Beetle mining for mining beetles

If I have a defect (I said, "if"), it is that I don't let go of a topic until it is thoroughly dealt with. (Well, that's one. There may be a few others.)

So, after we brought home those photos of the engraved branch, last Sunday, I wondered aloud what critter had done that work, how, and why. When I mentioned that I had dug the branch out from the rocks and logs, and propped it up well above the tide line, and that, "maybe it will still be there next time we go down that trail," Laurie proposed going the very next day, with a saw.

(Laurie is incredibly patient with me.)

So he carried his saw down that steep trail, and sawed the branch in half. It was just right for a tall, sturdy walking stick for me, and a cudgel for him. To ward off any dangerous falling leaves, I presume.

At home we examined our haul. It is birch, from the remains of bark on the "cudgel" end, still flexible, but dry. I peeled off the bark; the tunnels underneath were full of wood paste, still dampish. They made quite a pile.

Another "carving"; some species of fantastic centipede?

I remembered that Snail had recently discovered larvae and adults of leaf miners by following their tunnels: I would try the same thing here. With a sharp hook, I carefully dug out the sawdusty filling, checking it under a lens as it accumulated.

Soon I found something; something tiny, shiny and black. It looked, under the microscope, like the pronotum and part of a head of a small beetle. I was on the right track! I dug some more, and found an elytra, then two.

I needed that encouragement, because it was over an hour before I found an entire beetle, all 3 mm. of it. And then I couldn't believe that I really had it all.

Here's beetle # 1:


It looks as if it were missing the end of the abdomen. And the legs are too short, almost not there, as if something had eaten them away.


I couldn't make any sense out of the mouthparts, even with the microscope.

I found a couple more, in the same state. One was a paler brown:


See how it looks almost broken off at the end?

Twisting and turning them, I realized that the stubs of legs had the normal claws at the end; maybe I had the whole beetle, after all.


Oh, Google Images! Trying "birch bark beetle". And I hit it first thing. Should have Googled earlier.

The master engravers are probably Birch bark beetles, Scolytus ratzeburgi Janson. Or possibly Elm beetles, which are more or less identical; a page from Virginia Tech says that,

Species identification is difficult because the adult beetles of the various species are very similar, cylindrical and hard-shelled.

And VT has an explanation of the intricate patterns the beetles create:

Adult bark beetles bore through the bark to the cambium layer of suitable host trees. The female excavates a tunnel between the bark and wood along which she lays her eggs. Upon hatching, each grub burrows away from the egg tunnel and feeds on the live bark tissue (phloem) and outer cell layers of wood (xylem). The resulting network of egg and larval tunnels beneath the bark is called a gallery.

If you look at the photo of a gallery above, you can see a tiny hole at one end, where the female entered. They bore nicely rounded holes; here are two, from the outside:


I followed one of the tunnels along from the entry hole, and found a beetle trapped at the end. Here's the hole and channel, after I had cleaned out the sawdust:


And turning it around, here's the beetle:


Unfortunately, when I pried this one out, it came apart.

I would imagine that this was a female; she came in from outside, didn't get around to laying eggs, and died. There are no side tunnels, and she'd barely travelled a little more than half an inch.

Again, from VT;

The "shot hole" appearance of the bark in infested trees indicates that numerous beetles have matured, chewed exit holes, and flown off to find new breeding sites.

This branch, at least in the parts that still had bark, didn't really have too many exit holes. It is possible that the branch fell in a windstorm, and landed in salt water, killing the larvae before they matured.

I also found, under the bark, a microscopic shell of a marine snail.
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Anonymous artist found in hiding ...

But there is still some work to be done on the story. Look for it tomorrow.

For now, rest your eyes:

Sky and sea, off Kwomais Point, yesterday.

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Lord of all he surveys

On the superstructure of an old tug converted into a children's play space, at the New Westminster Quay, a crow posed:

Keeping an eye out for pesky eagles ...

