Tiny travellers

I woke with a nasty headache and started sneezing later in the morning - I really don't want a cold as I have my first long day of paid fieldworkn tomorrow ! 

Most of the day was unrelentingly wet, which rather limited photo opportunities. Before dinner Pete brought in a log from the garden, which I'd been planning to use as a background for photographing a beetle. However, I ended up being more interested in all the tiny creatures which were travelling around on its surface, including several species of spring-tail, a rove beetle and a small centipede. There were also a few static creatures including a soldier-fly larva, another fly larvae and a small slug. So many tiny creatures, all dependent on a one small wet log.

The two spring-tails in my image are Orchesella cincta, a very common species that is one of the only British spring-tails that can be identified with the naked eye. This species is relatively large for a spring-tail, all of 3mm, but  think it still counts as tiny. Indeed they were so tiny I could scarcely see them when I took the photograph - I was trying to focus on the one in the crack and didn't even know the other one was there till I put the image on the computer screen!