are: red mite, spider mite and clover mite. Most likely, the mite that I came across was Dermanyssus gallinae, or red mite, an ectoparasite to poultry. While red mite may occasionally cause skin irritation for humans, birds in Rand Park may have legitimate reason to fear for this small red parasite typically found among the cracks and crevices of concrete. Red mite are blood feeders and attack birds at night, staying in the cracks and crevices of concrete until the sun has gone down. They are typically white or gray, but after feeding become engorged with blood and turn red. Red mites are vectors of diseases, indirectly affecting the health of birds. Spider mite spin protective silk webs on the undersides of leaves, where they generally live. They can cause damage when they feed by puncturing plant cells. Bryobia praetiosa, or clover mites, were my second guess for the red creature I discovered in the soil in Rand Park. They are reddish-brown, most prominent in the Spring and prefer habitats with thick vegetation (one reason I believe they are a contender for the creature I found).

Assuming my prediction is correct and the arthropods I came across were red mites, they may not affect the rosemary that will soon be planted, but they can cause indirect harm to the birds living in Rand Park. Stay tuned for a post about the adventure and difficulties of planting rosemary!