Happily, most backyard wildlife go about their business while being large enough to photograph. But sometimes, intense drama unfolds at a scale my camera simply can't handle.
The sunny slope that lies at the foot of the river rock wall in my yard is a haven for small, solitary bees which dig their tunnels into the sandstone and clay.
Should the European honeybees fail in San Diego, there are plenty of locals available to pick up the slack. The bees in my bluff are smaller than honeybees, and bluish-green in color. They're also hard to photograph, but that doesn't keep me from trying.
There I was, camouflaged by my immenseness, lurking above a selected burrow, when movement to the side attracted my attention. A very wee jumping spider was vigorously attempting to attack a tiny pillbug. The little jumping spider would leap onto the rolled up pillbug, which would slowly roll over to one side to brush the spider off. Finally, with one particularly enthusiastic attack, the tiny spider set the pillbug off rolling down the hill.
This disrupted a tiny centipede, which squiggled out from under a wee dirt clod, right across the spider's path. The jumping spider leaped on it, riding out the thrashing until the venom kicked in. The centipede put up quite a fight, but the spider went the entire six seconds without falling off.
Sometimes, you kick yourself when something happens, because you left the camera at home. This time I had the camera, but it's useless for photographing nearly microscopic activity.