All the way home

The spider, a fat, yellowish half-inch blob of a spider, dangled herself from a thread directly over my bed. Over my pillow; I opened my eyes and found myself staring into hers. I squirmed out from under and got up.

I was living in a 50-year-old log cabin in the Bella Coola Valley, 300 miles as the eagle flies north of Vancouver. These were whole logs, unplaned, chinked with ancient mud, with a "new" addition of home-sawn lumber, insulated with ancient rags and sawdust; bugs of all sorts were always with us, and we had learned to tolerate them. More or less. A spider hanging over my head while I slept was too much.

I twined a stick in the web and carried her downstairs and outside to the front porch; she would be very useful there, eating mosquitoes.

The next morning, she was hanging over my head.

Rinse, repeat. And again. Every morning, there she was, fat and sassy.

I gave up; I carefully moved her to the other side of my bedroom, to the alcove in front of the window, open for the duration of the warm weather. She scooted into the framework. "Stay there," I admonished her.

A workable compromise. She hung there all summer, getting bulkier every day. Occasionally, I fed her a moth that insisted on buzzing my bedside lamp. When the cold weather came, she disappeared.

How is it that a spider does that? How does she find her way home? Why does she persist in living "here" and no place else? Unanswered questions.

Cut to the present, and my tame, citified existence. A tiny spider hung himself from a thread over my desk. I climbed onto a chair and reached for him; he scuttled up out of my reach. Ok, fine. Maybe he'd catch a mosquito for me. But later, here he was, walking along the edge of my in box. Not ok. Again, he didn't let himself be caught; after several of my attempts, he went back to the ceiling.

I kept on going after him for several days; he kept tying his threads to different items on my desk, but racing for cover at the least move on my part. I began calling him my "nervous wreck spider".

Finally, I managed to get above him and move him, thread and all. Outside with you, spidey!

The next evening -- you guessed it; he was hanging over my desk.

That did it. Next time I got a handle on him, he went into a plastic jar lid with a clear piece of plastic taped on top. Here he is, in jail:

Looks to me like a tiny cross spider, Araneus diadematus.

A couple of days later, I fed him a mosquito. He was afraid of the monster until it had tangled itself up in his web and was immobilized. Still a nervous wreck. See the relative sizes: those flecks at the bottom are mosquito scales.

This week I fed him a woodbug. But I must not have taped the plastic on as securely as I thought; in the morning, I found a dead woodbug, but no spider. Oops! Well, maybe, by now, he would have learned his lesson, and he is long gone.

Nope. He is hanging above my desk, as I write this.

Next time I catch him, he's going for a long trip, to the trees across the lawn. I wonder how long it will take him to make his way back.

Two that got away, one that didn't.

Seen on or near the beach in Boundary Bay:

A well-tied-down piling. Except that it up and left:


At the roadside, a crab, on the move. (Well, not really.)


A few houses away, the one that didn't get away. A whale. At least, its jawbone.


Here's a close-up, showing the texture of the bone:


And a few small rocks. These are a better size for the Rock Flipping Day. And are probably sheltering dozens of squirmy and crawly beasties each.

Neighbourhood Stroll

Down the alley, across the schoolyard, around the block. And home again. A breather in between chores.

Pink dead nettle?

The fruits or seed cases of some variety of magnolia.

Fading lily.

"Filler" in a flower pot.

Roses, getting ready to set hips.

And a rock, for the 2nd, the International Rock Flipping Day. Or is this still too big?

Flippin' Rocks

International Rock Flipping Day, September 2, 2007. Sounds like fun. I'm in.

How about you? Read all about it here!


Let's see:

• Camera -- check.
• Close-up lens -- check.
• Notepad -- check.
• Pen -- yup.
• Back brace -- uh-huh.
• Pry bar -- ok.
• Compliant teenager -- hmmm...
  

Well, maybe I'll just aim for something a bit smaller.

Sunny Afternoon

At Burnaby Lake.

We sat on the hillside, resting our feet and breathing non-musty air after an afternoon of antiquing. The sun had come out and the wind was warm. In the field below, beyond the parking lot, cricketers in white clattered and shouted. Farther down, a flock of Canada geese nibbled at the grass. On our left, the creek, hardhack and a stand of touch-me-nots, invasive but pretty. And directly in front, two model airplanes swooped, almost as graceful as swallows.


Not quite so graceful, nor so high: crows begging for handouts (I gave them stale peanuts) in the parking lot.

Just a shell from a garage sale

Abalone. Found on some distant beach, empty except for the remains of hitchhikers. Enjoyed for a time, stashed, forgotten, piled on a table with junk. Useful, perhaps, as a soap dish, an ashtray, a key catcher. Just a buck.

A teller of tales, if you look closely. And a thing of beauty.


In the sea, life builds on life. Kelp on clumps of mussels, snails on the kelp, barnacles on the snails, algae on the barnacles. Barnacles on everything, actually. The abalone bears both pink an white barnacles, still holding their shape. Others have broken off, leaving only the white scar of their base.


Tube worms cemented their homes among the barnacles; curlicues, macaroni shapes, masses of tiny shelly bubbles. And snails bored deep holes in the shell to get at the meat inside.


