While checking an expired mushroom for coleopteran fauna after work today I saw some miniscule specks crawling around on the palm of my hand among the mushroom gill pieces. I said to myself, "Boy, if those were beetles, they'd be the smallest ones I've found yet." I figured they had to be super-small springt*ails.

Yet the more I looked, the more beetle-like these specks appeared. They did not spring away, they crawled more slowly than a spri*ngtail usually does, and they seemed to have a sharper outline like a beetle does. I decided to collect some in my pocket vial.

Sure enough, these half-millimeter motes proved to be feather-winged beetles, the smallest species I've encountered. They must have been feeding on the rotting mushroom. I collected eight or ten from several nearby rotting mushrooms for my photo shoot, so the subsequent shots are not all of the same beetle.

(My prior smallest beetle was a tiny his*terid that turned out to be a species record for New England.)