Under Brush

It may be a cliche, but have you ever... watched your step?

This next log seems to have been singed by a brush fire at some point. Note the larva-dug tunnel uncovered on the left.

Not sure if that's the culprit on the bottom right, emerged to adulthood. Poor light conditions. Having a devil of a time identifying its fat butt. Wood-boring is a time-honored and widely adopted profession, but from a bit of image-searching only a couple of subfamilies like Cryptorhynchinae and Mesoptilinae have such... child-bearing hips, let's say.

 

I've always been fascinated by these tiny microcosms. 

A patch of moss, a log or rock, flowers and sporangia, saplings dreaming of the canopy, there's a whole epic in a single footstep.

It brings about a perspective shift when you realize even the tiny flitting fuzzlings we so casually dismiss tower over this world.

Maybe it's how delicate everything looks. 

Or maybe it's the sheer variety of form we so easily pass by, all those alien-looking lichens and mosses which, at least on the surface, appear so unconcerned with the rest of the biosphere's struggles.