In a garden gone wild

Bright colour, on foot, wing and stem ...

The front yard


Poppies


Green leaf, yellow, gold and black fly


On the pear tree, a pale orange snail


Red peony


Nine-spotted ladybug


Spotless ladybug, a different species.


Purple iris, with California poppies in the background


Orange flower with black fly


Blue: a drowned spider with unripe fruit (pear?) in a children's pool. The red circles around damaged spots on the fruit must be some sort of fungus.


Yellow and mauve in the centre of an iris.

.

Cook wanted?

"Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" Someone hidden in a dark stand of evergreens really wanted to know. A barred owl! And maybe, with the voice to guide us, we could find it.

We followed the sound, slowly, stopping often to get a bearing on the call. We were about to give up, when we saw the two owlets, sitting silently far above our heads.


The pair, nicely posed.


This one was a bit more active; the greyer one stayed huddled by the trunk. But they were both very interested in us; at first, this one bounced back and forth, as if trying to get a clearer view. Finally, it just settled down to watch.

According to the Owl Foundation, the young owls begin to leave the nest around 4 weeks of age, first one, then a few days later, the next. I would imagine, by this, that the one close to the trunk is probably a bit younger, and a bit timid yet.

The neck markings (cross-wise stripes) are clearly visible, and the breast stripes (vertical stripes) are just beginning to show. The head will be the last to develop adult feathers; now it almost looks as if it were wrapped in a soft baby blanket.

The adult was no longer calling. The little wood was quiet, except for the subdued clicking of our cameras.

10 minutes went by, a quarter-hour, maybe, while we tried to focus the cameras through the branches. Then, suddenly, both owlets lost interest: something was happening off to one side.




Mommy was coming!


I thought maybe she had come to feed them, but I was mistaken. She nuzzled little Brownie's ear.

These owlets didn't scream for food, nor even open their beaks, the way other young birds do; they sat still and silent on their branch the whole time.


The nuzzling was vigorous. I had to laugh; Brownie has the same pained look that a little boy gets when his parents wash his face.

After she left, Brownie did a little exultant dance for us, flapping wings, turning on the branch and fluffing up his feathers. He still made no sound.



And now, we found the mother's perch, high on a tree behind us.


She watched us until we left.
.

Party at Uncle Merl's! (I and the Bird # 76)

Hi! And welcome to our "Beginning of the Season – Victoria Day – It's Not Raining Day" Garden Party and Potluck! Glad you could make it! Come on in, join the fun; there are tons of people here already, birders all!

(Yes, I know Victoria Day was last week, but everybody was at the park or watching the parade then; besides, you were busy, weren't you?) So I'll just show you where you can leave your jacket, … in here … and then we can go out back and I'll show you around, introduce a few of the people. ... Ready? Out this side door, then. We just follow this little trail under the trees for a bit.

Oh, look, here's Island, scoping out a Red Breasted Nuthatch nest; Hi, Island! Beautiful bird! But we'll tiptoe on past and leave you to your photography. See you at supper later!

Out of the trees, and here's the garden. A bit on the wild side, but an excellent birding spot. On this side, there's a tiny creek and a bit of a pond. And there's the Ridger from The Greenbelt, photographing May birds; look at those cute goslings!

Up against the house, here on the patio, are the edibles. Buffet over here … bar over there … at the far corner, the BBQs. Lots of comfortable chairs. And Rob, resting after a good hike. Stop by in a bit, and he'll tell you an exciting tale of a trip in Yellowstone Park. Ospreys, Sandhill cranes, a wolf hunt, and … but I'll let him tell it.

And here's Duncan, discussing the intelligence of ravens, and the origins of the saying, Stone the crows!. Hey, Duncan, if you'd been dive-bombed by crows because you were supposedly invading their territory, you might think that was a good idea. But they are smart, I'll give you that.

At the bottom of the garden, standing by the rhododendrons, that's Hugh, of Rock, Paper, Lizard. He's probably listening to the birds. The other day, he was asking, Who's singing at the park? What bird says, "cow-cow-cow-cowp"? I didn't know. Now I do.

Ok, what else? Over there, down that trail, is the staircase to the beach, 'way below us. I saw Cis heading down a while ago; it's a long haul, but she's quite the walker. Ask her, when she gets back, to show you her photos of a pair of Gray Jays.

And now, the house. Did I tell you about the house? No? I hardly know what to say; I was flabbergasted when the lawyer told me about it. I just inherited it from my uncle, Professor (and mad scientist, really) Merlin J. Featherbottomley. It's a moldering ruin, mostly; he's been living here alone for over 50 years. But we've managed to clean and refinish the lower floor, so if (or I should say, when) it rains, we'll have shelter. It's basically empty; we'd have to bring the outside chairs in.

Come on in, through the patio doors; I'll show you.

Well, here's Amila, of Gallicissa! I wondered where he'd got to. Oh, you're setting up your photos along the wall there! Good idea! What colours! What names! And you've labelled the display: Birds in my local patch. Certainly exotic for us, though.

And the rest of you; now I see what you're doing! You're turning the room into a gallery of bird photos. Oh, marvellous!

Let's see, here are Troy and Martha, with tips on ID'ing Short-billed dowitchers. Very useful. And Liza with a bird report from Albion trip, complete with a bird-watching seal. And this is Pam, of Tortoise Trail, with a Yellow-eyed Junco on Mt. Lemmon. Great photos; and such a nice idea, putting them up like that!