All this can be seen while the abalone lives. But the inner magic is only revealed after its death.

The "scar" where the muscle was attached.

One of a row of "portholes".

I am struck dumb.

Baby pictures

When the house spider's eggs hatched, 5 days ago, (We Haz Babies!) Wren wrote in the comments that she had only seen masses of spiderlings, never single ones. I have been watching ever since, hoping to catch one on its own.

Difficult. For the first 4 days, they huddled together around the egg case, so tightly that it was hard to see them with the naked eye as more than a grainy mass.

I tried to get photos, but they were just too tiny and too inaccessible, up in the dark corner, far above my reach, even from the stepladder, for clear shots.

Day two. Moving around a bit.

Day three. With artificial light.

Over the last two days, the crowd has been thinning and spreading out; their numbers were dropping. I kept looking for strays, but any that left the group just plain disappeared.

Last night, with only a couple of dozen babies left, I went out after dark with a flashlight and examined the web. Ah-hah! Tiny moving dots showed up along some of the strands. It took some doing, but I caught two.

Day five. Momma and the last of the brood.

Those guys are tiny! Inside, under the light, I could barely see them with the naked eye; they could have been dust motes, for all I could tell. Only with my hand microscope (60x) could I see them with any clarity.

So; no photos of single spiderlings. Sorry, Wren.

At that age and size, their abdomen is a pale yellowish tan, the thorax reddish. But they have their mother's fat belly, the darker joints on the legs, and the beginning of a pattern, tiny black dots on the upper abdomen. And under the microscope, I can see their eyes clearly, something I have never managed with the mother; she always seems to have them shielded behind the legs.

When I had done examining them, I realized that I could have gotten others all over me, prowling around the web; they are so small, I would never have noticed. Suddenly, I could feel them crawling down my neck and up my arms. Nothing but my imagination, but still, I had to shower and change clothes and wipe down the desk with alcohol before I could settle down again.

But what an adventure their life is! So tiny, and walking all that long, long way out of the mother's web, out into the world where danger lurks at every corner. The trees across the lawn are festooned with the webs of Araneus diadematus, several orders of magnitude larger than they and more than happy to snack on a mouthful of baby Achearanea. They will have far to go before they find safe places to set up shop.

Mud Shots

Mud Bay, a couple of weeks ago:

A line of grass sprouts from a hidden root. It reminds me of a windbreak; tall trees along a property line.

Dali? No. Just posts for some long-forgotten project. The mud won that battle.

A lone eagle, traveling fast, in a straight line. No circling here; there is no prey.

Is it censorship season or something?

Hard on the heels of the Turkish blocking of all Wordpress accounts, because one Adnan Oktar didn't like what bloggers had written about him, (see my post for links), comes this: a crackpot so-(self)-called scientist, Stuart Pivar, sues PZ Myers for libel.

Because he didn't like PZ's book review. Because PZ called him a "classic crackpot".

That's it. He didn't like the assessment, so he goes ahead and proves that it is appropriate; he acts like a "classic crackpot."

Blake Stacey has the story, updated as new comments come in from other blogs.

PZ, in one of his two book reviews (first edition, second edition of the book), shows a sample of his "research": an illustration of the development of a spider.

Here it is; you be the judge.

I had never seen before a spider with 10 legs. Here's a real spider, with all those legs clearly visible:

8 (eight) (4 per side) legs

Pivar's spider is not as accurate as this one (from an IIDB post):


At least they got the number of legs right. And, by the way, the number of legs is the first piece of information in any definition of the word, "spider".

From Encarta, for example:

spi·der plural spi·ders
noun
Definition: 1. eight-legged animal that spins webs:

Stuart Pivar is a crackpot.

We Haz Babies!

American house spider babies, that is. (Background posts: Spider Watching and Fresh-Laid Eggs!)

The proud mother:

Fat Momma with newest eggs

The Achearanea tepidariorum family; Momma, babies and egg case

Spiderlings! Aren't they cute?

I've been checking these eggs morning and evening. They first appeared Monday morning, the 20th. Which makes the incubation period, from July 26th to yesterday, 25 days. That question answered.

And she has laid a second batch of eggs, so I'll be looking for those babes the middle of September.

Next questions: 1. how many of those spiderlings will survive? 2. And how long will they sit around their old case before they move out? (I just checked with a flashlight; they are still clumped in the same spot.)

About the males: back in July, a small male hung around the web for a week or two. Then he disappeared, about the time she laid those eggs. I wondered if he had been eaten. Last week, there was another, a bit smaller; after a few days he had competition, a second tiny male. I kept an eye on them and watched one make advances up to within an inch or so away, but then he retreated to the edge of her web again. Yesterday, there was no sign of either male.

Question # 3: Does she eat the males as soon as they dare to breed with her? Or when she's ready to lay eggs?

Around the corner, Chica has laid her own eggs, the same day. Hmmm...

Chica. I love this photo, against the light.

Next: Baby Pictures

Turkeys!

