Background: Haemoproteus as a protozoan intracellular blood parasite occur in various avian hosts globally. Different genus of blood sucking insects’ families such as Hippoboscidae and Ceratopogonidae are able to transmit this vector borne parasite in birds. Due to the pathogenicity and pathologic changes in their hosts and limited studies on the wild infected birds in Iran, current study were planned to examine the infection rate of Haemoproteus spp. in this region. Materials and methods: Birds were captured from North Khorasan province, northeast of Iran during June to August 2016. Morphological identification of blood parasites were performed on the stained slides in 1000x magnification using Olympus light microscope and immersion oil. Results and discussion: Of 40 wild birds, we detected Haemoproteus spp. in 11 individuals (27.5%) in which eight host species were infected with this blood parasite. Avian hosts belonged to six familes of song birds including Passeridae, Paridae, Emberizidae, Acrocephalidae, Phylloscopidae and Turdidae. More than 140 species of Haemoproteus, are already described by the morphological features which are able to arasitize abouth 70% avian hosts globally. The infection rate of zero to 100 percentage were recorded for haemosporidans in diverse hosts around the world. Our results in wild hosts showed the blood parasites infection for the first time in northeast of Iran. Conclusion: The attained results in this study confirmed the relative infection rate of haematozoa in this region which might suggest the potential locations for next studies on blood parasites and their vectors.

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