... or for kids with their tribute of cookies and chips.

We had nothing to offer, so he flew away...


... to establish his supremacy over a row of humble pigeons.
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Nicomekl

The Nicomekl River is a tranquil, meandering, dawdling little river. It crawls across the Fraser Delta from the low hills east of Langley to drop its share of the farm soils into the bird heaven that is Mud Bay. The water is a green-brown mud colour.


If the light is right, it makes an excellent mirror; nothing shines through from underneath:


The name comes from the Halq'emeylem, and means, "the route to go" or "the pathway." Which makes sense; it is an easy river to navigate in small craft, if short (34 km).

On our way to Crescent Beach and Kwomais Point, we often stop at the last little bridge that crosses it.

One-lane bridge. Not too much traffic.

There's not much to see; slow water upriver, slow water downriver. Sometimes a duck or two. But it's a restful spot.

Looking upstream: that bridge is the one we will cross going home.

Once, many years ago, we fished upriver; a lazy, sleepy afternoon, watching the red and white floats drift on the stream, catching nothing.
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Half a dozen photos of an old branch

We found this beautifully engraved branch jammed in among the logs and rocks in the splash zone at Kwomais Point. At first glance, it looked man-made. But no, it is the work of smaller artists:

Artistry by bark-tunnelling insects.

Look at the designs they have made!

Is that a fish, down in the shadows?

Woman in furs

Untitled

I peeled back the bark from one section. The wood was still damp, and the contents of the tunnels stayed with the bark. See how the raised design on the bark matches the engraving on the wood beneath.



I don't know what type of creature does this. The branch was green wood, still flexible, not driftwood, so it would have been carved on the tree; these are not marine organisms.

And it was too long for the car; maybe we should be carrying a saw on our outings, too.

A mouse logo.

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Bug bane jelly

Walking on the rocks near Kwomais Point, we came across another of those red jellyfish, Cyanea capillata:

Small, dead, half-dry jellyfish

Not this one, but one like it. Dry and leathery-looking, but still in one piece. I'd been watching videos and reading about these jellies; it seems that only the tentacles will sting, so this time I dared to touch the upper part. It was sticky, like fly-paper. And it had trapped a couple of things.

A bug. Maybe two bugs.

Stuck tight.

I pried the bug off, and brought it home in a pill bottle. Here it is, right side up.

Something else for BugGuide.

It was dead when I found it, but undamaged except for the loss of part of a leg and a scratch on the wing covers. I wonder; did it die because it got stuck on the jellyfish, or was it poisoned by its venom? I can't imagine that this is its usual diet.

This would be, I think, a true bug; it has the long sucking tube of a bug. So, back to BugGuide's gazillion photos of bugs. (399 pages of them!) Any hints you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

*Update: Wow! I'm down to the Family, already! He's some sort of Dirt-colored Seed Bug, Rhyparochromidae. (Only 10 pages of these.) More or less like this one, from California.
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Just goofing around

Laurie wanted a "scary" spider for a card he's making. I found one of my old photos and tweaked it a bit.

I liked the result so much I have to share it with you:

A tiny Araneus diadematus

These cross spiders always remind me of old jewelry; this one even more so. Love those purple knees! And if you look closely, there is a face on the back; I see a smiling Indian prince with an imposing headdress, or maybe Ganesh, with headdress.

So much for "scary"! Laurie said it suited his purpose, though.
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Critters of the sand

It was the last sunny day this week, the weather people said. (They were wrong, but that's beside the point.) So even though we were not free until late in the afternoon, we headed to the beach. And found the tide at its highest point. There was no beach, to speak of; a strip of piled drying eelgrass, above that, the sandy path in front of the houses.

Walking on the eelgrass is difficult, and the flies were bothersome. We dawdled along the path. Laurie took another dozen photos of Mount Baker, and I sat on a log to wait for him. Something moved in the sand, and I chased it down and bagged it. A beetle or fly of some sort. And I caught a beachhopper to keep it company, collected a pill bottle of sand for housing.

