The Brown Hive  (Euconulus fulvus) is another very tiny snail found in leaf litter at Leaning Oaks. This is a holarctic species found in both the old and new worlds and there are introduced populations in western Australia.  The foot of this snail (not shown in these photos) is extremely long and thin, and overall, a Brown Hive on the move is a rather elegant mollusc.  
Many snails which have protective shells have anatomical peculiarities caused the twisting of the body up and into the shell. In the case of this snail the anus is located near the right eye of the animal, which, at the risk of seeming overly critical, sounds like a design flaw to me.  Like many snails it is a hermaphrodite, that is it has both male and female  gonads. The penis of this snail as a finger like projection.   Hives are named after old-fashioned bee hives, which are similarly shaped.  

(Punctum randolphii) also called Randoph's Dot-shell or Randolph's Dot Snail.  The Dots are a family of tiny, air breathing snails.  Dot snails are presumably called such because of their tiny size.  This species is only 1.25 to 1.4mm across..so tiny indeed.  Leah's photo here is of one on a Bigleaf Maple leaf.

The species must be very common here, this one was found by friend Robert Forsyth, and he found it on the 3rd leaf he looked at.  He looked like he expected to find it on the first leaf.

Or Chestnut Slug -or in several places , "no common name".  Derocerus invadens went totally unnoticed by us until malacologist Robert Forsyth was visiting, turned over a tile and pointed it out. He also happens to be the person who wrote the Land Snails of BC. He knows his stuff. 
This species has been tracked on its invasive path  from Italy in many parts of the world, seemingly only limited by cold winters. The first record in Canada was 1966 in a greenhouse in Quebec and then the first outside record was at UBC in 1974. Since then it has been found in various locations on southern Vancouver Island (Hutchison et al 2014).  That same paper cites a study where this species was unable to survive a temperature colder than -6.4 deg. C. It hit -5 a couple of nights ago and we do get below that a number of times in the winter, so whether the tramp becomes another pest at Leaning Oaks is yet to be determined! 

This will be one of the smallest organisms that we tackle on species a day! The lower photo shows one with a fingernail as a size reference.  

In 2010 the Threaded Vertigo was listed as Special Concern by the Committee on the Status of Endangered  Wildlife in Canada, the full report is here. They seem to be found mainly on Bigleaf Maple trees on southern Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and one on Saturna Island and have minimal dispersal capabilities -i.e. they ain't flying or jogging to the next tree, which may be a long ways a way when you are but a couple of millimetres long.  

The ones that we have found have all been on two stems of one maple and are either in the cracks or on the moss...interestingly at eye height. I'm sure that isn't sampling bias. 

At present this species is just known as Nearctula sp. 1 . There isn't any question on the validity of the species, just that it is in a been a taxonomic muddle. 

They really are blue!! Or at least this one was.  Prophysaon coeruleum comes in a range of blues and greys so I was very pleased that my lifer was not some dull grey.  

We have had squares of cardboard out all over the property for the past three years and the checking has been a bit perfunctory unfortunately. Well, maybe not so much perfunctory as without much hope.   There has been a lot of peering for a whole lot of  snails, isopods or slug frass. Today that all changed! The little endangered slug (SARA listed) is just over a centimetre and a half long and was was snuggled in to the corrugations. This species has been found in locations around Leaning Oaks, but never very often and never in abundance. There seemed to be no reason that it wouldn't be here. 

The fabulous local organization, Habitat Acquisition Trust or HAT has a program enlisting the help of landowners to put out the cover objects and then monitor them to get a better idea of the Blue-grey Taildropper range. They have also had some great identification brochures made to help differentiate between this critter and some of the other common species in the Victoria area. Information on this program with links to the ID guide are here. 

There are times where a species may seem at first blush to be rare, but once there is a concerted effort to search, it may not be the case. With this species, the HAT work has shown that they do occur in more areas than previously thought - but that they are not a common slug. Inventory is the best way to assess how at risk a species is. 

This large introduced slug is a familiar site for anyone that spends time outdoors on southern Vancouver Island.  The species is introduced from Europe and can be a major garden pest.  For many years we had very few of these at Leaning Oaks, but in the spring of 2013 the numbers increased greatly and the density of this species in the meadow and the garden was amazing.   There are a number of common names used for this species, and Chocolate Arion undoubtedly refers to a brown morph of this species.  Reddish colour forms (hence the Latin name Arion rufus) also exist but the commonest colour we see here is the jet black "Licorice Slug".

What is not to love about a slug that can grow up to 25 cm in length, is hermaphroditic, can be any colour from the darkest of solid chocolate brown to yellow with black spots, greenish with brown spots to nearly albino and produces the most extraordinary slime or mucous in prodigious quantities? This mucous is used for locomotion, aiding in keeping the skin from drying out and as a form of communication between slugs. More on the slime here (very cool stuff!): 
http://www.thealizone.com/web1/static.php?page=snail_slime_101
Ariolimax columbianus plays a very important role in the decomposition of leaf litter. And sometime lettuce seedlings.

Oh and if you lick it, you tongue will go numb. 

Look waaayy down, and under and behind and you will find a number of teensy tiny snails, including Vespericola columbianus. I think that I will need to learn how to put scale bars on these photos so you could see that the diameter of the shell is approximately 6 mm. Even at this small size, the fine covering of hairs is apparent and surprising to most. Snails are not thought of as furry and cuddly! The best place to find these is under leaf litter, logs and sword ferns. This one was on a piece of slimy mushroom (not identified!). If you are turned on by these wee, and sometimes not so wee critters, the best field guide is Robert Forsyth's Royal BC Museum handbook; "Land Snails of British Columbia".  

**Thanks very much to the local expert who caught my original misidentification of this critter. There is a somewhat similar small snail called Pygmy oregonian; Cryptomastix germana that I had mistaken this for. (Aug 11, 2014)

Turn over woody debris or brush away the fallen oak and maple leaves, peer between the cracks of the mossy rock outcrops and you will find many types of snails. This is one of the larger species that lives in the forested areas, often near the base of the Douglas-fir or Big-leafed Maples.  The yellow sideband of the Pacific Sideband  (Monadenia fidelis) is highly variable in width, some being wider and obvious, others like this one narrow and tanny yellow. Thanks to Lea Gelling for confirming the identification.

This pretty slug; the Yellow-bordered Taildropper (Prophysaon folioatum)  is the largest of the taildroppers that we have on southern Vancouver Island. This genus of slugs have a line of defense where if a beetle or other predator grabs at its "tail", it will excise the back end! Apparently they gush out more slime at the front end in order to convince the predator that the back end is the place to be. 

I found a number of these while looking for the much rarer Blue-grey Taildropper. Here is a handy ID guide:    http://www.hat.bc.ca/attachments/Blue-grey%20Taildropper%20ID%20Guide%20HAT%203.pdf