Cave dwellers

The more you look, the more there is to see ...

I've returned several times to look into those caves in the bark of the snags beside the river, zooming in as close as I could get, trying out a couple of flashlights, wishing for a battery-powered microscope.

The holes were made by woodpeckers digging for ants or grubs. And now I was looking for those ants. I found a couple of large ones and chased them up and down the trunk; they never stopped running.

Racing ant. With lichen and moss.

Zooming in closer, and enlarging the photos once I got them home, I found a busy community:

Floor and walls of one "cave".

The black oval looks like a pupa of some insect. On the next visit, it was no longer there. I searched all the holes I could reach, and found no others. On the left, those off-white globes may be slug eggs. And on the left, near the top, the popsicle on a stick is probably a slime mold. Lower down there are a few wearing pink.

Zooming in on that slime. Is the blurry white blob more of the same, in a different stage?

Springtails and a spider.

In a dark corner, small, black balls, much smaller than the slug eggs. There were many, but all in the most protected areas. Larger balls, a dark red, not confined to the dark, may be mites.

There's more!

And a piece of moss.

And I'll be back. With a better flashlight, maybe one I can strap to my forehead. And a decent hand lens.

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Entre más miras, más hay que ver.

Regresé varias veces a ese grupo de troncos "muertos" al lado del rio, acercándome lo más posible, tratando de alumbrar las cuevitas en la corteza con unas linternas de mano (sin mucha suerte), sintiendo la falta de un microscopio de pilas.

Las cuevas las hicieron los pájaros carpinteros, buscando hormigas u otros bichos. Y ahora, yo buscaba esas hormigas. Encontré unas grandes y las perseguí mientras corrían de un lado para otro en la corteza. Nunca dejaron de correr, ni por un instante.

Foto # 1: una hormiga, corriendo.

Haciendo zoom, y aumentando las fotos en casa, encontré una comunidad diversa.

Foto # 2: El piso y las paredes interiores de una cuevita. El paquetito negro parece ser la pupa de algún insecto. En la siguiente visita, ya no estaba, y aunque busqué por todos lados, no vi ningún otro.

Al lado izquierdo hay unas bolitas blancas; pueden ser huevos de babosas. A la derecha, arriba, hay algo que parece una paleta sobre su palo; creo que es un moho mucilanigoso; abajo hay otros, pero con un tinte de color de rosa.

Foto # 3: Haciendo zoom. Y la masa blanca en el hoyo ¿será más moho, pero en diferente etapa?

Foto # 4: Colémbolos, y una araña.

Foto # 5: En la sombra, se ven muchas pelotitas negras, mucho más chicas que los huevos de babosa.  Otras pelotitas, algo rojizas, y que no se limitan a la oscuridad pueden ser ácaros.

Foto # 6: Una comunidad diversa: las flechas apuntan mohos mucilanigosos, la pupa, colémbolos, las pelotitas, huevos de babosa, una araña (puede ser la muda), y algo con espinas.

Regresaré. Con una linterna mejor, tal vez una que puedo fijar en mi cabeza. Y una buena lente de mano.

In a handful of moss

We've not been able to get out of urban environments for a while; all our outings have been to family gatherings or running errands. And since the weather changed, most of our bugs and other critters have disappeared, except for the one carpet beetle larva and a crop of fruit flies.

I was hungering for something green, something wet, something alive and slithery. So, at the end of another day hopping from store to store, I went out in the rain and gathered a few tufts of moss; tiny will do; let my camera do the walking.

Green and wet.

The moss was beautiful, glowing translucently under my light, the spiky leaves green at the top, a rich brown beneath. Underneath, where the moss still held remnants of soil, a couple of miniature slugs were sleeping. Disturbed, they woke and stretched, heading for new cover. At their full length, neither was more than a half inch long.

When I pulled the largest clump of moss apart, I exposed a cozy nest.

Slug eggs, almost as big as the slug diameters.

A closer view, trying to distinguish features of the developing slugs inside. No luck.

Closer view.

Apart from the slugs, their eggs, and one tiny earthworm (so tiny he crawled into my eyedropper), the only other visible animals were black springtails, from pinhead size on down to mere visibility, racing and hopping around. I found one stopped for a breather.

Springtail, Collembola.

Under a good lens, I found more animals: a little black snail, barely a pinprick to the naked eye once I knew where to look for it; another earthworm, identifiable as such only under the microscope, and a few slow-moving, beautiful, shiny, deep red mites. I took photos, but they show only red-black spots with a hint of legs along the edge.

This different mite was about twice their size:

Unidentified mite. 

It has eight legs, but holds the first two high in front, like antennae. And it looks like it's carrying at least one, maybe two smaller mites on its back. Babies? Or parasites? Maybe they'll know at BugGuide. I'll ask.