Last post of 2018: A warm, moist NYE!

One final post for 2018. Here's a small selection of things I've found lurking in the garden here in the last 24 hours.

See you all on the other side.

Some of today's finds

 

More small things...

Mid-December and the garden is teeming with life. So many little critters in the leaf litter, and plenty of fungi, lichens and slime molds. I also found a hawk moth chrysalis last week. I haven't photographed it yet, but I have named it and given it a safe home for the winter!

Tiny funky disco balls!

November catch-up

A few images from the last part of November.

Some Sarcoscypha coccinea.

They are abundant at the moment.

Slime mold fruiting body & Eyelash fungus / Scutellina sp.

Dog Lichen / Peltigera sp.

Saturday's small things

Minute moss mushrooms?

I was looking for interesting things growing on mossy rocks and I noticed what I thought was perhaps a patch of lichen.
On closer inspection it looks very much like tiny mushrooms are sprouting from the moss, but they're not mushrooms - it's a slime mould!
Diderma hemisphaericum

Diderma hemisphaericum

Diderma hemisphaericum

Soggy firewood...

 All of the images in this post (and the previous one) are of organisms that have made their home in a small pile of (mainly beech) logs that could really do with being moved to somewhere drier!

 

Photobombed by a pseudoscorpion!

 

 "Let's Get Small"

                           Steve Martin

 At first glance these looked like unremarkable small brown nodules growing on a beech log. When I peered closer they began to look more like chocolates! Then I noticed that one of these delicately dusted luxury truffles was sporting an assortment of translucent bright orange globules and 'hairy plumes' a little like dandelion seed heads, giving the thing an almost cactus-like form. I have absolutely know idea what it is. Fungus? Slime mold? Xenowonkia cocophoria?

I was trying to photograph  a patch of green fungus and a dead isopod on a branch, and a small creature with massive pedipalps strolled casually in to shot! My first pseudoscorpion sighting.

I'd love to be able to get closer! If anyone could point me towards a very good deal on a very good microscope I'd be very interested.

Swan Vestas

Just because it's Thursday

Very wet outside for most of today, but I managed a few shots without getting too rained on.