I don't know where to start ...

... to identify this.


I was sitting at my daughter's computer, staring at the wall, when I saw movement. A spot of cream, barely lighter than the wall, that's all it was. But it was crawling.

I got out the camera and took a few quick photos first. Then I reached for the desk lamp to turn it around to shine on the wall. When I looked back, my spot of cream had left. I couldn't find it again.


These are the two photos that turned out, blown up to their maximum size. The bug would be barely a millimetre or two long, I think.

I think it's a larva of some kind, but what kind? Where do I start looking?

Help!
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Chinatown Critters

Seen in Chinatown last week, mostly overhead ...

Lamp base in an antique store


Pigeon on an old wall


Lion atop a lamp post


Behind a dusty window. Toothy.


Above it all


Paper dragons

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Cornucopia

Strathcona Community Garden, continued ...

(Part I, here)

Tide flats. It wasn't all that long ago, as geographical features go, that the garden area was a tide flat; the water is still there, barely under the surface. In spots, it determines the use of the land.

I ended the previous post with a photo of a wooden ramp that leads to a small pool. A bench on it provides a resting place surrounded by greens and flowers; I sat there to listen for frogs ...


... and discovered a secret shrine:


In that "cave" in front of Laurie, a small Buddha sits, presumably to spread his beneficient karma over the garden.


He's not the only guardian angel here:

On the post of a shady arbor.

One of the many flower plots. Due to good karma, fairy dust, compost, or hard work? Or all of the above?

Borage.

Going on, deeper into the garden, we came to a row of espaliered fruit trees, painstakingly pruned and secured, bearing red apples and hard, green pears.

"This espalier uses the oblique cordon system with the tree stock grafted onto dwarf rootstock."

Next, the waterlily pool:


... a mirror in the centre of an herb garden with gravelled paths, following a Tibetan Buddhist mandala pattern. Butterflies flutter here from one herb to another, dragonflies zip to and fro, and the bees are busy.

Time for a break, and a cooling drink of water.

Another pool pic. Just because.

Back through the vine walk, heaped with grapes, clematis, kiwis and honeysuckle:


... to the garden house,

"a space for meeting, seed collection, herb drying and archives / library. The building was created using sustainable and reclaimed materials, and incorporates natural systems such as solar power, rainwater collection, grey water cleansing as well as a composting toilet."

Solar panels.

Figs.

Time to go home for tea. We walked back around the west edge of the plots, past a children's area,


... and a berry patch,

Black gooseberries.

... down the path, and home, sunburnt (again!) and foot-weary.

We missed the wetlands area, down in the southeast corner, the composting bins, and the native sweat lodge. A route for another day.

Section of the Environmental Youth Alliance map.

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And still the void ...

I've got a migraine. This is what it feels like.


Decipher that, if you will. I'm taking an ibuprofen and going to bed.

See you tomorrow!

I just had to pass this on...

It made me smile. And cry at the same time. Especially the kids.

Watch the video (4:29) | digg story

Thanks, Bing, for passing it on!

Greening the dump

Downtown Vancouver is shaped like the belly of a seahorse, with Stanley Park being the head. It swims between Burrard Inlet and English Bay; False Creek bathes the lower back.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the water continued down and around the tail as tidal flats. A dam was built at Main Street, the "land" was deeded to the CPR (who later gave some of it back, as unusable) and the wetlands were slowly drained and filled. What is left now, is a large, barren area, partly wasteland, partly scarred by railway lines and warehouses. I have marked it on the map in pale brown.


On the north side of this blot, a small bright green V marks the Strathcona Community Garden. This was originally part of the tide flats; over the better part of half a century, the city has been gradually filling it with soil, garbage and gravel. In spots, the water still surfaces.

The flats have seen varied activity over the decades: railway parking, industrial landfill, city garbage dump, "Hobo Village" during the Depression years, and later on, the site of the main city firehall and mixed industrial use. All of this, of course, was laced together with the irrepressible blackberry thickets.

Since the end of the 1970s, residents of the area have been working towards creating a shared garden on the dump. It has not been easy; between the difficulties of the terrain, the encroachment of the city, conflicts with other worthwhile projects, and the on-again, off-again battles with the city government, it took ten years to formalize a temporary lease on the property, in 1985.