We'll be back to look at the rest of the photos in a minute or two, but first, let me show you… down this hall, this is Uncle Merl's old laboratory. We've left his workbenches in place; they were pretty solid still. Oh, hi, Zen! Already hard at work? What are you doing?

Oh, I get it. Testing the effect of a hammer hitting a tree at 13mph. Better a hammer head than a bird head, anyhow. Unless that bird is a woodpecker, eh?

Uncle Merl was studying seagulls here; he was certain that they were extremely intelligent, and he spent a lifetime trying to teach them to nest in "proper" boxes so that he could observe their care of the chicks. Not much luck, I'm afraid. I don't think they were interested.

One of Uncle Merl's photos

That reminds me; Seabrooke had photos of Barn Swallows building their nest; I wonder if she brought them along? What, Zen? Around the corner in the study? Oh, thanks! And here she is; look! Seabrooke's photo series, A mouthful of mud!

And this is Adrian from the Bird Ecology Study Group putting up photos of hard-working Black-naped Monarch parents incubating, feeding and … potty training?

I see, you guys are setting up a bird-nest exhibition! Oh, this is great!

Here's Nina, with a partly-sad, partly-hopeful story in two parts: Not a pretty picture and 1...2...3 Chickadee...dee...dee.

And over here by the window, this is Max. Hi, Max! Still not raining! We might just get used to it. What do you have here under Spring Emergences? A humming-bird nest? And flocking starling nestlings! (You know, I think they're a beautiful bird! Beautiful the way purple loosestrife is beautiful. Or Japanese knotweed.)

Look, Snail brings us an edifice that dwarfs all other bird structures. And, yes, I believe you, Snail, but … but … are you sure? Your Orange-footed renovators really do that? Wow!

Uncle Merl would have liked this one: Burrowing Owls - Will They Survive In North America?. Larry tells of buried nest boxes. For birds that live in burrows, of course.

We seem to be missing one of our guests; let's leave these people to their work, and see if we can find him.

Back to the hallway again; there's the foyer where you came in, the walk-in closet, the side door, the washrooms, the kitchen. That's about it. Oh, the stairs? We haven't refinished up there, yet; it's just a bunch of empty rooms. Come to think of it, though, I saw PetMonologues going upstairs with a flock of birds and a camera; he said something about doing a video for Sex and the Single Bird. "Birds do it", he said.

Oh, and I'd totally forgotten Greg. He's probably still in here, in the sound-proofed room where Uncle Merl analyzed seagull mating calls. Let's see ... Still working, Greg? Good for you, but it's party time! Come on out and get a drink before supper!

Greg's reporting on enigmatic sex ratios in a nearly extinct bird, the Magenta Petrels. I hope they can bring them back from the brink.

Anyhow, I'm looking for N8, of The Drinking Bird; he has a report on a pelagic outing, Slippery when wet. Poor guy, he gets so terribly seasick. And he got drenched, as well. All in a good day's birding, though! Oh, there he is, down on the landing, looking at the water. Come on, we'll get you a drink on the way … what'll you have? … and he can tell you about the Storm-petrels.

The landing, looking out to sea

And I've got to run; I hear another car in the driveway. It's probably Charlie, just in from his South Africa trip. He's bringing photos from the Zaagkiuldrift gravel road, the road to Kgomo-kgomo. I bet I pronounced that wrong.

So I'll leave you to your own devices now. Make yourself at home!

Hey, I almost forgot; this travelling house party and potluck will be over at Great Auk - or Greatest Auk? in two weeks, the 12^th of June. If you have some goodies to bring, give Carrie a shout at labenc AT gmail DOT com by the 10^th.
.

Owlets!

Seen in Bear Creek Park, this afternoon.

More on these later.
.

And Baby makes Three

At my window yesterday afternoon:

House finches

Very new, very trembly chick.

I'm hungry, Mommy!
(Note: he'd barely had time to swallow a big mouthful. Like a little kid; wants "one in dis hand, one in dis hand, and one in me mouf.")

.

Sand and sky and red sorrel

The sky was an ever-changing glory over Boundary Bay a couple of days ago. I couldn't decide which photo was the best to share with you, so I just have to give you half a dozen.

On the dunes, red sorrel on sand. Looking northeast.


Silence, except for the crunch of our shoes on sand.


A few inches of water bring the sky right back to our feet.




Mount Olympus, over the border in the US, catching the last glimmer of sunlight.


Time to head home.

.

Sanctuary? Sorry!

This moth flew in my open door this evening.


He perched on my wall, high up near the ceiling. I climbed on the desk and took his portrait.

Note: there is a bit of damage on the wing, and one antenna is truncated. He's survived an attack, maybe. Some bird missed the meal he was hoping for.

I captured him with a recycled plastic tub, and put a sheet of glass over the open top.


The old plastic makes for a misty atmosphere.

I tried putting the light behind him.


Sort of an X-ray effect. I love the detail on these wings; if you click on the photo, you can appreciate the fringe of feathers along the scalloped bottom edge.


No, he's not flying. I took this through the glass, looking down at him perched on the wall of the container. His reflection is bigger than he is because of the curve of the tub wall.

And then I took him to the door and released him into the big, dark, dangerous world out there. Sorry, fella.
.

