A Speck

Last night we had a wee bit of snow, but then it turned to rain, and by noon today the snow was gone and the precipitation had stopped, and it had warmed up a bit, so I thought I might as well go outside and look for some bugs.

I mostly just found mud. I almost wiped out once, slipping in a muddy patch.

I did see some bugs - a few of the swarming crane flies, some sow bugs, and springails.

And this, the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what this is. I can't even see it well enough to look it up. It might be a very, very young springtail, which seems pretty likely given that they are what's around right now, but I really have no idea.

 Even magnified, it's tiny.

 Here it is with a couple of springtails. Bear in mind that the larger of these two is about a millimeter long. The smaller of them (which I think is a different species?) I can barely see without the camera lens. I am not sure if I could see the Backyard Bug of the Day without it or not. You may remember one of the most recent blogs I posted I had pictures of a lot of springtails, and a tiny speck of a thing that I had not noticed when I took the pictures. Well, this is probably that tiny thing. And even when I saw it, and focused on it, it's still too small to know what it is.

 This was also a similar scenario to that day with the springtails and the tiny speck with legs. Again I found these in a puddle on the same rock, and it was two of the same critters who were being pushed together somehow.

 But this time the little one kept crawling on the bigger one.

 

 

 And another came to join them. Except it didn't appear to do it on purpose. I don't know what force was directing them to the same spot - they didn't seem to be swimming (though that might not be the best word anyway - they are on top of the water. And they can spring from there). On the other hand, they do have that spring underneath - maybe it pushes them around? Last time I saw these I thought those prongs sticking out the back of the smaller of these springtails was the spring outstretched in the act of springing, but today it was just out there, so maybe not.

 There's a fourth one at the top of this picture - and the small one crawling on the large(r) one again.