The garden at first covered 3.5 acres; in 1993, it was expanded to include the Cottonwood, along the street to the southeast, and the Environmental Youth Alliance garden (on a blackberry-infested garbage heap), bringing the total area under cultivation up to 7 acres.

Enough stats; on to the photos. Follow our footsteps:


The sign on Hawks Avenue does not encourage visitors; it doesn't even mark an entry-way. Up at the corner of Prior, a narrow wood-chip trail cuts through the blackberries and bindweed.


This wild border serves a useful purpose or two: it insulates the garden from the smoke and racket of Prior Street, and provides a safe habitat for birds and other wildlife. Besides, it disguises the garden, discouraging non-garden-oriented visitors. It almost discouraged us; we passed the corner several times before we noticed the trail.

Around a gentle curve, the garden dozes in its sunny enclosure. At first, we wander among the expected allotment fare.

Lettuces and other salad greens.


Big blue cabbages.


Herbs in containers.


Nasturtiums and dillweed. With a chair for the weary weeder.


With the occasional decorative element thrown in. Here, crab shells on poles.

The plots go on and on, and we went around and around, up and down the rows. A few gardeners worked quietly on their squares of land; a woman showed us her neighbour's grape vines, woven together with flowering purple clematis, white bindweed, and laden with green grapes.

Heading for the garden shed, for another tool, perhaps. Scarlet runner beans bloom overhead.

The plots petered out. We passed a row of tall boxes; beds raised to waist height.


I learned later that these beds were built for the use of disabled gardeners, who would not be able to handle the stooping and lifting that most ground-level gardening entails. (Oh, my aching back!)

A few picnic tables under fruit trees, and this round "dining suite" in a sunny spot. And just beyond, the orchard; apple, pear, and crabapple trees.


And across the orchard, the beehives, housing the pollinating crews.

Doing the map dance.

To be continued: water features, solar panels ...
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Hard at work

I'm still sorting Community Garden photos; the promised history, etc., will be delayed until tomorrow.



... Now, where was that hoe?
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They call it the "BiodiverCity"

A scant half dozen blocks from the bustle of Chinatown, we walked into a fragrant oasis, quiet except for the buzzing of a million bees and the chatter of chickadees and sparrows.

Strathcona Community Garden. Once a dump, now ... let me show you:

Environmental Youth Alliance map.




Apples, redding up.




Yellow squash.




Weeding the rows of onions.




A few plots on the southeast corner.

Tomorrow: history of the garden, current projects, more veggies, fruit and flowers, beehives, and a hidden Buddha.
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Fifty-six legs

One thing about a vacation; I've got a whole new batch of insects and spiders to look at. Even when I've only travelled a few miles.

I've been prowling around the house and garden here in Strathcona, looking in all the corners and under leaves. And here are some of the spiders I have found.

(I just crashed my daughter's computer, trying to browse BugGuide, and now the mouse won't work. So IDs will have to wait.)


Found at night, in a corner of a bedroom. So elegant!


This is another night prowler. Very tiny, a few millimetres toe to toe. But an efficient predator, judging by the detritus. He is extremely shy, so as soon as the camera gets anywhere in his vicinity, he turns tail and buries his nose in the corner. Wishing for a real hole, no doubt; he pulls in the legs and bundles himself up into a tiny spot of black. I haven't been able to see the pattern on his back clearly at all.


A daytime spider. These are all over the garden. I've been pruning and weeding, and they take off running in every direction when I bag up my cuttings.


This one was on the underside of a hydrangea leaf, along with the zebra jumping spider I posted this morning. Daytime, again. It's trying to climb up the slippery, shiny dog dish; the reflections make it very leggy.


Daytime. On the kitchen window frame. She sat there, unmoving, while I raised and lowered the window, maneuvered my hand, the camera, my head around in the gap, tried again and again to take a photo backwards; not a sign that she had noticed anything unusual.


That lump? I think it must be eggs, and she's standing guard. "You'll get to my babies only over my dead body," she says.


Below that window, on the wall; a smaller spider. It has no web, but sits in the same place all day.


