Between the grains of sand

With a good microscope handy, I've been able to look more closely at what's happening on the White Rock beach. Last Tuesday, I brought home a few small containers of sand and water from the contaminated area. I've been examining them to see what's alive, down there between the sand grains.

Wet sand, as my camera sees it. The little orange specks are alive.

I've been taking notes, mostly sketches of what I see, and I've scanned a few pages. I can't identify any of these things, but they give an idea of what's there. Everything I drew was alive and moving. A couple of times, a humongous (or so it seemed) copepod scooted by, at least 10 times the size of the biggest of these critters. The copepod would be about 1 to 2 mm. long.

The images may be pale; I find them easier to see by clicking to get a full-size photo.

Page 1. "Hamburger critters" like a split bun with something in between, boxes and pen-like things.

The ones labelled "1" and several similar ones don't quite match each other, but may be different stages of the same animals. # 5 is like them, but was the largest I saw. In the center, I could see something fluttering. They all swim slowly, along the length-wise axis. The "pens", # 4 and three similar ones, moved only their tips as long as I watched.

Assorted swimmers and jittery stuff.

#6 looks like a piece of threaded pipe. All the ones I saw were the same size. #8 is sort of like an amphipod, but extremely jumpy and hard to see, even though it was large. The antennae/legs/hair moved constantly.

#9 is one of the strangest animals. These are very tiny, like a balloon on a black thread. The top constantly bobs back and forth, always in the same direction.

And #10 is like a hairy flatworm, always changing shape; it has no features that I could distinguish.

Worm?

This was another of the larger animals. It lay against one of the sand grains, moving along sluggishly. Occasionally, something would startle it, and it contracted instantly into a collapsed balloon shape. A minute later, it stretched out again. I'm not sure if I saw tentacles at the forward end, or if they were a trick of the light.

Movers and shakers.

These were the weirdest of all. #13: a blob with a smaller blobby end. It turned around and around, circling about the narrow "head" end, as if it were attached. To what? It was in an empty space between widely-spaced grains.

#14 is tiny. I only saw the one. A rough pyramid, with a tentacle that I could see inside the body as well as out. It traveled with the tentacle in the lead.

#15. A tubeworm? Long and snaky, it hid behind a sand grain, extending the tip. Closed, it looked like a worm head, but it kept opening wide, showing a circular mouth. From time to time, it suddenly extended itself its full length again, as if to capture something.

#16. I can't figure this one out. A dark oval shape that spins and spins, always in the same direction, very rapidly. I could barely see the connection, but a tiny blob spun with it, sometimes close, sometimes a distance away, but always coming back as if tethered.

#17 looks like a baby sand dollar. #18, like a jellyfish. Many different animals start life as a medusa, a jellyfish shape; this could be any of them.

Besides all these and the copepods, I saw a few larger worms slithering about.

All this is good news: there's life down there. Two of the containers held sand and water from about 100 feet down the beach from the center of the dead zone; they were full of those "hamburger" critters, and others. But the two bottles from the center were basically empty; nothing but sand grains and a tiny worm.

Elva Paulson asked how big the dead zone is. I checked again, on Google maps. From where we access the beach, moving west, we went, the first time, 300 feet before I found anything alive. The next time I measured, the zone had extended and the borderline was 1700 feet down the beach; about 1/2 kilometer.

Tuesday, we began to find beach hoppers and tiny snails somewhere between those two distances. And the first bottles of sand I collected were well within the former dead zone, about 100 feet from the access.

Looking at the satellite photo, I notice that a creek comes down from the top of the hill, just there. I wonder if there's another construction project up top.

No dignity whatsoever

I never get tired of this ...

I barely got out of the car at White Rock, when the gulls far down the beach saw that I had a bag in my hand, leapt into the air, and came squalling and jostling to be the first to get handouts.

"Me first! Me, me, me!"

"Well? Are you going to share or aren't you?"

"We're waiting."

"That was mine! I saw it first! Mine, I tell you!"

And when I poured out the last crumbs, too small for their beaks, they turned up their noses and flew back to their sandy patch with nary a word of thanks.

Hope on the rocks

Last November, I poured fresh seawater from the White Rock beach into my aquarium, and the aquarium died. (A sad post) A month later, we returned to the beach. I searched for live animals, and found that a large section of the beach was dead. (Empty beach)

Since then, I've been flipping stones every time we visit, with discouraging results. The dead zone increased, and I correlated the boundaries with the areas where several large homes are being built up on the cliffs above. It may be that run-off from their work is causing the damage: it may just be a coincidence.

