Stylish jumper

My increasingly grumpy and pessimistic search for the 30th Odonata species of my summer took me back to Grafton Wood again this morning. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike this reserve? Oh, right. In that case, you probably don't need to hear about it again. So anyway, having trudged back, Willow Emerald free, in around 28° of heat by this time, across the four fields to the car park, and then failed by a five minute miscalculation to be able to persuade R to take me out to lunch, I was in a pretty bad mood. And Trench Wood is ten minutes down the road from Grafton Flyford, and I love Trench Wood, so I swung round there in the hope of cheering myself up, instead of doing the sensible thing and going straight home.

Trench not only applied its usual balm to my soul, but provided me with the best invertebrates of the day. This is the second jumping spider I've found there in less than a month, and it was in almost exactly the same place as the first. I tentatively identified that one as Evarcha arcuata, despite concerns about Trench being the wrong kind of territory for it, but I've had this neither confirmed nor denied by the spidery authorities (who are pretty poor at validating records, to be frank), and I'm now wondering if she was actually the distaff partner of this tiny chap, who is almost certainly a male Woodland Jumping Spider, Evarcha falcata. 

Evarcha falcata is widespread in the southern half of Britain, in contrast to E. arcuata, and favours woodland rides and glades, where it tends to hang out on the lowest leaves of trees, or on even lower foliage such as heather or gorse bushes. I spotted this one on an aspen seedling, just a few inches off the ground, and getting down low enough to capture his front headlamp eyes without scaring him into jumping was quite a mission, I can tell you. He was no more than 5mm long, and was pretty horrified by the proximity of an enormous human, so I had to move very slowly and do my best not to look like a predator. I also had to spend quite a bit of time simply waiting, because he kept turning his back on me - whether to look for a possible escape route, or simply on the basis that if he couldn't see me I probably couldn't see him either, I can't really judge. Either way, I eventually made it to ground level - knees and elbows in the grass, bum in the air (no-one has ever accused me of being inelegant and lived) - and he finally turned just enough for me to get this half-profile portrait. After which I crawled backwards a little way, restored myself to the vertical, thanked him politely, and walked on. By the time I came back, quarter of an hour later, I was unsurprised to find that he was nowhere to be seen.

Before I go, I'd like to remind you that there's still time for you to submit an entry to this week's Tiny Tuesday challenge. Anything small will fit the bill, photographed close-up, with any equipment that will do the job. The tag this week is TT432. I'll be judging the entries, and awarding hearts to my favourites, towards the end of the week.