Squirrelly Antics

A couple of weeks ago, I had company:


First, a squirrel kit, presumably one of Scruffy's. It was snuffling around my patio, looking for goodies. When it saw me inside the door, it scooted behind my supplies cart, and finished off its sunflower seed there, keeping a watchful eye on me through a gap.

I took a couple of photos and got out of range, so as not to ruin his meal. The next time I looked out, there were two of them.


Twins! Scruffy Jr. and Little Scruff.

I opened the door, very slowly, reached out an arm and dropped a handful of seeds, hoping to entice them closer. They ran away, but were soon back; what squirrel can resist sunflower seeds?


They ate the whole handful. First the more distant (relatively) seeds, then the not-quite-so-far ones. They came closer ...

See the pink noses? They're still nursing.

... and closer ...


And inside, I crawled up to the door, one inch at a time, then eased it open until I could hold the camera outside, barely 18 inches away from the babies ...


The first one I had seen was much more cautious, or more responsible; while Little Scruff ate and ate and ate, oblivious to me and my camera, Junior stood guard, eating whenever I wasn't moving.

Every so often, Junior would pick up a seed and Little Scruff would snatch it from him. Then they both squealed (tiny, squeaking cries I could barely hear) and tussled for a moment. Little Scruff always won these arguments.

They haven't been back, not when I was watching. But I have seen them at odd moments, running across the lawn; Laurie saw one in the church parking lot next door.

Today, at the end of the lawn, a crow was standing watching something under the rhododendrons, something moving erratically only a few crow steps away. I couldn't see what it was; there was just a blur.

From closer up, it looked to be about football-sized, but it was thrashing around so wildly that I couldn't get bearings on it. Bird captured by a rat and fighting? Snake and baby squirrel? Squirrel having a seizure? Poisoned squirrel? That last seemed entirely too possible. Whatever was going on, the presence of that crow hadn't worried the sufferer.

I came a bit closer. The crow left. The convulsions continued. Finally, a breather. A baby grey squirrel sat up, holding something brownish and limp. Then he attacked it again, writhing and biting. It reminded me now, of kittens at play. I went back for the camera.


I snapped a photo, took one step, snapped another, took another step, ... Most of the photos were blurrier than this one. A kitten "killing" an old rag.


Another brief pause for breath. Then, back to the fray.

I got too close. The kit scampered off. And so did I.

When I came home in the evening, I looked for the rag. It was still there, a bit farther away from the rhodos. It is an old, ragged dishrag. Very dead.
.

Beauty break. Better than coffee.

Is the earth spinning faster than it used to? It sure seems that way. Here it is Thursday morning, and I swear that only yesterday it was Monday.

Or is it that I've been buried in work? Could be.

I took a tiny break yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon to inspect my garden. The plants have been busy, too; see what they've produced!

New pink columbine blooms among the greenery.


Lily of the valley. They always remind me of my grandmother. She had lily of the valley patterned china.


I've forgotten, for the moment, what these are. I'll know in a day or two, when they are fully open.


London Pride, up close.


And out on the lawn, English daisies.

And now, for a nap, and -- back to the salt mines.

Lucky me.
.

I and the Bird # 76 call for submissions

I'm finally taking the plunge!

Rather worried-looking sparrow on my hedge.

I have been a fairly regular contributor to the bi-weekly carnival, I and the Bird for some time. Now, with much trepidation, and 10 badly chewed fingernails, I will be hosting the carnival next week.

Do you love birds and the people who watch them? Do you watch birds and love to blog about it? Welcome to I and the Bird, a carnival for bloggers who love birds.

I and the Bird is a carnival celebrating the interaction of human and avian, an ongoing exploration of the endless fascination with birdlife all around the world. It is also a biweekly showcase of the best bird writing on the web published on alternating Thursdays.

Previous posters have done a superb job. Last week's presenter, Amila, at Gallicisa, even has prizes! (If you haven't already checked it out, go on over now. As soon as you've taken down my email, because I do hope you will be sending me a great bird post.)

Here's the place to send your latest and bestest bird post: e-mail the link to me at susannah AT dccnet DOT com before the 27th of May. And if you have never contributed before, now is the time!

White-crowned sparrow at my door.

*Edited to add:

I see from the first comment, that I didn't make it clear enough; bird photos are great, but this isn't all about the photos. If you have watched birds, thought about birds, read about birds, fed, rescued, missed, housed birds, etc., etc., and blogged about it, "I and the Bird" is the place for you. Photos are optional.
.

Picnic crumbs

One day, two parks, two mysteries to bring home.

At Queen's Park, in New Westminster, we sat at a picnic table having lunch. A young tree provided shade, and provided the first "What's that?".


There were only a dozen or so of these flowers on the tree. Here's a closer look:


It's a "Handkerchief tree," we discovered after going through a stack of books. Otherwise known as "Dove tree" or Davidia involucrata. It's an import from China, and still relatively rare here. The flowers are in that little cluster in the centre; the white things, always one larger than the other, are bracts.

We had supper under another tree, in Central Park, Burnaby.


This is just the lower branches; I really should have backed off to get a full-scale photo. We were not able to identify the tree.

What intrigued us was this:


Little red spikes growing straight up from some of the leaves.


Leaves with too many "spikes" get all wrinkly.

Some sort of a leaf gall, possibly caused by an insect.

I forgot to turn the leaf over to check the bottom. I didn't think to bring one home. In my defense, I will say that the entire family was congregated, and the food had just arrived. First things first!
.