Remember that insult? My kids and their friends were using it back in the 1980s, to mean something akin to "stupid". I thought it was unfair, sometimes to the birds, and sometimes to the targets, usually other friends.

It may come back, but now with a slightly different slant.

Turkey (the country, not the bird) has blocked all wordpress blogs because one real turkey, in the 1980s sense, by name Harun Yahya, complained that bloggers were "defaming" him. (Read, "telling the truth about" him.)

Read more about it on Bug Girl's blog, microecos, Thoughts in a Haystack, Pharyngula, etc.

I'll quote a section from Pharyngula.

That fanatical nitwit wrote in to wordpress to brag about his accomplishment and demand that blogs that offend him be shut down, such as this one, and by the way, he'd also like all these blogs censored:

http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://fitikado.wordpress.com
http://oktarbabuna.wordpress.com
http://adnancilar.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://whoisharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktargercekleri.wordpress.com/
http://quiestharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://harunyahyaarabic.wordpress.com/
http://safsataciharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://savsatalaracevap.wordpress.com/

It sure would be a shame if someone echoed all those urls, and these anti-creationist blogs got more publicity and attention because of a stunt by Adnan Oktar, now wouldn't it?

And now, I guess, poor Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. Harun Yahya, will have to go back to court to have Blogspot and Scienceblogs blocked, too.

Turkeys!

Other People's Gardens

... all the colours of the rainbow. Boundary Bay, South.

Guarding the gate

Tulip tree, a late bloomer, deep purple-pink

Big and bold

Garden wall

A shy purple petunia. I love this deep shade.

White. Almost papery.

Yellow

Leaping flames

A bee in her bonnet

White in the shade takes on a green tinge.

Turning over stones

Summer has come (when? I must have missed it) and gone. The geese are on the move again, and the nights are cold. Yesterday the clouds threatened rain. We went to Boundary Bay anyhow, in hopes that the sun would be shining there. It was. For a while.

High tide

Is this a snake, lizard or log?

Another snake-ish piece of driftwood

The tide was almost at its peak, leaving us a thin strip of beach, mostly rocky, to walk along. We poked among the stones, searching for crabs. The small grey crabs on the northern end of this beach are shy creatures; they scuttle for shelter as soon as the light hits them. Here, towards the southern tip, some hide; but last time I was here, I found green crabs that stand their ground and offer battle, waving their pincers menacingly. I poked at one with a fingertip, and it grabbed and held on. I lost that round.

The next time, I used an edge of a clamshell; the tiny, half-inch crab was more than willing to attack it over and over again.

I dare you!

On guard

I found other crabs this time, small, thoroughly camouflaged ones. They neither ran for shelter not waved pincers. They didn't need to.

Blending in

We passed a long stretch of lugworm egg cases, (Here, and here.) interspersed with coiled piles of fecal castings, tiny and large. Among the far-too-plentiful invasive battilaria snails, I was pleased to discover a few miniature, fatter ones, probably native to the area.

And, turning over barnacled rocks to see if I could get a good look at something that twisted and flashed out of sight, I found a pair of these:

I don't know what they are. This is the large one, and the white piles beside it are small barnacles. They were both soft to touch, and shrunk away from my finger, just a bit. The jelly-like flesh is transparent, brown, with greenish stripes inside the gel, not on the surface. The creamy top disappeared inside after I had touched it. They both had tiny bits of sand glued to their skin, shining like jewels in the sunshine. (Click on the photo to get the full effect.)

They look to me like anenomes, closed in for low tide. * But they are in the wrong place, on rocks just at the high tide line. And I have never seen an anenome so small, nor alone like these two were.

So I've got another week of Googling and reading and leafing through indexes to do. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

It was getting close to supper-time. We turned back.

It was raining when we got to the car.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Update: Hugh Griffiths identified them for me in the comments; they are Diadumene lineata, reported in the Exotic Species Guide (San Francisco). Thanks Hugh!

Weekly (more or less) Five (actually, twelve)

Five Science Links:

Latent memories from previous generations may help birds to fly. From Science Daily. Note: they say may. Something to think about, anyway.

I mentioned this earlier. We knew about global warming, some of its causes and results, back in the 1950s. GrrlScientist has the video.

Squirrels raise the temperature of their tails to warn off rattlesnakes. Wierd. From Afarensis.

How to build a bat detector. Hat tip to Hugh.

Practical science: Developing a better font for highway signs. From Cognitive Daily.

Other stuff:

25 World's Wierdest Animals. They left some of the goodies out, though.

Larry Moran quotes Mark Twain.

You can run, but you can't hide. Discussion on Pharyngula about the spy technology in use, and about to be expanded - to watch all of us.

Cleavers. Those tiny prickly seeds that get all over your pant legs and socks. I got them in my hair, crouching down to take their photo.

News:

Volcano erupts in Guatemala. Night shots by MyBootsnMe. Aug. 8 and 9 (so far).

Earthquake in Peru, a few hours ago. 8 on the Richter scale. (I've been through a few 6s; those are scary enough. I've seen the results, close up, of an 8. Newspaper stories don't do justice to it.) Here, with links to more stories.

