When adult ticks climb aboard a host animal, the males mate whilst the females feed.

Engorged with blood, females then fall to the ground and lay their eggs.

Female ticks lay around 2000 eggs in shaded, humid leaf litter, in the spring. They are very small (0.7mm long); there are probably about 500 in the picture below right.

After laying their eggs, female ticks shrivel and die.

Tick eggs hatch as 6-legged larvae in the summer of the same year they were laid. They’re about the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence.

The larvae remain inactive till the next spring, when they climb grass and wait for the first of the 3 hosts they’ll need to feed from during their life cycle. Potential hosts may include mice, squirrels, rabbits, birds, deer, livestock, cats, dogs and man.

Tick larvae spend up to a week feeding from the host, before they detach and fall to the ground.

In the spring of the year following the larval stage, having spent the winter in a state of suspended animation known as a diapause, tick larvae moult into 8-legged nymphs.

Once again, they climb the grass and search for a new host.

Then they feed on the host, this time for up to 11 days.

Finally, they detach and fall to the ground, where they mature into adults.

Tick nymphs moult into adults in about a month, but remain inactive till the following spring, when they start to search for the final host.

In common with the larval and nymphal stages of the life cycle, they do this using a behaviour known as questing, whereby they raise their front legs to sense a host.

Adult female ticks will feed on the final host for 8-12 days, increasing their weight by as much as 100 times, before they lay their eggs and the cycle starts all over again.

In all, ticks complete their life cycle in 3 years, although cool summers and warm winters can modify the cycle.