We went on. Behind the next log, I almost stepped on a pair of big black spiders. They fled, and I chased them with the camera; here's the slowpoke of the pair:

A wolf spider, almost completely black.

A daddy-long-legs (harvestman), hanging out with the spiders. Nice orange leg sockets!

After a while, we crossed the eelgrass again, and found that the tide was starting down; there was a smidgen of beach about a foot wide. Yay!

And just a few steps along that strip, Laurie came across one of those jellyfish that "Huckleberry" had written about.

Cyanea capillata, Lion's Mane jellyfish

Aren't the colours appetizing? Imagine that on toast!

We found quite a few of these at the high-tide line, mostly in deep reds and oranges shot with gold. A couple were paler. The one in the photo was one of the smaller jellies; the first one was at least 14 inches across, which is about as big as they get this far south.

As "Huckleberry" said, none had tentacles. Many were quite decayed, and had lost the central cap, so they looked like jelly doughnuts. Only in a couple could I see the 8 lobes.

For a list of interesting links, check out Huckleberry Days. And here's a YouTube video, which will lead you to several more; these animals are seriously beautiful in motion!

Supper time. It was a short walk. But at home, I had my captures to investigate.

The beachhopper turned out to be the smaller of the two common hoppers from our beaches, Orchestia traskiana:

Cute eyes.

I've spent quite a bit of time trying to get a photo of him without torturing him with plastic.

Head down in the wet sand.

But it is almost impossible. When I gently pry him loose from his hidey-hole, he comes with his own coat of sand. In that state, he lies still, pretending to be dead, but looking like a lump of sand. When I wash him off with a droplet or two of water, he leaps! to his many feet, flips over, and burrows into the sand. If I am very, very quick, I get him in the above position. A moment of hesitation, and he is almost invisible, except for the very top of his back. A minute later, there is no sign of his presence.

So, here he is, exposed and unhappy:


The tail rolls under; even walking on the flat, he keeps it in that position. But while he is burrowing, he shoves his head into the sand, then repeatedly flips the tail out straight, scooping the sand out from underneath and piling it on his back.

He has seven pairs of legs, three in back (I only see two) and four in front, plus assorted other appendages. And they all stick out at strange angles; check out those last legs in the full-size photo (click on it).

He is active at night; when I checked him at midnight, he was out wandering around. I brought him into the light, and within a minute, he was buried.

Next, the beetle. Which turned out to be a Rove beetle, about 1 cm. long, and as ornery as the beachhopper.

A long, skinny beetle with undersized elytra (wing covers). And I love those beaded antennae!

This is an extremely active beetle. Nothing slowed it down, neither dark nor light nor cold. Wet or dry, it keeps moving. I moved it to a container of very fine, dry sand for easier photo-taking, and the sand stuck to it; then it went into a frenzy, contorting itself every which way, brushing, twisting, combing, flipping, until no sand grain was left.

So no face shots.

About those wing covers: on most beetles, they reach the full length of the wing. The rove wears a little back-pack with the wings folded inside. I got a fuzzy photo of the wings extended all the way:


And this beastie likes the light; at midnight, it was nowhere to be seen. Under my desk lamp, it woke up and -- of course -- started to race around again.
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October in the parking lot ...

... on a sunny afternoon at Tim Horton's:

Enticing colours; "Look around! Don't go home until you've seen what we've done here!"


Multicoloured trees ...


and shrubs ...




Scattering leaves ...


and bark.

I like the way droplets of water serve as magnifying glasses on fallen leaves:


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Green and yellow and bumpy eyes

Sometimes the flash does weird things to the cat's eyes.


Look at this full-size (click) to see the hills and valleys in the irises. Is that the muscles contracting to respond to the flash, or an optical illusion?

