can anyone identify this insect?

[pellgarlic]

hi, beyond my back garden, there's a bit of "scrub" land with sycamores, rowans and cherry trees. amongst the "living" trees, there are some that have been cut down, and were basically piled up on the ground. i grabbed a bit of cherry to carve a spoon from (it seemed like it hadn't been there that long - didn't look rotten or anything).

i noticed today that there were a couple of very small - tiny - insects crawling about on it. one about 1mm long, and kind of "cream" coloured, the other even smaller and more translucent looking. i do get some insects coming off my houseplants from time to time - very small black flies, so i'm not sure if it's just that, but the fact that the insects seem very attached to the bit of cherry wood has me a little concerned that i've brought some kind of wood-eating insect into the house... i'm hoping that someone will be able to help me identify the wee beasties - i managed to get a half decent photo of the larger one (with my thumb beside it to show scale =P).

 

[_mark_]

The rentokill site is good for identifying woodboring insects, that is way to small.

 

[JonathanD]

It does look like a wood borer, Ptinus fur. The males are that size, colour and have the same length antennae.

 

[pellgarlic]

_mark_ - yeah, it is a bit too small in the photo to really get an idea =P unfortunately, that's as close as my camera would allow me to get to it and still focus on it... i had a look at the rentokil website, but i didn't really get anywhere - looks like it would help to identify some insects, but none seemed to look like the one in my photo above...

JonathanD - i guess it could be a ptinus fur... but the one in my photo is so small, maybe still too young, that it doesn't really resemble the photos i can find in a google image search for "ptinus fur"...

thanks both for your suggestions though - as a precaution, i've taken the various bits of wood that i got from that area out of my house - put them into a carrier bag, tied it up and put it in the boot of my car =\ nowhere else to put them, and didn't want to abandon my spoon quite yet, if there's a chance i can redeem it...

i guess maybe it was a bad idea to pick up wood that was already piled up, and had been for an unknown length of time. i wonder if there's anything i can do to try to avoid getting "infested" wood? obviously, i don't want to take "living" wood off a tree, but finding a suitable piece that has died naturally recently enough to be of use is proving difficult, so i'm resorting to taking stuff that's been dead for a while, and potentially carrying beasties like those above...