And tonight, out on the porch, I found one of the cross spiders in its web. Most of them are active in the daytime, building webs across pathways where humans will run into them. I am surprised to see a web still intact at night.

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Black and white, with headlight eyes

I fell asleep in the middle of preparing a post.

Here's a spider, as a place-holder.



More spiders coming up tonight.
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Do Not Dumb

It's been a long, difficult day. We woke up this morning to discover that the house had been broken into, and our keys, money, ID and car stolen. We've been dealing with police, banks, half-remembered numbers, telephones on hold, repetitions, endless repetitions of the details, and the locksmith. And it's been hot.

In the evening, a long walk around the neighbourhood calmed our spirits. These are photos from that walk.

Hydrangeas peeking through our porch railings.


A garden down the block. Found objects make good supports for the squash vines.


Nobody uses these for records any more.


Knot. Tighter than a square knot, greener than green.


"Do not Dumb". One wishes. (Probably a translation from Cantonese.)


Sunny face.


Overhead, huge fig leaves. This one makes a deep bowl.


Just an old house, warm in the setting sunlight.


Scarlet runner beans, in flower. Growing up a "No Parking" sign.


Outsider art, nailed to a hydro pole. "Hydrate. Eat a fish."


The blackberries are coming along nicely.


These were so sweet and sun-warm!

And, on Facebook, John sent me "Good Karma". Thanks, John. I think we needed that.
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Two doves and a dragon

Looking for a Strathcona corner store that is open Sunday evening, (a difficult assignment), I came across this small Buddhist temple on Keefer Street:


Up top, keeping the dragon company, is a pair of mourning doves. **


Zooming in:


Maybe they're nesting there. We'll go back soon to see if we can find them again.

This was supposed to be a wordless post, because it's late, and I'm sunburnt and tired. So, no more. I'm going to bed, with Noxema on my nose.

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**Patrick says they may be rock pigeons. Could be; I'm often wrong. They didn't look like our everyday pigeons to me; smaller, head too small, tail too long. But it could have been an effect of the pose.

I went back and got more distant photos of one, in shadow, unfortunately. Stripes on the wing: rock pigeon. Comma on the face, longish tail, thin body: mourner. White rim on the bill: rock pigeon. Skinny rock pigeon.

One of a million. Oh, well.

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We have constructed pyramids

There's a mad poet wandering the alleys of Strathcona. He has no blog; he has to write on walls.

"I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft."

"We have constructed pyramids in honour of our escaping."

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Exotics in the alley

Like some sort of flying saucer: the passion fruit flower, Passiflora caerulea.


It is a strange, mis-matched collection of flower parts: 10 sepals and petals, intermingled, a ring of 70 to more than 100 deep blue filaments, a lime-green, pentagonal central area, then a "crown" of smaller, purplish filaments. The pistil is topped with a contraption made up of 5 green and yellow male organs in a flat circle, the developing fruit, and on top, a purple "propeller" with only 3 blades (the female organs).


In Strathcona, it has often gone wild, and climbs up and over rickety alley fences. The less care it gets, the more it seems to thrive. We found this one clambering over a pile of abandoned lumber and mingling with the branches of an unpruned apple tree.
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Jumpin' Jehosaphat!

Strathcona is buggy. Right now, the place is swarming with cross spiders, mostly tiny, mostly with webs built right across pathways. At face level, as often as not.

But this afternoon, I saw this creature:


A long, skinny wasp-like fly, or fly-like wasp. I haven't had time to look it up, yet. (We're on vacation, Laurie reminds me.)

It attracted my attention because it was hopping up and down in a flowerbed. I couldn't see if it was just stretching those lo-o-ong legs and contracting them, or actually jumping off the ground. Whichever it was, it was raising and lowering itself a couple of inches, fast, maybe a couple or three "jumps" per second. It stayed mostly in the same place, until I moved in too close to it with the camera and flash. Then it went to hide under a leaf, came out the other side and began the "jumping" again.


I caught it with a face-on view, before it gave up and left. I've cropped off the legs, to zero in on the face. Here it is, toe-to-toe:


You can see one rear leg clearly; it ends on that dry leaf at the top of the photo.