This world is so full of mysteries ...
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Greater Yellowlegs at Mud Bay

On a sunny afternoon last week. They were busy eating something in the mud by the pilings, happily pip-pip-pipping all the while, and let us approach much closer than usual.






I wonder what they were eating. What lives in that mud? Next time, I'll bring home a sample. I didn't want to disturb them last Sunday; they were having too much fun.
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Westham Island Herb Farm

Second in the Westham Island Herb Farm series.

The Ellis family has been farming at this location in Delta since 1916. The on-site outlet for their produce, WIHF, is snuggled up against the farm proper; a complex of sheds and a farmhouse, surrounded by extensive fields.

At this time of the year, most of the fields are resting; the store will close for the winter in two weeks. But the owner, Sharon Ellis, ends the year with a bash and a blaze of Hallowe'en colour and fun.

Pumpkins, of course. Starting next week, there will be carved pumpkin faces everywhere, lit up each night until Hallowe'en. And there are costumed figures, smiling "scary" masks, a haunted house for the little ones (billed as "Terror in the Jungle" and housed inside a quonset greenhouse.) I was tempted to pretend to be a kid just to go in and see what they've cooked up.

Is that a wicked grin, or just insane? Uncle Herb, inviting us into his "Jungle".

But there's more to be seen. On the far side of the pumpkin festival, there's a tiny, old-timey general store, carrying everything from home-made jams and jellies to soap and buckets.


Through that back door, a little lawn overshadowed by a hard-working kiwi vine, still producing in spite of the chilly weather:


Vintage farm tools and farmhouse dishes decorate outside walls.


The flower is made of parts of machinery. And does anyone know what that wheel would have been used for?

Down a path past a battery of wheelbarrows, there is a henhouse and stable. The henhouse was empty, but this birdhouse had some pretty tenants:

Birdhouse. No birds.

Wasps, instead. With a spider web as curtain across the door.

The only chicken we saw.

One of the residents of the stable

Clematis climbing the chickenwire

Back around the front, we went in to see what veggies were available still. We bought newly-dug potatoes and carrots. (Try to remember the smell of a fresh-pulled carrot -- worth the stop all on its own!) Some of the carrots were a pale yellow; I had never seen any like them. I got a few onions, too, and garlic heads. And apples, of course.

Mouth-watering

Crookneck squash

The owner (I think it was) chatted with us as she cleaned veggies by the back door. Did you know that potatoes keep better if they're not washed? I didn't. I bought the washed ones, anyhow; I would use them in a couple of days.

Back out to the car with our loot, stopping on the way to invade Miss Pumpkin's privacy in the bath:

Rubber duckie and all

Of course, if she hadn't planted herself in the flower/herb/squash bed right by the driveway, she would have reason for complaint. As it was, she seemed completely unperturbed by our swarming around.

Missus Pumpkin's tractor was bogged down; ...


... she was still by the roadside when we left. She waved goodbye.


Bye! See you again in the spring!
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Serendipity strikes again

Finally! After days of sorting and deleting, sorting and deleting, editing and deleting, re-arranging and deleting, I've whittled our photos of the (freezing!) side trip on Westham Island to only 72.

We were looking for Snow Geese. But ...

On our route to Reifel Island Bird Sanctuary, we always slow down to look at the assemblages on the corner of the road to a veggie farm; they are always exhuberant, sometimes very funny. This time, Laurie wanted to take a photo:

Mister Pumpkin

I turned into the side road and let him out, then went to find a turn-around spot. Good thing the road is narrow and I had to drive to the end; otherwise, I would have missed Missus Pumpkin on her tractor.

Missus Pumpkin

The Snow Geese could wait; we'd found Westham Island Herb Farm.

(Although they grow and sell a lot more than herbs.)

We wandered down the driveway, saying, "Hello!" to a cheerful witch on the way.

Dressed to kill

There were pumpkins everywhere ...

