Traveling Wood Tick

Tuesdays are my day to monitor my streams. Today is 40 degrees warmer than yesterday so I decided to take a long walk. Here is a view of the Us Kab Wan Ka river upstream of where I monitor. The water is coming towards me from the top of the picture and moving to my right. As I walked along the gravel road (free of wood ticks I was hoping) I heard my first of the year ovenbird, white throated sparrow and red-eyed vireo. I also saw my first, second, third, and fourth Monarch butterflies. What a pleasure to watch the orange butterflies fly by. Grasshoppers with physical coordination problems would fly up and hit me smack dab in the chest. Or maybe the strong winds caused that to happen.

Here is another view just a little closer to my car of the same river. This time the water is flowing from my left towards the right and bending into a sharp turn away from the road. Today was windy but a nice day for a walk. On my way home I got a car wash. I parked in the car wash parking lot to apply the once a year wax. As I am spreading wax on the roof of my car I see a wood tick crawling on my roof. Did that wood tick come from this road, travel on the car for 20 miles, and survive a car wash too? The grass around the car wash is new and looks to be mown and fertilized so I doubt this is a local wood tick. I am just glad this wood tick didn't bite me.