Standing on the corner

Hanging under the eaves of a garden shed, I found this abandoned flower pot:


Moss. And segregated; tall spore cases on the "front", short, flowering stems in "back". ("Back" and "front" defined by the photo, not by the round pot.)

What is it? Two species or one? I took a couple of dozen photos. At home, I consulted my Plants of Coastal British Columbia. A simple search, this time; it's the second entry under "True Mosses". Polytrichum juniperinum, Juniper Haircap Moss.

The two distinct expressions are sexual; the short individuals are male, the tall ones female.

So here are the males:


These upside-down umbrellas are the male "flowers" (properly called antheridia). They grow on a short stem with spiky leaves right to the base of the "flower". In this photo, you can see a couple of females who have invaded the male territory, but mostly they keep to their own company. This holds true to most populations of the Polytrichidae.

The female mosses have work to do; they can't just sit there and look handsome, like the males. After a rainy day, once sperm from the males has migrated across the wet surface and fertilized the young female plants, they develop sporophytes, long stems topped with spore cases.


The community forms three levels; at the bottom, the leaves, next the tall stalks and the ripe and empty spore cases. At the top are the capsules (sporangia) containing spores.

The leaves are folded towards their centre; if you look closely at the first photo, you can see the line where the two sides meet, and at the base of the leaf, the triangular gap between. This is a defining characteristic of the Polytrichidae.

The name, Haircap, or Polytrichum (many hairs), comes from another feature; the hairs that coat the capsule from bottom to tip. Look at this photo below full-size to get a good view of them.


The spores are formed inside these capsules, and held in by a lid, or operculum, the whole covered by the calyptra, the long-haired blanket that gives us the name.

When the sporophytes are mature, the lid pops open, displaying a toothed "mouth" (peristome); the spores are shot out of this when conditions are right.


Emptied, dried-up, wrinkled capsules.

More photos can be found at Biology 321, UBC, and Terry Thormin galleries.
.

Morning Paper

Meow!

(Just testing the postdate function.)
.

Little Miss Muffet likes spiders!

Grandmas are made to be bossed around. Little Miss Muffet here wants me to find her a butterfly.


Done. Three cabbage whites.

"Bumblebee." Done. And a half-dozen wasps, which she calls "bumblebees".

"Snail." Done. Plenty of those.

"Where is spider?"

Zebra spider, Salticus scenicus.

Here he is! Isn't he pretty?

He was quite a jumper, and very curious. He kept turning towards me while I tried to maneuvre him into a good position for his portrait. When I brought the camera in close, watching him through the viewfinder, he disappeared all of a sudden. I thought to look at the camera itself; sure enough, he was on the extended lens.


Angled up to look at me. Those headlight eyes give these spiders excellent binocular vision (the better to jump at you, m'dear) and they can distinguish prey as far away as 30 cm. (1 ft.)

Back to work, Grandma! Snookums wants another snail!

I found her a pillbug, the kind that rolls up into a ball. When it unrolled, it frightened Miss Muffet away. Turns out spiders are ok, pillbugs are not.

Bonus, and this one wasn't scary at all: a nice, popsicle-green stink bug.

A dramatic head shot.

Then we went inside and drew pictures of butterflies, spiders, snails, and the pill bug.
.

Fanning the flames

Summer weather! At long last! Yesterday was suddenly warm, bordering on too hot. (It takes me a while to acclimatize again.)

I was babysitting all day, after end-of-school-year events the night before. By the end of the day, I was too tired to blog until today.

Standing on the back porch of my son's house, I saw, on a roof a block away, this starling. He was waving his wings rapidly, as if flying against the wind, but anchored in one spot. He sang loudly all the while. I watched for a couple of minutes, not wanting to miss the show. He kept it up, though, so I went inside for my camera.

Fanning his wings a bit more slowly now. Still in full song.

A brief flight, still singing.

Back on the roof, calling, calling.

I saw no interested female. I hope he found one, though.
.

Wordless ...

... but beautifully perfumed.

Sorry I can't reproduce the scent here.
.

Seek ye Love, ye fairy-sprites?

Most of the vegetation in Burns Bog is small-leaved; evergreens with needles, mosses, Labrador tea, bog blueberries, and so on. But one plant breaks the rule; the skunk cabbage. The acid soil and deep shade of the bog is very much to their liking, and where the surface of the soil is wet, they settle in and fill the space with two-foot leaves.


A small patch.


Skunk cabbage flowering. We smell them before we see them; like skunks, but not so acrid. The bugs find them by the smell, too.


Here's a beetle.* An attractive little guy, wearing a brown jacket with black collar and patches.


Party time! A ripe, juicy flower spike, with plenty of food for all. The flowers themselves are tiny, either male or female, greenish-yellow, and without petals; that big yellow thing is a wrapper, or spathe. When the flowers are mature, the inviting (to insects) aroma is strongest. The flower spike in the background is not ready yet, and no bugs visit it.


And once the beetles have eaten and drunk their fill, what next? You guessed it! In this section alone, I count at least six mating couples.

Love among the skunk cabbages.

(Apologies to Lewis Carroll.)
.
*It's a Rove Beetle, Staphylinidae: Omaliinae, according to Boris Buche at BugGuide. The smaller ones on the spike are a different species, not ID'd yet.
.