I wonder why it was jumping like that. Trying to attract a mate? Trying to lose weight? (Not that it needs to; it looks anorexic.) (I know, I'm being silly. I'm on vacation; it's allowed.)

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Buzzing about town

A couple of bees I saw today:




This white bush towered far over our heads and was swarming with these little bees. The were in constant motion, never pausing long enough to focus the camera on them, so I just pointed the lens at the mass and clicked half a dozen times.

We were out with the cameras for several hours today: I'll be sorting for weeks after we get home. Houses, flowers, birds and bees, art, Chinatown, and oddities. For starts.
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One word

Orange



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The better to see you with

I never saw a pug-nose cat before. I met this one in an alley-way in Strathcona yesterday evening.


A baleful glare. Maybe it's the yellow eyes (click on the photo to get the full effect) or the scars on the face. (Is that a recent wound on his nose?) He looks like a scrapper. But he gave no sign of being annoyed by my photography, and sat there calmly while I experimented with flash/no flash and distant shots/close-ups. The light was fading, so I needed the flash, but it did strange things with his eyes:


One yellow eye, one green eye.

We will be house-sitting in Strathcona for the next two weeks. Blogging may be sporadic at first; my daughter's computer keeps adding uncalled-for formatting to this post. (It just needs to learn the rules: I am the boss, not it. I'll be giving it a good lecture tomorrow.)

Now, I'll hit "Publish" and see what happens. Wish me luck!
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Carpetbagger

A week or so ago, I found this visitor on my back door, blazing fiery orange in the early-morning sunshine.


A Large Yellow Underwing, Noctua pronuba.


The underside of those glorious wings. It's a newly-emerged moth, I think; all of the feathers, even at the edges of the wings, are intact. Later on, they get quite ragged.


Captured, and under glass on my desk, the bright underwings almost completely cloaked, it became just another common brown moth. It has a broken antenna. I think that might have been my fault; I don't see it in the first photos.


Until I zoom in; then the feathers make a delicate pattern reminiscent of those antique carpetbags our grandparents carried onto trains. (Remember them? Heavy, even empty, a bit awkward to carry full, but much prettier than the backpack I am stuffing clothes into for a couple of weeks vacation.)


When the moth wandered upside-down onto my glass lid, I got a good view of his underside. Brown and cream speckled belly, hairy, spiny legs, bulbous eyes, and a tightly-coiled feeding apparatus protected by a sharp "beak".

I wonder about those wicked spines on the legs; what use does the moth make of them? They're in an odd position for defense, or even for grasping a perch.

Someone is sure to know. That's what I love about blogging (well, one of the things I love); other bloggers are so helpful!

I interrupted this post to go chasing after another, different, moth that is flitting around tonight. I almost had it, but I frightened it, and now it's off investigating the corners of my ceiling again. More moth photos tomorrow, I think. And I'll try not to damage this one.
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From a balcony above Gastown

We spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon at "Girls in the City", an exhibition of art and photography held in a Gastown loft, and featuring three local women. One, the owner of the loft, is an old friend who specializes in architectural paintings; the other two women were my daughter (photography) and granddaughter (oil paintings).

Audrey's debut; this is her first exhibition. And she's so happy!

After we did the tour of the art, (and very impressed we were) we stood on the balcony overlooking the city. This area once was mainly industrial, but it has been cleaned up and converted to apartments and lofts. It still bears the marks of its history.

An old water tower.

"Ship Chandlery", the sign reads. I had to look the word up. It comes from the same root as "candle", and its first meaning, according to the online dictionary is "One who makes and sells candles." It can also mean a retail dealer in a specific line, in this case marine equipment. Another sign on the same building reads, "Boom Chains." They don't sell them here any more; those are expensive condominiums now.

Fire escapes and steeple, down in a hollow between buildings.

Looking west, beyond Gastown to the downtown area, relentlessly converting its old brickwork to steel and glass.

A sparrow sits on a railing on the roof of the refurbished chapel.

A silvery table for morning coffee on the balcony.

"Unframed Originals"

Gastown at street level.

Gassy Jack, being ignored by tourists and residents alike.

