I blinked first

A major part of the cleanup crew in my aquarium is made up of mudflat snails, Batillaria attramentaria, those invasive snails that crunch under our feet on the beaches of Boundary Bay. They probably would be invasive here, too, were it not that the big burrowing anemone eats all she can catch.

Most of them spend their time under the sand; when they venture out, usually to climb the walls scrubbing off the algae, all that can be seen of them are the shells and a hint of dark flesh at the lip. Rarely, one decides to look me in the eye (or camera lens). One of those curious ones was cleaning off a shell right beside the wall the other day.

Striped face, striped tentacles. And a staring eye.

These eyes can see some shapes, but they don't have a focussing lens, so things are blurred. And it seems that they don't see colours. Still, they can detect light and dark, day and night. For the rest, they don't have to chase the algae, nor could they dodge predators if they saw them; the eyes are good enough.

And they don't blink.

The three curves in the shade under the body almost look like crawly-type feet, but that effect is either from the pattern or the folding of the one fleshy foot.

Full-face view. The eyes are at the base of the tentacles, and bulge outward. The one on the right is barely visible from here.

A couple of years ago, another snail consented to be photographed. I blogged about it here.

Big foot, patterned in green and grey, folded.

And doesn't this critter, if you ignore the shell, look like a cuttlefish? Well, except that the cuttlefish eyes are on the forehead. And the nose is really a mass of tentacles. And it changes colour. And ... Well, you'll see what I mean if you look at this Common cuttle, from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. (It's copyrighted, so I can only provide you with the link.)

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Ain't misbehaving

My hermit crabs have been acting out of character these last few weeks; fighting over females, yanking the poor girls about, challenging hermits three times their size, even across species lines. But when I try to get the evidence on camera, oh, they're such angels! Shrimp pellets wouldn't melt in their mouths!

Meanwhile, I'm staring into their habitat, taking random photos, waiting till they let their guard down.

These are today's crop: anemones and well-behaved hermits.

Another look at Val's tentacles.

A tiny orange-striped anemone, once riding a snail, now moved to just west of the pump, and growing fast.

Another small anemone, unidentified. It started out as one a few weeks ago, and has now cloned itself twice.

Val eats several snails a day, but never bothers the hermits, who shelter cozily under her tentacles.

(This hermit is usually in the thick of any fight going on. But not now; the camera is looking his way.)

Grainy-hand hermit, in an shell overgrown with algae, etc., and too small for him now, anyways.

Checking out new shells. I've just donated the white one, which I think should fit him.

Tomorrow, if the hermits persist in pretending innocence, snail eyes.

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Flowerpot mimic

Things are not always what they seem: I was chasing misbehaving hermits in the aquarium with the camera, (with little success) and happened across a desert plant. Or so it seemed, at first glance.

Small prickly pear plant in a flowerpot?

Rockweed grows right up to the high tide line on the south end of the Boundary Bay beach, just north of Point Roberts. But it's an unusual rockweed; small, brown, straggly plants, looking more dead than alive, each tiny plant attached to a stone small enough to be rolled around by any wave action. The curve of the shore must curb the energy of the currents here, for these to survive.

They survive well in the aquarium, too. Other rockweeds tend to disintegrate, probably because they've been torn from their moorings. These come home with the stone attached. They're not exactly beautiful, but the snails and hermits love them, for food and exercise both.

This turned out to be a branch tip of one of the weeds. To the naked eye, it looks brown, but the flash brings out other colours, red and green.

The blue "ball" is a periwinkle snail. One of its antennae is showing, to the bottom right.

And those white "cactus prickles"? Everything that's been in the aquarium for over a day, no matter how clean it was when I added it, (I scrub shells that I add, and the glass walls) develops a miniature forest of tiny algae and other organisms, hydroids, worm tubes, protozoa, with their resident mini-critters. Looking at any of them under a microscope, I always see scooting, busy copepods and transparent worms. Even smaller still are swarms of assorted diatoms. And over it, in the "atmosphere" over the "forest", larger copepods and baby amphipods dance.

At this magnification, maybe 4 times the actual size, and seen through algae-coated glass, the white spots would be copepods and amphipods. The fuzz on the circumference of the snail is probably made up of hydroids.

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Reflections, Cougar Creek Park

I never tire of this view, and it's even better than usual in fall and winter colours.

South bridge, from the heron's favourite fishing spot.

West bridge, and newly planted shrubbery for next spring's show.

A Skywatch post

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What have you done to my water?