Death and rebirth in Burns Bog

We don't get down to Burns Bog as often as I would like, even though it is just at the bottom of our hill. This is, in part, because we always tend to walk too far once we're there; it is hard to judge just how far we've come. And in part, because of the dogs. This is sensitive environment, home to many birds and animals, some endangered, and signs at the entrance ask walkers to leash their dogs. Most don't. It is discouraging to see the dogs dashing off into the undergrowth, or into the creek, muddying the water and silencing the birds. We went, this time, on a Monday, not the prime dog-walking day; we still met half a dozen large dogs, none leashed.

Still, this is a tiny corner of the bog; most of it is left to the wild species.


The Nature Reserve, where there is public access, is the part marked in yellow. Part of the rest is private farm land, part is left undisturbed.

We walk in, usually, from the south end. A straight, gravelled path leads along the creek, parallel to the railroad track; from here, raised boardwalks lead off into the trees. This time, we took the #4 entrance, missed our turn to the third entrance (exit, it would be, for us) and ended up walking to the far end, out the #1 entrance, then back along the creek. The photos here were taken somewhere between the Sapsucker Tree and the Cedar Grove. (I have never seen what they call the Bear Cave.)




Cedars, pine, skunk cabbage, ferns, assorted understory shrubs. A typical view in this section.

Laurie, off the boardwalk to look at a fungus.

The ground here is always littered with broken branches, fallen trees, dried evergreen needles. Even many standing trees are dead, or dying. This time, we found more than usual, probably because of last year's storms.


Sometimes the trees don't make it all the way down. Half-fallen, they become supports for whole systems of mosses and shrubs that take advantage of the height to reach for more sunlight.




Others, on the ground, rot into the surrounding peat, hosting mosses and transient plants as they go. A deciduous fern, a common wayside weed, and tiny seedlings share this one.


Dead branches are coated with blankets of mosses; these ones tolerate dryer conditions than the ground-dwelling mosses. In the shadier areas, they grow thick, draping and binding old dead branches, molding them into fantastic shapes, hinting at beasts and birds and alien monsters.



Other trees, without the moss covering, become board and room for insects and birds. I don't know what ate the lower portion of this dead tree. I've seen ants in trees like this; are they there to prey on the tree, or on the tree residents? I don't know.

When a large tree goes down, it often falls in one piece, ripping the roots out of the soft soil, turning them up to the air. I noticed, for the first time, how this clears a bit of land, opening up a window to the sky and making a protected nursery for tender seedlings.


New soil, at the base of a fallen tree. The bottom of the root system now becomes a garden wall.


Young skunk cabbages colonize the new space. Salmonberries take advantage of any gap in the roof that lets in sunlight. These small plants are blooming already.


This old root system has been upturned for some time now. The bare face is covered with some kind of slime or lichen, along with the moss.


And at the base are cracks in the soil, spaces where a root was wrenched out of place, but still forms a sort of roof. I have seen these used by squirrels; no telling what may be living in this one. Not the bear, though.

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

Maps from Burns Bog Conservation Society.
.
.

Does a turkey-tail count as a bird?

The birds were singing this afternoon in Burns Bog. High in the trees, we heard them. Chickadees, of course, calling, "Here, sweetie". Robins a-plenty; "Cheer up!". I heard a flicker a couple of times. The song sparrows were celebrating; so were a few red-winged blackbirds in the grasses by the creek. Something went"Chirrrrrrrr" in the underbrush; a varied thrush was shouting "Cheee!" There were chirps and tweets and rattles and trills all around us. Over the open areas, swallows sang as they ate mosquitoes. (Of which there were swarms.) At the end of the afternoon, a blue grouse boomed.

And we saw one distant song sparrow. And a robin. And Laurie saw a few goldfinches before we entered the bog. That's it.

Oh, well. We did see these:

Orange and white polypore on a dead stump.


Some kind of crust fungus, smeared and hardened on a log. This is a close look, to show the pores.


Turkey-tail.


More turkey-tails, with a colour variant.


A nicely-layered shelf fungus.


Tiny mushroom, mosses and ice-blue lichens.


And a humongous gall, bigger round than the tree plagued with it. For size comparison, that's Laurie's shoulder poking out from behind the tree.

We had gone down to the bog for a short walk; we came home three hours later. There was much to see; I'll have more photos tomorrow.
.

Indian paintbrush, everlasting, and dandelion

Mothers' Day. I remember:

1953

2006

My granddaughter, 3, carefully searched out the dandelions that had already lost their little parachuting seeds, and harvested a fistful to take home to Mommy. Arranging them in a glass for her, I realized that they are beautiful, too, with their silky round stems, a neat little creamy cap on the top and a lacy fringe; how long is it since I had really looked at them?

2008

.

Life overhead and underfoot

It's easier to take a photo of one eagle than it is of a half-dozen.

We got to the beach at lunchtime, earlier than usual. The tide was low, but still going out. The wind was chilly, in spite of the bright sunshine. We walked south, facing the wind; it would be easier work coming back, when we were tired.

Ahead of us, a pair of eagles called to each other, a high, skittering ee-ee-ee-ee-ee. They were too far away to consider getting a photo, but we walked faster, watching them. Others showed up, soaring in low circles, dropping to sit far away at the water's edge, then rising to make another lap of the beach. When they flew closer to us, we started clicking.