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Tufty Hallowe'en bugs

A few weeks ago, I was trying to identify the various species of ladybugs I have been finding. Yesterday, in White Rock, I found a group of what looked like small orange ladybugs. The odd thing was that they didn't move, not even when I pulled away sheltering leaves and brought the camera in close.

Here's why:


Ladybug # 1, blown up to several times its size (around 5 mm). What are those frilly things at the end? And why is it so rumpled-looking?


Ladybug # 2. Blurry, but the "frilly things" are clearer. Nice Hallowe'en colours.

Then I found two of these:


A larva. I looked it up on BugGuide; it's the larva of the common Multicoloured Asian Lady Beetle, Harmonia axyridis, the ones I had blogged about earlier.

Adult Asian Ladybug.

The first two are pupae. The frills at the end are the remains of the discarded larval skin. Look back at the photo of the larva; you can see the tufts, black and white, along the sides and back.

The skin is glued to the surface of the leaf, holding the pupa in place no matter how the wind blows or how curious people wielding cameras yank at the leaves.

There's an interesting photo on BugGuide; a larva just getting ready to pupate. They assume a hunched-over posture, attach themselves to the leaf, then split down the back to allow the pupa to emerge. Both the larvae I saw today, though, were flat on the leaf.
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Bedtime ritual, interrupted

It was warm yesterday evening, and we sat outside, watching the sun go down. We had company; a busyness of chickadees, a towhee, a wren, swallows far overhead, mosquitos around our ankles, and a family of house finches:

Papa, standing guard

On a lower branch, checking out those intruders; is it safe to go down for our baths?

They waited until we had gone inside, then they brought the kids down for a quick dip before bed.
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Mixed media, including a park

A few days ago, I promised you a walk around Strathcona. I hadn't forgotten.

But where to begin? Gardens? Quirky stuff? Houses? Art? Close my eyes and jab? That works for me; and here are the Paneficio Studios:


I took this photo at midnight, a few weeks ago, with ambient light.


In the little garden spot in front, one of Arnt Arntzen's metal sculptures.


Hawks and Keefer. The street signs are in Chinese and English. We are a short walk from the centre of Chinatown, at Main and Pender.


Keefer Street view of the building, in daylight. Some half a dozen artists live and work here.


Down the alley, up at the roof line, a propeller with the letters A - R -T. Arnt's work, I imagine.


Hawks Avenue side. A view of the park reflected in the window of a long passageway/storage area, with my favourite yellow rocking chair barely visible at the end.


Reflection of a reflection. Pot inside the studio, car outside, bicycle handlebars somewhere in between.


And in the corner windows, under the sign, Valerie Arntzen displays her recent work. She creates Assemblage Art, using found materials, and usually focussing on religious imagery, often mingling Mexican icons and industrial left-overs. This piece is typical: a Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, in a Chinese dragon frame, on a stained spool pedestal and protected with rusty barbed wire. The little box contains a skull with a thimble cap.

I like the extra layering in Laurie's photo; the green outside world beyond the metal grid.

I don't know what this all means. I think, as with most art, it speaks to something beyond words. Whatever it is, I am always drawn to her window.
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Bursting upwards

Under my neighbour's new rosebush:


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Why, why, oh why?

The third anniversary of I and the Bird is coming up fast. And Mike asks us for a post answering the question,

"Why are you still bird blogging?"

He clarifies:

Why do you, in spite of all the other birding-related activities you engage in professionally and/or recreationally, put so much work into your blog?

What carried you through the tough times, the writer’s block, the scarcity of readers, to the point you’ve now reached?

Why, when so many millions have tried yet failed to maintain even a sporadic blog, are you so actively engaged?

And he gives us a deadline: tomorrow. So, here goes:

Why are you still bird blogging?

Because I'm still looking at and for birds, still exclaiming when I see a family of house finches at my bird bath for their evening ablutions (five of them after supper tonight), still talking back to my chickadees; "Dee dee dee, to you, too!" I'm still craning my neck to see eagles far overhead and counting hawks on fenceposts on every drive down the highway to Tsawwassen. I still try to photograph crows.

And shared joy is double the joy. Hence, I blog.