Life is full of mysteries. And meddling people.

"Can't drink this. Nor wash my feet. What good is it?"

And now the meddling person has gone and removed the bowl entirely. The birdbath, too. What's a young raccoon to do?

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Contact

This photo always cheers me up:

"You were saying?"

It's an oldie, from 2009. I ran across it again tonight, sorting photos into some semblance of order. When my storage hard drive crashed, it took with it many of my photos, and corrupted many more. Then, transferring the remainder to a new storage drive, it crashed again, taking the new one with it mid-transfer. Even more photos got lost. Eventually I was able to rescue quite a few, higgledy-piggledy, without their original file folders. I'm even finding name changes, so that a photo of a beaded Mexican gourd was labelled "female scaup".

It's comforting to remember a summer afternoon, feeding a gull on the railing of the White Rock pier, one bite of old bread at a time.

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Yay!

I think I've got my computer whipped back into shape. Now I can get back to the good stuff. Like this tiny critter:

Unidentified, as yet. Something to look up on BugGuide. Very small. How small, I've forgotten. They'll know. 

And speaking of critters, here's an interesting article, with video, about how male spiders tie down their mates to avoid becoming supper.

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Oh, for an island of mine own!

And back before computers existed, too.

I am fighting a sulking, stubborn, unreasonable hard drive that wants to hog all my yummy photo files for itself and not share. I'm not giving up, but the island is tempting . . .

Somewhere in mid-channel, from the Tsawwassen-Schwartz Bay ferry.

These days, of course they have computers there, too. And internet access. No refuge anywhere!

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November flowers

At Mud Bay.

Early, pale sunset. Everything's turning brown, but the tansy's still going strong.

New tansy buds.

Mature buttons

All over buds, and a brown fly

Sea rocket, sheltered between the rocks on the shore.

Same photo, showing dying stems.

And one little brown mushroom in wet grass.

I'm playing catch-up, after a slow November; these photos are from several weeks ago.

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A gift for Little Momma

Sorting old photos, I came across a file of spider shots that I'd put aside "to deal with later", and then forgot about. They showed a pair of American house spiders, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, grandkids of the one I'd been tracking since 2007, still living in the same corner.

I obviously hadn't looked closely at them, back in 2009. I did today. Look what I'd missed!

Day 1, afternoon. Female in her skimpy web at the bottom, male visitor (suitor) at the top left. The fat, "boxing glove" pedipalps identify him as a mature male.

Day 2, 5:48 PM. He approaches with a gift, a silk-wrapped weevil.

Will she accept the gift? If not, she may eat him instead.

Yes! "Thank you very much; this is delicious!"

5:49 P.M. 16 legs. They're mating. He's on the far side; you can still see his pedipalps. She's not letting go of the weevil, though.

5:50 Success! He's impregnated her, and escaped uneaten. She's busy.

5:55 He rests, she eats.

And the next day:

Day 3, 5:07 P.M. She's finished with the weevil, but he's brought her a gift-wrapped bug.

And from what I remember, they raised a healthy brood of spiderlings, several egg sacs worth.

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Hungry!

I am constantly amazed at my sturdy anemone, "Val"; in little over a year, she has gone from a blob of torn tissue to this:

At rest. Occasionally, she inflates that column by another third, and stretches upward about 4 cm. The tentacles now measure over 4.5 cm.

The disc, with its big mouth, flanked by crumbs from her last meal.  Open like this, she dominates the whole aquarium.

And she probably has more growing to do. She now eats a snail or two every day, plus two big pellets of shrimp meal. And any amphipod that loses its way. She would eat my fingers, if I let her; she grabs them if I happen to get too close.

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Blue and white

November and December are slow months on our beaches. The only low tide of the day is scheduled around 3:00 A.M. Walking the shore in the afternoons, only sometimes are we lucky enough to get a couple of feet of intertidal zone. But the clouds make up for it.

Boundary Bay, looking south

I'm having computer problems; spent most of the day today reading the machine the riot act, and it's still misbehaving. Two year old computers are more stubborn than two year old kids.

A Skywatch post

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Well-lighted passage

The water in Georgia Strait this weekend was flat, even glassy in spots. The ferry skimmed along smoothly, almost imperceptibly, except for the wash streaming straight out behind us. And wonder of wonders, someone had recently washed the windows on the first ferry! I was able to stay inside, in the warmth, and still see the coasts of the islands our route passed.

First half of the trip across the Strait. Our route marked in red. Google maps.

Saltspring Island

Light beacon on point. I notice that a lot of them now are solar powered.