The problem with a bunch of eagles is that, while you're tracking one that seems to be coming your way, another always shows up, just barely overhead, coming from behind you. You spin to take the photo, too late. When you look back at the first one, he's headed for the stratosphere. Eagle # 2 is now hidden in a tree.

Laurie takes his photos carefully, getting the frame right, but in this case, I just snap away any time I see a black shape on my screen. He usually gets better photos.

I like this shot.

The eagles had paired up; when they landed, they sat two by two at the seaward side of the last sandbar. Once, when I had more or less given up, two of the eagles rose, screaming, to tackle each other with wings and talons. The argument didn't last as long as the duck fight at Reifel a couple of weeks ago; by the time I had the camera aimed at them, they had sorted things out, and were settling again to sit with their mates.

Looking around the web at eagle sites, I found the way to distinguish between the male and female eagles:

Another way to tell them apart is to measure the height of their bill. The female’s bill is always deeper than the male’s and usually has a larger hook than the male’s.

Simple. All you have to do is convince the eagle to come over and sit still while you measure its beak.

It might help to know that the female is bigger and has a deeper voice. Or not. At least I can tell a young one from an adult; the adult has the white head.


We'd come quite a ways south. That pillar, on the far right, just beyond the low tide line, marks the American border. I'd never seen it that close before.

On the way back, now with our backs to the eagles, we looked down rather than up. I poked in a few tide pools, looking for crabs.

Molted crab shell. Good thing he doesn't need it any more; somebody stepped on it.

In one pool, I saw these things, all about an inch long, and very squirmy.


Something that looks like a tiny eel. In another, very fuzzy photo, I got a side shot; he's like a narrow ribbon rather than a tube.


The "eel" and some sort of segmented worm.


And another worm, a spiky creature. I can't tell if he's the same species as the previous one.

I've worn out my eyes looking at worm photos. Is he a polychaete? I'm not sure. Kozloff has a photo of Ophidodromus pugettensis that looks very similar, and lives in this area; that would be my tentative guess.

On a barnacle- and mussel-covered rock, I found a family of a snail I'd not seen here before; it has a green or blackish mottled shell, much shorter and fatter than the usual Batillaria.

Red and black mussles, white and beige barnacles.

Laurie found this one: a convoluted knot of tubeworm tubes.

And at home, sorting out tiny clamshells and sand dollars, I discovered that I had a snail shell less than 1 mm. across.


The snail is the red-brown dot in the centre of the photo. I don't know how I managed to notice that this was a snail. It's about the size of the grains of sand I was washing away.

I probably had snails and clams in my shoes and didn't know it.
.

Day on the beach, with eagles

We walked almost down to the tip of Point Roberts.

Story and critters tomorrow.




For now, goodnight!
.

On Spiders and their diet restrictions

I've been reading the book Laurie found me in MacLeod's Books, "Spiders", by W. S. Bristowe.

Unidentified spider found this morning. He's been in a fight and lost 2 legs. One was still on the table.

Bristowe has a chatty, non-technical style, easy to read, but often surprising. I'm in the middle of reading his discussion of the complex relationships between the insect-eating spiders and their not-so-hapless prey.

What happens when a spider tastes an insect with a disagreeable flavour? Often the chemo-tactic ('taste' by touch) sense leads to rejection without biting, but where a spider has bitten an insect with an unpleasant flavour it staggers clumsily to the edge of its web and is 'sick'. Fluid oozes from its mouth and this is rubbed away vigorously against a twig or leaf.

...

... if the aphid gets caught in a spider's web, fluid oozes from the cornicles without any caressing. The spider which gets this fluid on its mouth, or even the tips of its legs, shows immediate signs of discomfort. Often it is 'sick'. In consequence, few spiders will eat an aphid.

I'll have to watch for that!

And this:

Next we come to the hard chitinous armour possessed by some beetles, bugs and mites. ... many an impulsive spider, including most of the hunters, will retire after one clash of fang against chitin, ... The strongest armour is found on beetles and beetle-mites (Oribatidae) which have no unpleasant flavour to save them. Like the distasteful moths they lie still when attacked, but they draw in their legs tightly against their bodies so as to be out of harm's way.

Which brings me to a couple of photos I took today. I found a new carpet beetle, just coming in my door. Not a behaviour I encourage; he's in a plastic bag now. I wasted some time trying to get a good photo of his face, without much luck, but I have a couple that illustrate Bristowe's point.


Here's the carpet beetle. Blurry, but you can see the mouth parts. I wanted the eyes, too.

When he's really upset, he plays dead. And look what he does with all his varied appendages:


That's his underside. Legs folded and tucked into slots, chin down, mouth parts rolled into a ball; even the knobbed antennae are flattened against the body. There's nothing there for a spider to grab or sink a fang into.

Funny what you discover about one creature, by reading about another!

One more photo, this one a bit more artistic. Another of Hollick's 19th-century drawings from the book.

Xysticus lanio C.L.K. Male.

.

Jaya's Cat

I babysat all day today. I'm too tired to write.

Fingerpainting, stuck to back porch window by its own moisture.

The "artist", with blue hands.

.

No boots, no bags, some goodies anyhow

I left my boots in the trunk. That was my first mistake.

We went down to Crescent Beach yesterday afternoon. The tide was low, very low.


That white spot, at land's end, just under the paired clouds, is a boat close to the beach. And the greenery is eelgrass; this is all intertidal meadowlands.