Humour: We need some, after the news.

Remember the Doomsday clock? It has run down.

And Elvis laughs!

Quiet morning, with plenty of company

Bug Season:
The weather has warmed up a bit in the last couple of days. We got some work done outside; pruned some bushes, pulled a few handfuls of weeds, moved a plant or two. The birds and bugs have been mostly quiet until now, but with the slight warmth they have come out of hiding. The chickadees have been at the feeder all day today, and mosquitoes are out for blood. Ripping up invading stems of dead nettle, I disturbed a nest of harvestmen (daddy long-legs); they took off running in all directions.

And a big cross spider, Araneus diadematus (I think), ousted Chica from her protected spot and guarded his own web there for two days. Last night, he moved; he started a large web anchored on Laurie's bike, the top of the garden wall and the screen door. When I stepped out in the morning, I walked right through it.

Spider web on my face. I hate that.

The central part of the web was intact; I exacted my revenge by setting up the tripod a couple of inches away and clicking at him. Finally, I removed the anchors from the bike and he scooted off, winding up the remains of his web in a ball as he went.

He's probably out there now, rebuilding.

While I had the camera and close-up lens outside, I went prowling. See what I found!

On the wall beside my bedroom window, a tiny brown moth, Scoparia biplagialis.

In a rolled up hydrangea leaf, a shy earwig:

Look at that jar-opener tail end!

Among the spores on a common "weed" fern, a leaf-hopper, so tiny that I didn't even notice it until I had the camera focussed. I think it's a privet leafhopper, Fiebriella. Around its feet, miniature orange bugs wandered here and there. I could barely see them with the naked eye. You can see one here, just a blurred spot of orange a bit to the rear of the leafhopper.

On another frond, I found a smaller hopper, whether a nymph of the same species or a different one, I don't know. And I think that's its cast-off molt beside it.

And finally, near Chica's new home high on the wall, a happy couple of lauxaniid flies:

I keep checking. No spiderlings yet in Fat Momma's web. How long is the incubation period? Anybody know? It's been three weeks already.

Glass Half Empty, Glass Half Full

Adrift

We've had a chilly, rainy August. And a cool July. Not for the first time; BC's weather is generally unpredictable.

But this year, it seems, has been a little more out of kilter than usual. There were severe storms last winter, flooding in November, a severe windstorm in December, when thousands of trees were blown down; not only Stanley Park suffered, but all our green spaces. I blogged about the damage in Watershed Park last spring; we passed a big downed tree just last week in the SAMWMA.

Add to that, a record (for this area) snowfall (I measured 18 inches on my birdbath), a 5-metre high tide plus winds that washed out a section of Boundary Bay's seawall, storm-caused power outages (50,000 homes here, 200,000 just across the border), flooding in the upper Fraser River this June leading to sandbagging as far south as New Westminster, and more. The Lower Mainland's reputation as a laid-back paradise may not recover.

The storm that swamped Ladner's harbour was just one of these events, but a significant one. Not in terms of the immediate damage, but possibly as an advance warning.

Natural Resources Canada, in a page on climate change impacts, focuses on the Fraser Delta.

Even today, parts of the coastline of the Strait of Georgia are eroded by waves during winter storms. Higher seas may also flood deltas, tidal marshes, and other low-lying coastal areas. Dykes may have to be built or upgraded to protect these areas.


Fraser Delta tidal marshes are critical habitats for waterfowl, shorebirds, and salmon fry. A rise in sea level may drown the marshes or squeeze them against sea dykes that protect Richmond, Ladner, and Delta.

...
What impact would the loss of Fraser Delta marshes have on ducks, geese, and shorebirds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway?

Climate change. We experience it as a local series of events, but we know it is happening around the globe. Flooding on the Thames, calving icebergs in northern waters, hurricanes in the Pacific not following their own rules, drought in the US, typhoons in China, a heatwave in Hungary ... Bird flu and malaria, HIV and the latest viral mutations ... Extinct dolphins and invasive snails ...

And nothing we can do about it. Or is there?

It certainly feels as if nothing I can do will make any difference. Sure, I can avoid useless consumption, eat local foods, keep the car tuned up, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". But so what? The roads are still jammed with SUVs, the grocery still sells fruit and veggies from the other end of the globe. What good is my little bit?

And here is my pessimistic, glass-half-empty, outlook: some of us, quite a few of us, see what's happening and want to make any changes necessary to at least ameliorate the impact. But many people, important, influential people, do not see this. Or do not care. And the majority will go along in their happy cloud, "eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage", as the Bible puts it, until disaster slaps them in the face.

Then, oh, then; there will be an uproar, a hullabaloo; "We've got to do something!" And people will pursue solutions -- any solutions, possible or not -- with great energy. But it will be too late by then.

Really, it is already too late for our best efforts to have much effect. We should have been working at this back in the 1950s.* We knew at least some of the dangers, even then. We have been inexcusably lax.

Painted cement block, Ladner Harbour Pub

But ... I am not always pessimistic. My glass might be half-full.

This old earth, and we two-legged, chattering inhabitants with it, have weathered many storms before. Not easily, not comfortably; but we made it. And provided we don't blow ourselves into clouds of hot dust, we will possibly make it through again.

