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.

Slime molds, fungi and lichens abound around here...

Xylaria sp.