We walked out towards the distant shore. Laurie collected a few big clam shells.


Behind him is the shore we walked from. It was pleasant out there, quiet and warm; the little puddles, when I stooped to wash out a shell or two, were like tepid bath water. We walked for a good while.

Quite a ways out, I noticed a sand dollar, one of the shell-full I posted yesterday. It was about the size of a dime. I showed it to Laurie, and we started looking for more. There were plenty to be found, all tiny. And tinier. The smallest one that made it home (a few of the littlest crumbled when I touched them) is barely a centimeter across.

Here's my second mistake. I had forgotten to bring plastic bags or other containers. Laurie had one sandwich bag, already full. I piled the sand dollars in a clam shell, carried open in my hand.

Then I saw the snails. Not the regular batillaria that are all over the beach; a larger, amorphous shell, mostly covered with sand. (Looking at the photos, I think the sand is glued to the shell.) I wouldn't even have seen them if one hadn't suddenly rolled over. I looked closer, and they were moving, slowly.

I gave Laurie my clam shell of sand dollars to hold, and bent to take photos. And Laurie said, "Hey, the tide's coming in!" I looked, and it was; it was frothing and splashing about half the distance away that it had been when we got sidetracked.

Never mind; I wanted to get those photos.


Here's one. It's about an inch long. See the foot, or tentacle sticking out the front?

I took three photos, hurriedly, and looked up. The water had halved the distance again; this is flat land and the tide speeds in. Time to go. Laurie, at least, had decent boots; I was wearing street shoes. Leaky street shoes. I took back my clam shell and ran for the shore.

At the first eelgrass patch, I noticed that the leaves were covered with yellow lumps. I jammed my camera in a pocket, and grabbed a handful. And ran again.

When I got to safe ground, I set my stuff on a rock, piled the dangly eelgrass in another clamshell, and took a photo. This is what I saw:


I don't know how much of this there was, nor did I have time to see what creatures were associated with it. I should have been wearing boots; I would have stopped to investigate the surroundings.

I dug through my pockets again and found a pill bottle. I jammed eelgrass and water into it, and dumped the rest in a tidepool. At home, I dumped my catch out onto a plate.

I had more than eelgrass; something was dashing about in the water. These:


Shrimp of some sort?


There were two varieties; some were plain, some spotted. See the stripy eye? (This one is dead: the other was very much alive.)

But what about the yellow blobs? Close up, this is what I saw:


Individual packets of clear jelly, with a central area full of yellow balls. Eggs? Looks like it to me.

I knocked a few off the leaves; they were glued on tightly. They didn't seem to have a root or holdfast. To touch, they felt hard, but jellyish.


The blobs weren't uniformly round; some were quite spiky. Some lined up in rows, others were spread higgledy-piggledy.

I tried something new; I focussed on one blob with my old hand microscope (at 40x), held it in position, and aimed the camera down the eyepiece. I'm quite pleased with the result:


Not much to be seen, though. Some sort of nucleus in those "eggs", that is all. And the irregular outer casing. At 60x, the camera caught only a blur.

I don't know what these are. I looked at photos for a couple of hours and found nothing like them. The closest I can come up with are some sort of sea snail eggs.

What do you think?
.

Look what I found!

No, not these.

Well, these, too, but there's much more. Something I've never seen before. I'll have the story and photos for you tomorrow.

Miniature sand dollars, Crescent Beach.

.

Open House

We were spending a quiet Sunday at home; it's been a busy week. But the word must have got out, and we had a constant stream of visitors.

The multi-footed kind. And a few one-footed ones.

Grey squirrel. Getting tamer by the day.

Scruffy. I finally discovered today, that she's female. And raising a family.

Cabbage white butterfly. Also female; you can tell by the two spots on her wings; males have one.

Robin. One of a pair that came at suppertime to forage for worms.

Snail.

This snail had been sitting quietly on the birdhouse for hours, but as soon as I decided to photograph him, he got very active. He took a great interest in the camera, and at one point decided to climb up the lens. Luckily, I was using my home-made lens, which was easy enough to clean.



I gave him a sheet of glass instead of my lens. And got a shot of his underside. Up front, if you click on the photo to see it full size, you can distinguish some mouth parts, looking like 4 pale teeth. There is a gland also at the front, which secretes a constant stream of mucus for the snail to slide on. (And to smear up camera lenses.)

There's a nice page on snail anatomy here.

Not photographed, but making their presence known; nuthatches, chickadees, pine siskins, a couple of flies, an American House spider, a batch of sowbugs, and too many slugs (now deceased).
.

Not so awful, after all

Cowbird, male.

Until our recent visit to Reifel Island, I had never seen a cowbird up close. Laurie pointed them out to me, occasionally; little black birds off in the distance, indistinguishable, as far as I could tell, from the starlings.

I had read about them, of course. Cowbirds are those nasty parasites that lay their eggs in other birds' nests, leaving the poor foster parents to do all the work. Worse, the greedy youngsters, hatching first, get all the food and the other occupants of the nest die. That's if the cowbird chick hasn't pushed them out of the nest already.

Just plain bad.

Now that I've seen some, Googled them, and learned a bit more, I've changed my mind about them.

Speaking his mind.

Cowbirds got their name because they hang out around cattle, eating the insects that plague cows and horses; bot flies, horseflies, ticks, etc. If I owned a few cows, I'd want to have a flock of cowbirds on hand.

