Monday, April 05, 2010

They're back! Chocolaty slimes!

Three years ago, in March of 2007, I discovered a tiny slime mold on an old birdhouse I was repairing. Since then, I have checked it every year about the same time, with no luck, except that I found some nice globular springtails.

Last night, I looked again. And they're back.


Slime mold fruiting body. About 1 mm. high.


Last time, they were clumped. This year, they stand alone.


Casting dark shadows. The pale blue-green lumps are probably baby lichens.


The tiny dark dots at "ground level" are immatures.


A look at a fruiting body in the microscope.

And there was a springtail, too; a different kind, one I haven't seen before.


Springtail, unidentified as yet, about 1.25 mm nose to tail.


Seen with the microscope.

I got three shots, then, "Pop!" He sprung up into the lights of the microscope, got singed, and lay belly-up, stunned. I fished him out with my paintbrush. When he cooled down and started to walk again, I replaced him gently on the birdhouse, and put it outside in the cold.  Now he has a story to tell. ... "Oh, the places I've been, the dangers I've braved ..."

5 comments:

  1. I can't think of anywhere else on the web I could read stuff like that - I love the way you notice the tiny things. Reading this sort of made my day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How I love the way you see the tiny worlds within worlds. And the way you care. Who else would have fished out a bug from certain death and made sure he was back home with a story to tell. Your compassion is amazing. I admire you, you know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Super ,chocolate slime molds for Easter.Not to be missed

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very cool photos - I've looked for the fruiting bodies of slime moulds but have only been able to find the more "mobile" stage of their life cycle. Neat!

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger