How to Get Rid of Bird Mites

The best comfortable place everyone wants to have in your room where you can feel relax and coziness, especially when you are tired from the whole week’s work. Lying on your bed to get better sleep and take a full rest is somewhat the best thing to do. But how can you do that if there are itchy, scratchy, and red bumps on your skin; something is biting on your skin but you can’t see anything? Watch out for the annoying and irritating creature, the Bird mites!  ( Related: How To Get Rid Of Carpet Beetles)

What are Bird Mites?

Bird mites are a very tiny parasite, less than 1 millimeter in size in oval-shaped body and semi-transparent in color but turned red to clack when they digested the blood from its host. They can easily move from one place to another with their 8 legs. They are usually found in warmer regions with humid and moist conditions like Australia, during spring and early summer. From the several species of bird mites, the most common is the Ornithonyssus bursa, known as Tropical Fowl Mite, and lives in bird’s feathers.

You may see bird mites in some birds’ nests like poultry, starling, sparrows, and pigeons, where they lay eggs. When the birds left those nests, there are thousands of mites in them that usually look for a new food source and start to enter your home or business premises. They can reproduce quickly even with a short life span (around 7 days). They undergo 5 stages to be fully developed, namely, egg, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, and adult. During deutonymph and adult stages, they need more food so they suck blood from their host. (Read: How To Get Rid Of Silverfish)

Habitats

Bird mites are usually found on a bird nest, which are possibly built in your house or building’s roof area, wall cavities, balconies, window ledges, and sometimes inside the basements and chimneys. They may even move into ceilings, climb walls and go inside your room, step up to your children’s bedding to search for food.  (Related: How To Get Rid Of Cloth Moths)

Danger and Damages 

Bird mites are considered as an extremely problematic pest, though they do not transmit serious diseases, their bites inject saliva that can cause severe irritation including itching and swelling creating red bumps on their skin then later become rashes. Also, cause discomfort for some people when they feel the sensation of creeping bird mites on their skin, and when they scratch it, may result in secondary infections.

The problem with their bites, they can hardly diagnose right away, and often be mistaken with other insects’ bites since they look totally the same. Bird mites do not harm any home or building furniture or stored food in your kitchen, only if you have pet birds in your backyard, they might infest them if not acted immediately. To avoid this to happen, better check the signs of their presence below. (Read: Safe Pest Control)

Signs of Bird Mites Presence

Checking the signs of bird mites is actually very difficult due to their very small size (1mm) and low numbers when visible. You might need to be very vigilant in checking your walls, beds, ceilings for some small red dots moving around.

And when you see nests built near your vicinity or your children feel any unusual itchy bites, this would give you an idea that your home is probably entered or infested by bird mites.  (Related: How To Get Rid Of Waps)