It’s amazing how many different creatures you can find when you look at the undersides of leaves: aphids, ladybirds, leafhoppers, craneflies, more aphids, barkflies, galls, leafmines, all kinds of weird and wonderful insect larvae, and lots of varieties of tiny spiders … like this little guy. Although its name is Red velvet mite (there are several and I don’t know which exact species this one is), it has eight legs, so is actually an arachnid. Being bright red makes these wee spiders very obvious and, with its covering of miniscule hairs, it really does look quite velvety.