Why do you, in spite of all the other birding-related activities you engage in professionally and/or recreationally, put so much work into your blog?

At first, 'way back, I began a blog as a way to impose some sort of discipline on my day, but soon I discovered something: blogging, whether bird blogging, invertebrate ditto, beach, art, or whatever blogging (all of which I indulge in) is all about community. I write about what delights me, and I find myself in the company of others around the world who love the same things I do.

I found, today, on Huckleberry Days, a series of beautiful spider photos. (I know, not birds. But the principle applies.) I went back several times to look at them and marvel.

A couple of days ago, Hugh, at Rock, Paper, Lizard, wrote about looking for salamanders. (I know.)

"Why go herping? To see what’s there, of course."

I relished that saying all day.

Julie Zickefoose, today, posted photos of the courtship display of a Northern Harrier. (Ok, birds, this time.) I envy her and rejoice with her, both.

So I blog for me, but also for them, and the rest of you. Who knows, but that one of my posts will bring the same pleasure to someone else?

What carried you through the tough times, the writer’s block, the scarcity of readers, to the point you’ve now reached?

I never expected more than a few readers. I am always amazed to see the numbers in SiteMeter. But for me, that wasn't the point. Writer's block? Sometimes it rears its fearsome head. So I post a favourite photo. And sometimes that gets me started. Sometimes it doesn't. There's always tomorrow.

Why, when so many millions have tried yet failed to maintain even a sporadic blog, are you so actively engaged?

Because I'm having fun. Isn't that enough reason?

And because I can't do a post without a decent photo, let me see ... (browsing my files ... ) ah! Here are a few seagulls on the White Rock beach a couple of weeks ago.




I don't remember seeing gulls with the whitish legs around here before. In this particular flock, about half the birds had pink legs, the rest were white. Beaks were black, white, yellow, some with black tips, one with a white tip.

Pink legs, black beak.

I'll never get my seagulls sorted out.
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Woah! What is this all about?

This is weird ...

We were visiting with a neighbour this afternoon in his back garden, when I saw, on a toolbox, an ant. Nothing unusual about that; there were ants all over his place. But this one was behaving oddly, running around and around in a circle a couple of inches in diameter, always clockwise. I took a few photos, blurry ones because it was running fast.


We came home and I made tea. While we were drinking it, Laurie suggested that I could videotape the ant. Good idea: I finished my tea and walked back to the neighbour's place. (All that rigamarole to define the time span; 15 minutes to half an hour.)

The ant was not on the toolbox any more, but my neighbour thought it had gone down the crack. I moved the toolbox a few inches, and sure enough, there it was, going around in circles.

Here's the video (27 seconds).

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Note how the ant responds to the fuschia petal when it blows into its pathway; it deals with the obstacle, then returns to the circling behaviour.

I checked out some of the other ants in the vicinity; they were all behaving normally.

What is going on? Some sort of parasite in its brain? Poisoning?

Anybody know?
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Family matters.

Family parties are fun, but hard to describe afterwards. Except that everybody talks all at once, and that the food is always our favourite dishes. (I took albóndigas en chile verde, meatballs in green chile sauce; recipe if requested.)

I have a few photos, though, that you may enjoy.

The youngest member of the party: Baby Yellow-foot. Carefully tended by Sophia.


Gift from my granddaughter; 40 stems of sweet pea. Mmmm!


The artist, practicing for her first exhibition, next week in Gastown. (If you're in the area, do come: details at Girls in the City.)


Annika, mournful at being excluded from the goings-on.

You're looking at me! Does that mean I can come in now?

No, it doesn't. She's a great, humongous, tail-and-hind-end-wagging, bouncing, licking, rolling, hairy, hungry (always hungry) mountain of unbridled enthusiasm and she has to visit with us one at a time. Sorry, Annika.


Annika's view of the proceedings.


Icing! Yum!

Next: a walk around the Strathcona streets. Houses, gardens, art.
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Raindrops keep falling on my lens

Hundreds of photos with raindrop spots. That's what I brought back from a walkabout in Strathcona.

Here's rain on a rose.


I'm still sorting the rest. More later today.
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Wild night on the town

It's my birthday, and we're partying in Strathcona tonight! Yee-hah!

