A no-see-um, also called a biting midge.
'''No-see-um' was an Indian word -- red skin as vulnerable as white. To the early Indian, coming here {the Maine woods} to make a warm-weather camping trip would have seemed the act of a fool: Thoreau, with his veil, his smoke from rotting logs; we, with our Off and our Cutter. When the tribes lived here...they left in the summer. When the black flies, the mosquitoes, and the no-see-ums hatched, the Indians departed, and they did not come back until the bugs were gone.''
-- John McPhee, in The Survival of the Bark Canoe