When the tide drops, we walk over the stones covered with barnacles. Dead barnacles, these days; empty shells, for the most part. There is no greenery, except for bits of rockweed. Under the most likely stones, I have been finding the occasional group of immature shore crabs, sometimes a polychaete. Recently, I've seen the amphipods skidding sideways over the underside of the rocks; a welcome sight.

But no snails. No adult crabs. No live barnacles. No gulls dropping clams onto the stones. No flocks of birds feeding just off-shore.

This week, things are looking up. We caught the tide going out, and walked west from the park.

Looking west, towards Kwomais Point

I turned stones half-heartedly at first, finding the expected bare sand underneath. Sad. In the areas where we crunched over large dead barnacles, an odor of old cannery - stale, dead fish - overpowered the sharp aroma of saltwater. But as we went along,  we started to find hints of recovery.

A gull has found a juicy crab.

Burrowing anemone. Small, and just the one, but it's a start.

Purple starfish. We found four, looking healthy.

On the larger rocks, well to the west and in the mid-intertidal zone, the barnacles and mussels are doing fine. And we even found a few whelks; these and two others. 

And among the barnacles on some of the larger rocks, the bright green sea lettuce is starting to grow again.

I didn't see any shore crabs under stones this time, but a few of the tiny black snails that usually pepper all the stony areas showed up. One live clam lay on the sand, with his foot out, getting ready to bury himself. I helped him along, before a gull found him. And every stone sheltered amphipods.

From the center of the dead zone, I brought back a few pill bottles of sand and water. Last night, I examined two under the microscope. I found two copepods, an amphipod-like critter, something that looked like a busy hairy bacterium, a medusa, a long (at least under the 'scope) worm, and dozens of tiny swimming boxes and ovals and wormy things. It's not what it used to be, but it's young life.

I think the beach is going to make it.

Another lichen

Lipstick cladonia grows on an old fence in Beach Grove, pretending to be several different lichens.

The "lipstick". Clubs (podetia) tipped with bright red fruiting bodies (apothecia).

It starts out as tiny leaf-like scales.

Then bursts out in fantastic shapes covered with powdery soredia, which  may serve as "seed" to start new lichens.

Eagles in love

High above the White Rock beach, an eagle sat, alone. While we watched, he started to call:

"Squeak, whistle, squeak!"

"I'm coming!"

His mate joined him, and they sang a duet.

"Whistle, squeak, whistle." And the squeakiest  "Tweet, tweet, tweet!" I've ever heard.

The female may repeat a single, soft, high-pitched note that has been called “unlike any other calls in nature”; apparently this signals her readiness for copulation. (From All About Birds)

The photos are poor; the eagles were far away. I wished, later, that I had had the camera on video, to get the female's call.

Hearts and Flowers for Valentine's Day

This was my grandmother's purse, long, long ago. I wonder; did she carry her lacy handkerchief in it when she walked out with my grandfather? There isn't room in it for much else.

It went well with her ribbons and lace collar.

Detail

Driveway decor

At the entrance to a Beach Grove house, a raised corner bed holds periwinkle vines and a painted metal path light, knee-high. On that one lamp, none of the others, and nowhere else nearby, a small collection of lichens grows.

Grey-green leaf lichen, Pincushion sunburst lichen, and, I think, the beginnings of a moss patch.

Feeding on the paint? Or do the birds perch on the lamp and fertilize it?

Zooming in. Look at the photo full-size to see the dark grey hairs growing out of the thalli, near the edges. I don't know if they're reproductive structures or holdfasts, or something else entirely.

Falling asleep

No post tonight. Blame it on my grandson. He showed up this afternoon with a surprise: his phase microscope, which he is lending me for a week.

I've burnt out my eyes learning to work it and fell asleep with my eye glued to the lens. Enough! I'm going to bed. Goodnight,  y'all!

Halfway caught up

I promised you everything but the kitchen sink. There's more than I knew; these are the first three packing cases.

First lot: Beaches and birds:

The duck pond at Centennial Beach. The blue tarp-covered box at the back, eating up a good chunk of the marsh, will be new concession stands/washrooms/etc.

Gull in the duck pond, with reflections of the reeds where the red-winged blackbirds nest.

This makes Laurie laugh. Can you see what it is?

Mount Baker, with Crescent Beach in the foreground.

And this made us both laugh. Someone set up a bagel tree for the crows. They hadn't found it yet.

A green winged teal, quite a distance away, in the rain.

Leaving the beach, walking back to the car, we passed my favourite purple wall, with these tall grasses (well over 6 feet) in winter drab in front of it.

Along the street behind Crescent Beach, a gargoyle guards a gate.

His little companion chuckles between the roots of a tree.