Just a gull playing in the ship's air stream.

Hole in the wall. These little, usually unvisited, creek openings have always intrigued me. I want to row over, go and clamber over the rocks, see what's living in there.

Another inviting spot. A sun-warmed mossy rock, with light beacon.

Huge winch and chain.

Ferry and two beacon lights, one on the point, and one out in the channel. Plus a little marker buoy (with a light) beside the ferry. The end of a dock on the far right holds a row of cormorants.

Lighthouse on the shady side. Georgina Point, Mayne Island, at the eastern end of Active Pass.

It's a tricky route. The ferry track passes barely a stone's throw from several rocky reefs. The gap between Clive and Knapp Islands, just out of Schwartz Bay is just over 300 yards wide; Active Pass is double that, but ferries pass each other along here. I'm glad there are so many markers.

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Wordless: sparkly

Well, almost wordless. Processing party photos tonight. Beach tomorrow, weather permitting.

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An opportunity lost.

I made a quick trip to Victoria, for a birthday party. We were early, so we stopped for supper beside the Inner Harbour, and afterwards walked to the Parliament Buildings and back. It was chilly, but that just makes the lights shine brighter.

Parliament Buildings, Victoria

The blue lighting on the water behind the boats is the old Undersea Gardens, an underwater aquarium that allowed visitors to view marine life in situ. I was disappointed to read later, that it is now closed, after almost 50 years of operation. I always meant to visit, and never got around to it. My mistake.

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Red-eye special

My aquarium setup now includes two tanks. In one, the hermits and crabs, a big polychaete worm, four or five kinds of snails, the big (and still growing) anemone from Campbell River, and a varying assortment of temporary visitors all go about their business; eating, mating, climbing, watching me. There's a strong pump with a filter, and a bubbler; everything is constantly in motion.

The other tank is quieter. I don't stir it up; there's no filter, just a smaller bubbler. Here amphipods and copepods breed happily, without being swallowed by the filter. Here, too, the occasional miniature snail or hydroid appears, seemingly out of nothing. It's a good place for babies.

A couple of times, I've seen a transparent bubble with tentacles resting on the glass. Tiny things; I had to bring out the microscope to see the bubble part. A few days ago, I saw a larger one, and thought it might be big enough now to handle the active tank.

One of the first photos.

Here it is, from the bottom, parked on the glass, tentacles streaming in the current. The circle is about 3 mm. across. In the center (the "yolk" of the "egg") is the column, seen from the bottom. The tentacles sprout from nine radiating arms; they're beaded all along their length.

To the naked eye, the whole thing is transparent jelly; the colour comes from the lighting and the background.

Disturbed, the critter bounces away, and swims, bubble first, tentacles following behind. It's really cute to watch, almost impossible with my equipment to photograph. Imagine one of those deep, transparent umbrellas with streamers hanging from all the tips. Now, watch it swim by opening and shutting itself. With each quick closing, it zooms off in a different direction, completely unpredictable. It coasts for half a second, then opens-shuts, and it's gone.

Resting on sea lettuce. Side view, showing the bell and the central workings.

I think this is a baby Red-eye jellyfish, Polyorchis pencillatus. ( I could easily, easily, be wrong.) These are common on our coast, growing to about 3-4 inches high. They are mentioned on several sites in eelgrass beds; that's probably how they have come to my tanks, riding the eelgrass that I collect for the hermits' jungle gym.

The tentacles can shrink or stretch to much longer than the bell. I saw this happen a couple of times, when the swimming jelly miscalculated and swam into the tentacles of a small anemone on the wall. The anemone didn't try to reel it in, and after a few minutes, the jelly extricated itself, and dropped to the bottom of the tank. I thought it was dying, but it recovered right away and swam off. But for several minutes, the tentacles were shrivelled and twisted.

Look at the base of the arms; see those dark dots? They are eyespots, red when the light is right, which gives the species its English name. They don't see much, but they are light sensitive, helping the jelly to orient itself. Two similar local species do not have these spots.

Side view, showing central column.

Usually, at least when I've been looking, the central section is a column the entire height of the bell. In most photos of mature specimens, it's a tangle of organs dangling from the central top.

It's been in the big tank for 3 days now, and seems content. Right now, it's riding the eelgrass.

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Look what I found!

This showed up on the wall of the aquarium a couple of days ago.

Unidentified medusa, about 3 mm. across bell.

More photos and the complete story, tomorrow.

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Wordless - Tree skeleton

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