These photos were taken coming and going from the last party - Grad night.

In a Vancouver alley, half mural, half graffitti.


On the side of a store, at the edge of Strathcona.


Midnight photo, with ambient light. Party in Strathcona, around the corner from my daughter's house.

I'll have more Strathcona pics tonight. Or rather, tomorrow morning.

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Love, unrequited

A week ago, Aydin, at Snail's Tales, posted his technique for monitoring mating snails. It looked simple enough; catch the snails, keep them apart for a day or two, then put them together on an observation platform. He uses a glass plate.

I could do that! It's the season for snails, and they're easy to feed and house. Wednesday afternoon, I caught a pair of grove snails and brought them inside.

And right away, the snails imposed their own rules on the game.


By the time I was inside with them, one of the snails had glommed onto the other, and had no intention of letting go. Oh, well; maybe they didn't need to be kept apart for a day. I put them in a dish, together.


Snail # 1 proceeded to climb all over Snail # 2, just as Aydin had described. But Two would have none of it. He simply locked himself inside his shell and refused to come out.


After a while, One gave up and went about his business. Much later, Two got hungry, stretched out, and went a-foraging.


Inevitably, he met One:


They exchanged pleasantries:


And then One turned away. But now Two was interested in a relationship; he gave chase, and glued himself to One.


Nothing doing. One's feelings had been hurt, maybe; he wrenched himself out of Two's amorous grasp, and hurried off.

They're still in the same container, roaming around. Every so often, they come face to face, but as soon as they make eye contact, one or the other turns aside.

Tomorrow, One's going into solitary confinement for a couple of days. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say.
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Leggy

Half-grown crow:

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Heedless, galumphing monster destroys baby's home!

Spiderling, whose web I had inadvertently run into:


Breaking threads spring back, make ribbon patterns in sunlight.


Climbing the last remaining thread to start all over again. Sorry, kid.
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Witches Hair, Green Ribbons and Turkish Towels

I was almost inclined to give up. I had a file full of recent seaweed photos, the helpful ID site at the Washington State University, and to bring me right down to this area, Kozloff's "Seashore Life ...". It should have been a simple matter to sort our photos into the right slots.

Nothing is ever simple.

And I had no idea of the rich variety of seaweeds on our shores. The more I read, the more "possibles" for each photo I found. And the more closely I looked at the photos, the more different seaweeds I discovered crowding into the frame. It's a wild, exuberant, teeming habitat there, where the water meets the land.


In the end, I had to settle for a tentative ID for many seaweeds, a question mark for the rest. And a resolution to look more closely, more carefully, next trip to the beach.

So here they are; some of the seaweeds of the upper intertidal zone of the rocky shore on the headland at Kwomais Point.


Rockweed, again. And some sort of mushy "ground cover", one of the brown algae, I think.


Not an onion. A small kelp, bleached white, tossed up from the lower zones.


Turkish towel, Chondracanthus, with a side dressing of rockweed.


Sea lettuce. But what are those fat "fingers" beside it? I can't find anything like them.


Another mystery weed. There were several of these, all white, about a hand's-breadth long, attached to the sand under the stones.


Stringy Acid Kelp, Demarestia viridis. I think.


I think this is sugar kelp. The holdfast is visible on this one. That helps.


And this is another kelp, probably.


Eelgrass, and some sort of green seaweed, sea hair, green ribbon, or something similar.

And the stuff at the bottom of the photo? This one has me tearing my hair.



It looks like Witches Hair, Demarestia aculeata. Except that this one has tiny "olives" growing on it. I found great masses of these, separate from the parent weed, filling gaps between rocks.


Here's a handful.


Help! What are these?

And I've learned a few things:

• Always take notes.
• Measure things. Or add a known element to the photo, like a pen or a dime. Rocks won't do.
• Touch the seaweeds. Smell them. I think I've seen Bleachweed around this area; if I had handled some, I would have noticed the smell of bleach.
• Look at the holdfast. Some are like roots, others like a disc.
• Check them out both wet and dry.
  
• Carry sample bottles and bags. Always. Not just sometimes.

There's always something new to see. And having seen it and named it, we see even more the next time.
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