Velvet Mites

Taken near Marfa yesterday morning after two days of rain, these soft-looking, BRIGHT red mites are easy to spot when they're out. Once you spot one, you'll see many!

"VELVET MITES (family Thrombidiidae) can be conspicuous, especially in the arid Southwest, where they often appear in numbers after rains." Kenn Kaufman in his Field Guide to Insects of North America.

Kenn, a birding expert, naturalist and author, will be in Marathon in a couple of weeks as part of the Gage Hotel's Birding and Butterfly Festival.  Read more about it on our entry for Monday...the link is here.