Tall, tiny, tiniest

Yesterday (Friday) was bright and sunny, if still chilly. I wandered through the tall, shadowy forest at Miracle Beach, poking through the moss, peering under logs and down crevices in bark.

A corner of the forest. Douglas-firs, mostly.

Old, moldy Douglas Fir cone, with "mouse tails".

I turned over a broken branch, half covered by moss, exposing a small community of critters and fungi.

White, feathery mold. And a large pupal case, also coated in mold.

I was looking at the pupal case, wondering if the mold would have killed the critter inside, when something reddish dashed out from underneath and ran away. I chased it with the camera.

A very tiny spider. The sowbug is about 1/2 cm. long. The spider, legs and all is less than that; her body is about 2 or 3 mm., fangs to spinnerets. She was panicking; running back and forth, not seeming to be able to decide where to hide.

What I didn't see, until I got home and blew up the photos, were a few tinier red mites, and possibly a much smaller spider. On the red mite just below the grass bits, I can just barely see a leg. In other photos, the mites show up, but never in the same location; they were moving fairly fast, because I was taking photos as fast as I could follow the spider.

And then there were those other things; hundreds of them.

Or thousands? Each one has a dark spot, maybe an indentation, in the centre. If the spider is 3 mm. long, these would be 1/2 a millimetre at most. A dusting of miniature cup or birds' nest fungi?

Another sowbug. And two mini-sowbugs (top left).

And this time, on the way home, I counted 18 eagles, all adults. (The immatures are harder to see; they lack the white head, and their feathers are brownish and mottled. They blend in to the scenery.)

Tomorrow; fungi, I think. Or tree trunks. Or ... I brought home over 200 photos to sort and process.