Around an old Ford on the lawn


A Pumpkin Tree


In planters and wheelbarrow-loads


In old laundry sinks


On tables

On chairs and in an old wooden wheelbarrow,
and atop that signpost in the back,

... and by the fence and up a tree.

But that was only for starters; the circle tour, next post.
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Kids' Pics

I've been sorting through my photos, trying to get them into some sort of manageable order, and I've run across a few that I love, but have not shared. Here are five kid photos, old and new:

Toddler, eyeing the water park, MacLean Park, Strathcona. Summer, 2008


Learning how to milk. Bella Coola, 1980s.


Sand bucket and rain cape. Boundary Bay beach, in a light rain. Summer, 2008.


Waiting for Mommy. Surrey Central City mall, 2008.


Three willow balls. Sophia, this Thanksgiving.

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Wordless, almost

... because I can never shut up completely.


Bee or bee mimic? These guys are driving me crazy!

See BugGirl's, Things that aren't bees #1, and Things ... #2.
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Stopping on the bridge

Crossing back to the mainland from Westham Island, last week, we stopped at the bridge to look for waterfowl.

Looking East, upriver.

Another field of Snow Geese, and a family of Mallards.

Choppy water. One lonely seagull sits on a post.

On the mainland side of the river, there's a nice patch of reeds and grasses. And usually a fair collection of birds. This time, they were mallards and widgeons, and a heron. And these:

A pair of white geese, sleeping on a floating plank.

Or waking, to watch us. But keeping their bills warm.

And at the foot of the bridge, a pair of eagles watched us from their nest.


They had something up there; the one on the left bent over to deal with it a couple of times. Supper, probably.
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A good (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

It rained so hard the car was hydroplaning on the way to Chilliwack. And coming home on back roads to avoid the jam of returning holidaymakers, we got lost in the dark and the rain.

No matter: my daughter's house was warm and bright, and full of happy people. That's what counts.


Carving the roast. And taking a photo of it on the cell phone. It will end up on Facebook. The old traditions live happily alongside the new.

The menu: Potato and leeks from the garden in a hearty soup. Roast leg of pork, served with tortillas, chilpotle sauce, Mexican beans and rice. Salad, also homegrown. A green bean and onion casserole, with cheese au gratin. Local wines. Dessert was assorted fruit pies, store-bought, with vanilla ice cream. And coffee, of course.

I didn't miss the turkey and cranberry sauce, at all.
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A bit of October colour

Just leaves, mostly maple:

Red and yellow


Deep purple


Browns


And a bit of green

And we're off to Chilliwack in the morning to celebrate the season with the family. Food, kids, cameras, more kids, talk, coffee, more food, more talk, more kids ... If I don't post tomorrow, you'll know we had too much of a good thing!
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Grey fly

It's cold, these days, even when the sun shines. It was cold enough at Mud Bay on Friday afternoon for this fly to prefer his sleep to his safety. He let me come within a couple of inches before he started to walk away, slowly.


Now I have to go look it up on BugGuide. Under flies. It should be easy; I'm sure there will only be a couple dozen to sort through.

I always was an optimist.
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Snow Geese! Thousands of Snow Geese!

We had gone to Westham Island to look for snow geese. We weren't too hopeful; last year, we missed them entirely. So we dawdled. We stopped at the side of the road to photograph pumpkins, and I discovered an interesting farm, so we poked around there for a goodish bit, (photos later). It was bitterly cold, with a sharp wind, and we weren't dressed for it. We froze.

While we were out in the fields, the geese flew high overhead. Long lines of them, Vs, and small flocks, moving west. We aimed at the sky and took photos until Laurie's battery ran out.

Snow geese, too high, flying too fast.

So we were happy; we had seen the geese. When they had gone, we finished the tour of the farm, bought fruit and veggies, talked to the owners. No rush, except that our teeth were chattering.