Our children and grandchildren are in for a rough ride. And their world will not be the one we know. But they will see the clouds in the sky, the green of growing things; they will feel the warmth of the sun. They will look at the fruit of their efforts, they will look into smiling eyes, and they will feel joy.

One can hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Update: GrrlScientist has a video from 1953 that is a must-see in this context. Quite exaggerated, with a 150-foot rise in sea levels, but the basic idea was there. Did people ignore it because it was just too unpleasant to live with? Or because it was a SEP? I know that I knew about the "Greenhouse effect", as it was called back then, in the 1960s.

Not Suitable For Children

I hope you are over 13, if you are reading this. Otherwise, you'd better get permission.

Because:

Because, they tell me, I used the word, "dead", 3 whole times! (As in dead spider, dead weeds, etc.) Oops, there goes my count up to 6; cover your ears.

And I used the word "ass" once. (In a title, yet; "Jawbone of an Ass") Make that thrice, now. Ooooh! What a bad, bad blogger I am!

~~~~~~~~~~

Click on the graphic to test your own blog or website.

Snake head

Montbretia in a vase

Hidden at high water

Ladner Harbour, at high tide, is deceptive.

But the water goes down twice daily, and reveals scenes like these:

Weeds growing in an open boat sunken in the mud. A decent-looking cabin boat, coated prow to stern with drying mud. A nice little drowned sailboat, jammed in among still-floating docks piled high with rescued gear.




Detail of a smaller boat. This is the same boat that showed up in this January newspaper photo:

From The Vancouver Sun, January 8, 2007, commenting on some of the results of last winter's storms, including the windstorm in mid-December that felled thousands of trees in Stanley Park.

We parked the car at the entrance to one of the docks on the north side of the harbour. An old truck stood there, surrounded by mounds of rubbish; broken windows, twisted pipes, unidentifiable remains of machinery, wires, torn tarps.

Scene in a broken window, with Laurie's boot.

Things hadn't always been like this; there was a carefully-made number plate nailed to a tree at the entrance to the ramp, and someone had, once upon a time, planted flowers.


But the ramp itself was twisted and torn. I started down, cautiously. A truck drove up, and a couple got out and hurried past us, down towards the docks. "Be careful," the woman warned me; "I fell through last week."

We made it as far as the first solid footing, and stood photographing sunken boats. The man came around a shed carrying old lumber, which he piled on one side. Wherever there was a flattish spot, there were already heaps of could-be-useful-someday gear. We asked about the place; was he the owner?

"No, I'm just helping with the cleanup." He pointed out boats; that one, and that one, and that one, and that over there would be stripped of anything useful, then destroyed. He thought they could repair the one pulled up in the weeds.

We left them to their work and went on to the park, where the view was serene and green.

SAMWMA, by BCMELP, from BCWW ...

... If they could have thought up a longer, more unwieldy acronym, I'm sure they would have used it. Government bureaucracies are good at that.

It stands for South Arm Marshes Wildlife Management Area, managed by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, described by British Columbian Wildlife Watch. The SAMWMA is the marshland area mostly enclosed and criss-crossed by the alternate channels of the Fraser River on this map, below. Ladner Harbour is at the anchor on the south bank, Finn Slough at the northern anchor, Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary at the western shore, where the pair of walkers are. The area shown in the map is all flat delta.

I'm going to steal wholesale from BCWildlifeWatch's page; it has some good, relevant information.

(SAMWMA) contains 937 hectares (2316 acres) of habitats critically important to fish and wildlife populations. (It) ... contains a series of islands surrounded by both freshwater and intertidal marshes. Included in SAMWMA are Ladner Marsh, Ladner Lagoon and seven main islands - Woodward, Barber, Duck, Kirkland, Rose, Gunn and Williamson. ... SAMWMA is located directly east of Alaksen National Wildlife Area and the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary.
...
The Fraser River estuary is the single most important area of aquatic bird and raptor migration and wintering habitat in British Columbia. The South Arm Marshes Wildlife Management Area provides wintering, migration and breeding habitats for waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors and many passerine species. In addition, the intertidal marshes provide critical rearing areas for juvenile salmon.

Historically, more than 70% of the natural habitat in the Fraser River estuary has been lost to dyking. The islands and marshes of SAMWMA contain an estimated 25% of the remaining estuary marsh habitat. As these habitats continue to be lost to, or impacted by, urban development, this management area becomes increasingly more important as wildlife and fish habitat.

They include a list of commonly observed wildlife in this area:

Loons and Grebes - Common Loon, Red-throated Loon, Horned Grebe, Red-necked Grebe and Western Grebe.
Great Blue Heron.
Other Waterfowl - The most common species include Mallard, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal and American Widgeon. Snow Goose are present in large numbers on the west portion of the area in March and April.
Bald Eagle.
Hawks - Northern Harrier, Red-tailed Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk and Cooper's Hawk.
Peregrine Falcon
Shorebirds
Songbirds - Easily observed are the Marsh Wren, Red-winged Blackbird and Song Sparrow.
