Male, "blinking" on and off by changing the angle of its body. Thank you @leslieh for the ID, it certainly had us stumped.
Site: San Miguel
Dave Rabanes, Salaya Beach Houses
Thanks for pointing these out @u_phantasticus. Amazing effort people are putting in to hand pollinate them in the absence of bats.
Extracted from wet Quercus leaf litter using a Tullgren funnel and collected, 825 microns in length, tentative genus ID, also posted to BG. Specimen photos taken at the California Academy of Sciences.
Lovely field notes by @u_phantasticus were carefully inspected and approved by the subject matter.
Making an assumption. Sitting on Disholcaspis sp. (potato stem gall)
5-mm gall or needle mine (?) at tip of needle cluster of a two-needled pine tree, maybe Pinus monophylla. Also posted to BG here:
https://bugguide.net/node/view/1943677
I collected this structure and hope something emerges...
The host plant is here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/70234190
Note: likely a persistent bud scale per comments from others below.
Observation and photo by Robert Martinez, sent to nature@nhm.org