The car was deliciously warm, afterwards, and a cup of hot tea back in Ladner was calling to us. But we were almost at the end of the road; may as well check it out.

Two fields farther along, there they were:


Luckily, I had changed Laurie's camera batteries. We stood on the edge of the ditch, and took photo after photo; we couldn't stop. Every instant there was another marvellous configuration of geese, and another, and another. On the ground, in the air, far overhead and close enough, almost, to touch.




From where we stood, we could see two large fields full of geese. At one point, from another field that we couldn't see, a wave of geese suddenly lifted into the air, honking madly. They wheeled overhead, and settled somewhere behind a farmhouse. There must have been thousands just in those three fields alone.

Here's one field, just the central portion. Count them, if you can.


I was thinking, seeing them fill the sky, how it must have been for the earliest settlers, back when there was no city, when bird populations were at their peak; it must have seemed that the supply was infinite, inexhaustible. And yet, here we are, with extinctions in the offing. (Not the snow geese, at present; they're doing a bit too well for their own good. Link, see the bottom of the page.)

Enough; my teeth were chattering. We got back in the car and drove on. Two fields more, and another field of geese. We took photos there, too.


This one was standing guard. When he raised the alarm, "Photographers! Scatter!" half the field rose up, looked us over, and settled down to eat again.


The grass got in the way of this shot, but I like it because of the wing action. The geese fly with their legs up against the tail, but coming down, they drop them down into a forward-facing angle, and stretch their necks downward. An awkward-looking position, but it works for them.


It was odd: the geese were raising a constant chorus of honks, a choir several hundred voices strong. With the car window rolled down, we could hear them long before we were close enough to see them. And yet, in all the time we watched, I only saw this one with a beak open to shout.

On to the next field. The last before the entrance to Reifel, which was closed to the public. Never mind; that last field had a gate that we could lean over, instead of a ditch full of blackberries.



How do they keep so clean, puddling about in the mud like that?

One last photo, unfocused; where do you focus in this situation? I love the flurry of wings.


We turned and went back to Ladner for tea and coffee. Not without stopping several times to look at ducks and eagles and a pair of non-snow geese.

Coffee, tea, a warm blueberry muffin for Laurie, a beef samosa for me, nicely steaming. And a bit of a fireplace ... Ahhhh!
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Quick glimpse of a white field

We went down to Westham Island to see the snow geese. We found them, field after field of them, and much more besides. I'll be sorting photos all day tomorrow, but here's a sample:

On the wing


Mostly on the ground.

More photos tomorrow night.
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This begs for a button eye and a candy mouth

Just after sunset, a few hours ago, Laurie saw this:

One of the globe lights in our parking lot, with the moon behind it.

I think I want to Photoshop it.
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Once upon a time, bees were bees ...

... and they were all bumblebees. Then I started looking at them. And they were all different. So, eventually, I checked BugGuide.

Several days later, I have bees, honeybees, bumblebees, sweat bees (Sweat bees?!), carpenter bees, cuckoo bees, and more buzzing around in my head. I may not recover.

Did you know that BugGuide has 6,452 photos of bees? In 273 pages? And that's only in the US and Canada!

I posted this photo a few days ago:

Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus impatiens

A nice, normal bumblebee, I thought. I sent the photo to BugGuide, for an ID. A couple of the other bees on this clump of asters were different, so I sent them in, too, even though the photos were a bit on the fuzzy side.

There were a couple of honeybees.

Apis mellifera

And a Sweat Bee.

Halictini

BugGuide says that,

A few species are attracted to sweat, and will sometimes sting if disturbed, though the sting is not very painful.

So that explains the name.

Both of these are very common bees here; going over my old photos, I found several of each.

And there was a Syrphid fly, masquerading as a bee:

Syritta pipiens

Sure enough, I had a few photos of them, too.