Mammals - Beaver and Muskrat,Coyotes, Raccoons and Mink
Harbour Seal and California Sea Lions.

Unused pilings, marsh grasses.

And they forgot the ever-present seagulls, the crows, the starlings, Violet-green swallow, Sandhill Cranes, Canada goose, to mention those that come quickly to mind. And the rabbits and skunks, frogs, snakes, and assorted small rodents.

Never mind; the point is that these banks and islands are bursting with life. And are being gradually eaten away by our growing population.

Blackberries, green, pink, red and almost black.

The delta, like all riparian environments, is a fickle hostess; sloughs fill in, streams change course, the river periodically leaps out of its bed and romps over the tidy farms, tearing down and building up according to its whim of the moment. Not for nothing are older homes in Richmond and the Delta flatlands build high above ground, with the "basement" at ground level. There's a sensible reason for those deep, wide ditches, trenches you could lose a car in, throughout the area; they attempt to channel those spring floods out to sea, where they belong.

Year after year I have watched, a bit inland from this map, near Cloverdale, large fields that stay underwater from fall until spring, so that the road seems to be crossing a lake. In the summertime, it's all in hay and pasture.

Over the centuries, the river has been terraforming; chewing up the rocks from the mountains and spitting them out at the seashore, spreading them out flat and wide, deep into the strait itself (look at the lighter area underwater on the map). And the ocean fights back, pushing its tides well up the river; you can see the water flowing upstream as far away as Mission, only to turn an hour later and speed westward again.

We live in a continual to-ing and fro-ing of water, salt, fresh and brackish.

Great country for waterfowl.

But besides the usual uncertainties of the terrain and the encroachment of human habitat, a new challenge faces the inhabitants of the marshland and rivers. I'll talk about it in the next post.

Ladner: Village Afloat

I've been dithering for a few weeks over a series of photos from several of our visits to Ladner, wondering which, if any, to post here. While some, I think, are beautiful and peaceful, others ... well, let me start at the beginning.

I first visited Ladner with my kids back in 1978. It was a sleepy village just south of Richmond; a few shops, a few houses, docks and fishboats; we were charmed by it, and visited several times. I even considered buying one of the floating houses at Canoe Pass.

North end of the canal

In recent years, Laurie and I drop in frequently. There are the dykes to stroll along in fall and winter, to watch the flocks of shorebirds and marvel at the sunsets, Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary beyond the farms on the west, walks on the marshlands, an annual antique fair and village market days, bookstores, the harbour with all its activity, and a decent little cafe where we have an occasional lunch. All very pleasant, if not the village I knew back when. Now there are also malls, housing developments, traffic lights (and jams).

But it is a community in peril. Not, as Finn Slough is, from developers (well, that, too) but from natural causes. Weather. Water levels. Climate change.

This spring and summer, we've been poking around the harbour and marina. On the south side, swallows nest in the mud banks and catch mosquitoes over the water. An eco-tour boat glides down the river or rests at the dock. Kayakers paddle upstream. (Here is a gallery of photos from WestCoast Paddlers; well worth the time to view.)

Between the boathouses

Looking upstream from the pub landing. The Eco-tour boat is that one with the blue canopy.

It's a busy little harbour, a hodge-podge of boats, docks, sheds, log booms. The occasional swan drifts by and there is usually a family of paddling ducks.

Looking downstream

Shed and boats

A giant steel float, about 5 feet across. Another photo.

So where's the problem? I'll get to that, in the next post.

Fishermen

At Ladner Harbour:

"What are you catching?" I ask. "Little ones," he says.

A bucket for bait, or for "little ones"?

Taking Candy from a Baby...

... but it wasn't exactly easy.

I've been keeping a close watch on my American house spider, Achearanea tepidariorum. She is still guarding those eggs, and not moving very far afield.

Except one night a week and a half ago. I went out about 10:30 to check on her; the male was still up near the ceiling in his usual place*, but she was far down the wall, and moving fast. I shone my flashlight in the direction of her travel, and there was a third spider, a small one about the size of the male. "My" female (let's call her Fat Momma, or FM, for convenience) was making dashes in its direction, stopping, backing up a pace or two, and then running forward again. The intruder held its ground until FM was less than a foot away, then it backed around the corner, out of sight. FM went back to her eggs.

Two days later, the little intruder was building a rickety web between the wall and a post, just out of FM's line of sight. The same type of web, so I gathered that it was also a house spider, whether male or female I couldn't tell yet. It caught a good-sized fly that first day.

By the end of last week, she was fat enough that I could tell she's a female, still immature. Let's call her Chica.

Backtracking: a few evenings earlier, I had seen and photographed this tiny beetle. A couple of shots only; when I went out in daylight, it had left.


But last Friday, it turned up in Chica's web.

All wrapped up.

I was trying for a close-up, when I saw that it was still moving.


Chica's back is turned, and Beetle is waving. Help!