And their "nasty" trait of letting other birds raise their young? It is suggested that, before the continent was "civilized", when bison roamed the plains and cowbirds took care of them, they stayed with their ranging food source. If they had stopped behind to tend nests, they would have lost contact with the herd and starved. So they laid their eggs and flew away. Today, most of our cattle are confined behind fences, and the need to move on no longer applies, but the pattern is set.

And, so it seems, the harm done to the other birds is not great. Studies show that as few as 3% of the cowbird eggs actually hatch. Most are recognized by the host species, dumped from the nest, broken, or abandoned. Sometimes the chosen foster parents just build another nest on top of the old one containing the cowbird egg.

Many of the foster parents, besides, seem to be stimulated by rearing a cowbird chick and start a new batch of their own; they are often more successful at raising their own families than non-parasitized birds. (See Audubon; Cowbirds and Conservation.)

That's nice to know.

Mallard and cowbirds; these are small birds. Or the duck is big. Take your pick.

I noticed, going over my photos, that all of the birds are male. The females are a plain grey-brown, and none of my little brown bird photos match the cowbird females.
.

Three book day

We went into Vancouver today, to meet a friend for lunch at the Art Gallery. (The art was not to our taste today, but the food was. The food always is.)

Mirrored building, blending into the old city below, the clouds above.

Afterwards, we walked a few blocks to our favourite used books place, MacLeod's Books. I was tired, and sat in a comfortable chair browsing old Edgar Allan Poe stories and Jane Austen titles; I finally dozed off over a book Laurie brought me. He has more stamina, and a good half-hour later came to rouse me with four more books in hand, three classics for him, and another for me.

He had found me a copy of "Rats, Lice and History", by Hans Zinsser (1934), a book I had once owned but had somehow misplaced. Or lent, which amounts to the same thing.

The book is a "biography" of typhus, examining its pre-history, its assorted hosts, its effects on world affairs, its place in the family of diseases that plague humankind. Not to the taste of all, but one of the classics of modern bacteriology. And related with a wry humour;

The louse was not always the dependent, parasitic creature that cannot live away from its host. There were once free and liberty-loving lice, who could look other insects in their multifaceted eyes and bid them smile when they called them "louse."

Cleaning up an old façade.

The first book he had found for me was "Spiders", by W.S. Bristowe. He was, according to Wikipedia, "an English naturalist, a prolific and popular scientific writer and authority on spiders." The book I have was published in 1947, and has only 30 pages of text (a short, but fascinating, essay); the rest of the book is taken up by 24 plates of hand-painted spiders, done by an A.T. Hollick in 1867-70 and not published at that time.

Here is one of the plates:

Caption reads, "Philodromus fallax Sund. Female." The smaller drawing, I think, represents the actual size of the spider. On the page it is 2 cm, at the widest stretch.

And from the essay, here is a sample quote from the first page:

Not so Topsell. (17th century) Hear what beauty he discerned in a House Spider: 'The skin of it is so soft, smooth, polished and neat, that she precedes the softest skin'd Mayds, and the daintiest and most beautiful Strumpets ... she hath fingers that the most gallant Virgins desire to have theirs like them, long, slender, round, of exact feeling, that there is no man, nor any creature, that can compare with her'.

But he doesn't spend too much time with ancient opinions; soon enough, he is testing spiders' stamina by making them run, then taking their pulse. And under one of his own drawings of spider fangs, he writes, "Imagine two million pairs of jaws in an acre field." Eep! It's almost enough to stop me walking barefoot in the grass!

In the centre of all the hustle, sharp edges, and construction mess, this pocket of calm.

One more book, this time a new one; in the evening, we went to the book launch party for Anne Murray's new Boundary Bay book, "Tracing Our Past". The first book, "A Nature Guide to Boundary Bay", was a valuable resource. This one promises to be even better. More on it later.

(Photos (except for the book plate) were quick snapshots as we walked from the Vancouver Art Gallery to the bookstore.)
.

35,000 records. Of Lichen.

I spent the evening tonight leafing through plant and lichen books, browsing Google photos, going through alphabetical lists of lichen from A to Z. (E-Flora BC tells me that the UBC Herbarium Lichen Database has 35,000 records. I'm probably fortunate that their page wouldn't load.)

And I am no further ahead than when I started.

I saw this leaf lichen this afternoon. Pretty, I thought, and snapped the photo.


Greyish white, lobed, loosely attached. So far, so good. I see lichen like this in every clump of trees.

But I haven't been looking closely enough. This afternoon, sorting my photos, I noticed the underside of the lobes. They are covered in little dark brown teeth or spines.


Enlarged photo; you can see the jagged underside. Click on the photo to get a better view.

So I've been searching. I don't know what this is. It could be some type of Nephroma; at least that is the closest I could find. But nothing quite matches.

And I never imagined there were so very many species of lichen.
.

High hopes

I found an ant at the bathroom sink. It's the first one I've seen this year. I ran, first to the kitchen cupboard for a couple of grains of sugar to keep him occupied, then to the desk for the camera.

And here's his side of the story:

What's this?


Nom, nom, nom


I think I'll take it home.


It's a bit awkward, isn't it?


Is that a drop-off? Back, back, back!


Oops!


Hmmm. This one's a bit easier to handle.

And off he went, avoiding the drop-off into the sink this time.
.