Yuliia Skrypniuk - Week 8 with DNREC Fish and Wildlife Division

This week started with something a little different and very fun! On Monday, we spent the day at the Delaware State Fair in Dover, representing the Delaware Tick Program as part of DNREC’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. Our job was to help with public outreach and educate people about ticks, common tick-borne diseases, and prevention tips. It was great to see how interested and grateful people were to learn more about ticks and our work. We also had some fun activities for kids, like tick maze and word search that our coworker made for us, to help them get curious about nature in a safe way. Since we were there all day, I also got a few breaks to enjoy the fair—there were so many cute animals from all over the state!

In the evening, we helped students from the University of Delaware with Sherman trapping for small mammals like mice at Brandywine Creek State Park. That night, we checked 180 traps to see if they were sprung or unsprung, and whether they still had seeds for bait. We only caught one chipmunk (which was safely released in the same spot, because they were not approved to handle it yet), but we reset the traps for the next morning in hopes of better luck!

On Tuesday, I joined the mosquito team again to reset the midge traps. We have three trap sites and have visited all of them. Some of the traps needed small repairs, so we fixed those too. In the afternoon, I did some mosquito ID work in the lab. This time I worked with brown salt marsh mosquitoes, and I’m feeling more confident identifying them now!

Wednesday was an early one - I woke up around 4:30 AM to join the UD mice trapping team again for their morning check. I’m so glad I did! We caught five mice: four were recaptures and one was new. All were healthy and had some ectoparasites. We couldn’t take photos due to the research protocol, but they were seriously adorable with their big eyes and tiny paws.

After that, I joined the tick team and we headed out to watch and assist with bird banding led by Ian Stewart, a Delaware ornithologist we met earlier during the internship. We got to observe professionals in action and collect ticks from recently caught birds! It was an amazing learning opportunity. We saw a second-year female Gray Catbird (identified by feather patterns) and a White-Breasted Nuthatch, which was more active and a female too. I even got to release it afterward—so cool!

In the afternoon, we did tick dragging at nearby sites that were due for sampling. We then spent some time IDing and counting ticks. From one site alone, I counted 1,044 larvae—that’s a lot of tiny ticks!

On Thursday, we headed south for more tick dragging in the state parks to stay on track with our 2-week rotation schedule. Even though it was a long drive, it was definitely worth it—we collected tons of ticks, especially larval “tick bombs” (little clumps of larvae all together). It was a productive and exciting field day!