Ok; it's just a beetle. Spider dinner. Probably already dying. At least anaesthesized. Doesn't feel a thing. But still, it felt bad to watch it wave there, and to pack away the camera and go about my business.

I did the rounds after dark that night. Chica was working away at the beetle's abdomen, shaking and vibrating, as if trying to drill through that hard exoskeleton. I left her to it.

The next afternoon, I checked on them again. Chica had what looked to be a smaller spider, and was busy at it, with her back to me. And Beetle: oh, horrors! What was Beetle doing?


Very much alive. Arms and legs moving. Running in space. Almost looks human, there.

I couldn't stand it; I cut Beetle down, and brought him inside. He was snugly bound, but squirming steadily. With a paintbrush and a tiny hook, I tried to remove some of the webbing, but I couldn't make any progress. That spider glue is good stuff.
I left poor Beetle to die in a plastic cup and didn't come back until past midnight. And he was still struggling, slowly and weakly. I wetted the webbing down and tugged at it again; some of it came free. Beetle lay still, but started to move again as soon as I stopped. What to do?



I put him on a damp napkin with the plastic cup inverted over him, just in case he managed to move around, and went to bed, telling myself I was crazy to be trying to help a beetle. A beetle, for Pete's sake! Forget it; he'll be dead in the morning. No big deal. Spider fodder.

In the morning, the cup was empty. Beetle was gone.

That felt good.

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*About that male. He's gone. Or eaten, probably.

And Chica has another beetle today. This time, she managed to kill it properly; I looked closely, and it isn't moving. And she has been feeding calmly. Not jack-hammering her way in, like last time.

Weekly Five

I have been remiss; I missed last week's five science links. I was going to make up for it by posting 10 tonight.

But I just went over the whole last week of my web browsing and discovered that most of my time has been on Google, looking for marine life or insects. Repetitive, mostly.

So, stretching the concept a bit, my "science" will include nature photography. And one question, since Google has been no help at all; maybe someone out there has an idea.

Beasties: Sand bubbler crabs. This was down a blind alley on my Google search. Interesting, even if far afield; I wasted a good hour on these. AbelKane Adventures, Wikipedia and a photo on Flickr.

Julie Zickefoose discovers a new cockroach. Not my favourite animal, but then, I spent too much time in Texas battling with cockroaches the size of mice. This one seems a little more congenial. A slowpoke.

An article on insect photography. I adapted a technique from here.

And this, from yesterday. Amazing and funny and somehow sexy, even if I'm not a spider. A jumping spider mating dance. From Zooillogix.

Nude mice, and why coffee is good for me. From The Cheerful Oncologist.

Owls and heat relief. Scroll down to the end of Susan's post. That last photo is a classic begging for a caption. Can you think of one?

How to make a lemon battery. From YouTube.

PZ is Mostly Normal. I'm not. (I got a 38) How about you?

And, the question:

I found this on the beach last week. This is the 4th I have found so far, at Boundary Bay and off the Ladner dykes.
And no, it isn't a scoop of chocolate ice cream. It is a piece of what looks like pumice. It's rock, but it floats. I have had them in water for 3 days to see if they would get water-logged and they are still as buoyant as ever.

The ones I have found vary between marble-size and pea-size.

Somewhere, I think I heard something about bubbles of lava. I know there are great floating beds of pumice in some areas of the ocean. But none of the photos I found, or websites dealing with this, show little round balls.

Anybody have any hints?

~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: I just found Carnival of the Blue II over on Malaria, Bedbugs, Sealice and Sunsets. Lots of good links!

Wordless (Almost)

Mud and light.
And rocks.

Impossible. Can't be done.

... get a double exposure in a modern camera, that is.

So, how did Laurie get a quadruple exposure?

Or were there really four moons that night?

(And I asked him; he's not telling.)

Excursion to Serendip, Part III

Finally, I come back to the beginning of that walk on the south end of Boundary Bay beach.

We parked on a side street near a gravelly walkway to the beach. Someone with more enthusiasm than persistence had been doing a spot of gardening in patches beside the road and along the walls.

Dead daisies and live hollyhocks.

A barnacled net float on a twig.

Ah! Teasels! Once useful, now ornamental.

Pink mallow. I think.

The walkway opened out onto the beach. Sand flats opened up in front of us and to the north. Looking south, an arm of the land encloses the beach. Just beyond this is Point Roberts, USA.


Some kids had made one of those driftwood shacks. This one was quite "house-like"; the last few I have seen have been more like caves. It's not house-like enough, though, to keep the rain off, nor, I would think, exactly safe for visitors.


I remember building these when I was a kid, too. And teepees of sticks and ferns, tree houses of board ends painstakingly toted up the trunk, even a hay-mow hidey-hole, my favourite, with its heady aroma of summery grasses and the warmth of the sun in every handful. And, in the winter, if the weather co-operated, snow forts, with their piles of ammunition neatly stacked behind.

The building instinct; something else we share with the birds and the bees.

'nuff reminiscing; back to business.

We walked north, along the path between the houses and the beach proper. The gardens are blowsy, free-form, decorated with boat stuff and driftwood. Oversize windows reflect the sky, looking, Laurie says, like theatrical sets. Even construction materials get into the act.

Dramatic