Lot 2: Critters and their stories.

A tiny jumping spider threatens the camera.

And here's my shape-shifting spider. Sort of.

In mid-October of last year, Laurie brought me a tiny, bouncy, hoppy, blonde spider, and I put her in a glass box and kept her fed. I called her Hopalong, for convenience sake. From time to time, I brought in new branches for her, checking them over carefully for insects that could serve as food, or other spiders.

Later on, she had molted, and was twice the size. Twice, I brought her smaller spiders, identical to her in all but size. She ate them. I was calling her Hoppy by now.

It took some doing; she was incredibly good at hiding in plain sight, but eventually I got some decent photos and sent them in to BugGuide, both the baby pics and the adult ones. Confusion ensued. How can a spider change species in the course of a monitored life? The baby was a Theridion; the adult was a Philodromus. After a certain amount of to-ing an fro-ing, we decided that Hoppy, the Philodromus, must have come in on one of the branches, hiding so well that even though I examined them all with a lens, I never saw her. And, of course, she had eaten poor Hopalong.

She's got her comeuppance. Last week I brought in new branches for her. I looked them over extremely carefully, finding two pinhead black spiders, and a plant louse or two. I saw her two days later, scooting down a branch; that was the last time. After a couple of days, I took the branches out and cleaned the box, looking for her. No Hoppy; instead, I found this crab spider, an Ozyptila, another of the spider clans that blend in perfectly to their background to ambush their prey. In the detritus at the bottom of the box, I found the mangled remains of a Philodromus, sucked dry.

The current resident, fat with Hoppy's juices.

Turn about's fair play, I guess.

One more story: remember this?

Not an igloo.

I found this on a drying maple leaf towards the end of last October. Then, it was just a silky ball, with no sign of entrance or exit. I put it in a sealed plastic container and left it outside to winter. I checked it a couple of times; nothing seemed to be happening until two weeks ago, when I found the ball perforated and empty.

In a corner of the container, a dead wasp lay, all scrunched up.

Previous resident of the not-igloo.

I still have to resize photos to send in to BugGuide, for identification, which I will do by Monday.

Lot 3: Practicing on Element 10.

I've been plugging away at this, challenging myself with more difficult tasks each time. Here are a few things that look like they might be useful once I get proficient at them.

A complicated photo of a trail through the bush at Crescent Beach, with too-dark areas, and burnt-out whites. I learned to manage each section separately. I'm not too happy with the result, but next time I should do better.

I'm happy with this. An adult bulrush bug, 4.5 mm long; the same species as the "cutie" nymph. This is a composite of two photos, one with the head in focus, the second with the back a bit better, but a blur where the head was. This technique has real possibilities.

I cleaned up and corrected colour and lighting on a 10-year-old photo that was too dark to see. It's a Gray Jay, near a cabin in Chase,  BC.

An experiment. The osprey was 'way over to the side and top of the photo; the trees far below. Most of the photo was empty cloud. I used the compression feature to squish the photo together, removing most of the cloud in the center. This was fun, but I don't think I'll use it much.

I did a poor job of removing the entire messy background and replacing it with the grass from another photo. Got rid of half a mallard in the process. A simple select and blend command sort of worked, but I had to finish it off with the healing tool. This will be useful once I get the hang of it.

Now, back to work. Lichens, next.

Blackbird trees

The redwing blackbirds are singing in these trees. With the afternoon sun behind them, we could hear the birds, but only see them when they changed branches.

I know there are more than the one I see here.

A Skywatch post.

Stripy nymph

Isn't he a cutie?

Found inside a cattail head.

I've sent this one and an adult in to BugGuide and will post their verdict later.
*Update: it's Chilacis typhae, the bulrush bug.

My "To blog" folder is full, and I'm getting 'way behind. I think I must do a everything-but-the-kitchen-sink post in the next day or two. Bugs and birds and shape-shifting spiders, skies, mountains, you-name-it, crammed in higgledy-piggledy. You have been warned!

Two by two

Valentine's Day is almost here, and the birds at Boundary bay are in the mood already:

Matching outfits

The singer, with his shy mate in the background

Of one mind

"Come and sit by me!"

Side by side

Along the Ladner Trunk Road, an eagle pair was sitting in a tree next to last year's nest, discussing upgrades.

And a lonely chickadee, still without his mate, called out, over and over, "Here, sweetie! Here, sweetie!"

Last year, in a blackberry bush by the dike, a small bird decorated her nest with pages from a book. We found it this afternoon, bleached and torn, but still recognizable.

"Our babies will grow up with everything they need; berries, butterflies and books, too!"