This one has a Japanese "feel" to it.

Haphazard planting, aiming for a wild look.

At the end of the afternoon, after our escape from the incoming waters, we looked back south. A small wedding party had assembled on the point.

And I henceforth dubbed that shack, the "Honeymoon Hotel". Air-conditioned, an unobstructed view, the beach at the doorstep, silence; what more could a couple want?

Oh.

Update on egg cases

I'm still looking for an ID on those egg cases we found on Boundary Bay beach.

In the comments on my last post, Hugh Griffith, of Lulu Island Blog, suggested that they may be lugworm (Arenicola) egg cases.

Back to the books and Google.

My books on seashore life mention lugworms, of course, and show photos of them and their fecal castings. None of them mention egg cases.

"Cake decorator" fecal castings.

Wikipedia does. But they are described thusly; "The ova are enclosed in tongue-shaped masses of jelly about 8 in. long, 3 in. wide and 1 in thick. Each mass is anchored at one end." Hmmm. "Ours" were about 3 - 4 inches long, 2 wide, equally thick. More pear-shaped than tongue-shaped.

CalPhotos has a photo of an egg case of Arenicola brasiliensis . It is similar to the ones we found, although the size is not given. But this one was found in California at a depth of 15 metres. Ours, even at high tide, must not be under more than a metre of water.

Kozloff mentions three species that are found on this coast, Abarenicola pacifica, A. claparedii oceanica and A. c. vagabunda. Googling these, I get all kinds of info on their cell structure and chemistry, nothing about egg cases. No photos.

Anyhow, given that the lugworms do create large egg masses and that the beach in Boundary Bay is covered with their fecal castings (curlicue mud-poops, Hugh calls them), I think we can be fairly confident that these are produced by one of our local varieties of lugworm.

Thanks, Hugh!

Remembering King Canute

Excursion to Serendip, Part II

(I continue reporting, back to front; I'm waiting for photos from Laurie's film camera for the first segment.)

The delta is flat land. Centuries of slow silting from meandering rivers, the Nicomekl and the Serpentine, have built fertile farm land and then continued with great underwater flats. It almost looks as if we could walk across from Boundary Bay to Mud Bay. At low tide, of course. Providing it stays put and doesn't come roaring back at us.

That's the high ground in Delta, where we live, over on the far side.

We crossed a foot-wide rivulet, and headed south and east. The sand is clean here, with few snails, as yet, a few patches of eelgrass, some sea lettuce. The occasional purplish clam shell lies open on the sand, remains of a seagull's lunch.

Something was odd about it, though; we're used to wave-like ripples of sand, the ones we find at White Rock or Crescent Beach. The sand here was rolling, more like a plowed field than a sandy beach.


A family had left their sandals behind and gone out to the edge of the water barefoot. Or maybe that was where the edge had been when they decided to go wading. It sure wasn't there now.

I think that's them in the distance.

We walked to the water's edge, saw nothing but more sand and more water, and turned back. The tide was starting to trickle up the furrows.

We came to a little depression, where warm water stood a couple of inches deep. While Laurie took sky photos, I looked for snails. And found these:


See that pale brown thing? It looks like a big serving spoonful of gelatin that has been rolled in the mud; at first, I thought they were jellyfish and nudged one with my toe. (I don't touch jellyfish with fingers; one never knows if they sting.) It seemed to be connected to the sand, so I rolled up a tissue and pushed at it and several others. They were easily moved around, even rolled up with the wet paper, but were firmly anchored to the sand at one end. Looking around, I could see several dozen in that stretch of water, from 2 to 4 inches long.

I took photos: Laurie came over and took a couple himself. Then we turned to head back to shore.
Oops! No longer possible. Between us and the shore was a broad stream, about ankle-deep. Fine for me, with my old sandals, but not for properly suede-booted Laurie. We backtracked. Fast. And faster. Too late; we were encircled.

Another party that is going to have to hurry.

Laurie started to take his boots off. After the first one, he had to back up; the water was nibbling at his toes.

We waded, through fast-running water. On the shore, we found a good rock close to the edge for Laurie to sit and put his boots back on; those shore-line rocks were sharp! He got one foot dry and the boot on, and the water had surrounded his rock. Off we went again, "Ow! Ow!" He dropped a sock in the water in his hurry.

While Laurie sat on a dry log and finally worked on that second boot, I looked back. The beach was gone; a scant two meters of damp rock remained to be covered.

Water, water, everywhere.

Back at home, I've been searching, through my books and on the web, for an explanation of those "jellies". Eugene Kozloff, in Seashore Life of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the San Juan Archipelago, (and that's an unwieldy title for a book if there ever was one) gave me a clue: a sea slug, Melanochlamys diomedea, lays her eggs in an egg case just like that. Jelly, attached to the substrate at one end by a longish anchor thread.

The only problem is that diomedea's egg masses are less than an inch long. These were 3 and 4 times that.

And I've not been able to find anything else that matches. I have written an expert on sea slugs; hopefully, he'll be able to set me straight.

And I'm wondering; did those people ever find their sandals in time? Or are they going to be washed up on some Vancouver Island beach?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See update, next post.