But the first one, the "normal" bumblebee, turned out to be a bit of a surprise; BugGuide's bee man, John Ascher, wrote:

Looks like a Bombus impatiens male
This isn't supposed to be in British Columbia!

Here is what BG has to say about the range:

Eastern North America, from Ontario to Maine and south to south Florida (Miami area). Common on Atlantic coast; much less common near the western edge of its range (eastern ND, central NE, western KS, eastern TX).
Now widely used for greenhouse pollination in California and Mexico, far outside its native range. In the West it is used to replace the previously used western species Bombus occidentalis, because most wild and commercial populations of Bombus occidentalis disappeared after this species was developed for use by the bumble bee industry. Efforts are underway to obtain permits authorizing use of exotic B. impatiens for outdoor field pollination in California, where a very similar and very closely related species, the California native Bombus vosnesenskii, is abundant. In Mexico, B. ephippiatus is an abundant and potentially usable native alternative to B. impatiens.

(My emphasis)

The page was contributed in 2006, so it is possible that the species is now being used outdoors in California. Could it have wandered up the coast from there, or has it been imported for use here?

(**Update: John Ascher commented, on BugGuide, that it must be an escapee:

Bombus impatiens is found in British Columbia due to the irresponsible greenhouse pollination industry, which continues to degrade biodiversity by importing non-native bees and inevitably their parasites.)

I checked the Discover Life map for this bee, and found a reference to one specimen found here last year. It is the only one in my own photos.

Searching for them in my "Bumblebee" file, I found others, to be categorized under "None of the above":

Orange bumblebee**

Tsawwassen bee

Orange-bodied bee, Strathcona*

Yellow and black bee

I learned something else: bees go bald as they age. Which makes the whole game more confusing; is a given bee bare because it's old, or because that's characteristic of the species?

And then, there's that nasty word, "mimic", that shows up in phrases like "bees, wasps, and mimics". My head aches.

*Update # 2: See first comment. The Orange-bodied bee from Strathcona, seems to be one of those terrible mimics. It looks like it's really an Eristalis, another of the Syrphid flies, sometimes called a Drone Fly. Thanks, Beatriz!

**Update # 3: See third comment. The Orange bumblebee is a Bombus melanopygus male, and native to this area. Thanks again, John!

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Do you see what I see?

Looking over my spider photos tonight, trying to identify anatomical features, I noticed something not in BugGuide's diagrams. This one:


and several others like her, have a human-like figure depicted on the underbelly.

Here it is, up close:

Monk with goggles and white gloves?

Here's another:

Gladys the cross-eyed bear, wearing those same white gloves?

What do you see? (If you don't see anything, try stepping back from the screen; for me, the face resolves itself better from half-way across the room.)
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Wordless

No exit.

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Let it rain; who cares? I've a train ...

... sang Christopher Robin.

And we have wheels again. It was raining yesterday afternoon, but who cares? We grabbed an umbrella and went to Crescent Beach.


When we arrived, the rain had eased off a bit. A few other walkers were out, some with umbrellas, some getting wet.


All the colours were muted, sand, sea and sky in shades of blue-grey. But the air was fresh and salty, it was quiet enough to hear the sand squeak as it compressed under my feet, and ...


... there were loons!

And mallards, some little divers out a bit farther, and of course, seagulls:

One per post.

The rain was picking up. We decided to walk as far as the pier and then turn back.


We didn't make it. Our cameras were getting wet, in spite of our precautions. (It's really hard to hold an umbrella against the wind, let alone try to aim a camera and hold it steady enough to focus. I gave up and tried to shield mine with my jacket; Laurie used a handkerchief. On the way back, we discussed ways of rigging the umbrella to keep our hands free. Maybe something like a scabbard, with a long-handled umbrella?)

Not a place to rest on a wet day.

Several boats went by, heading sea-ward; somebody else was going to get wet.


Rounding the corner into the street where we had parked, we noticed a fence festooned with clematis gone to seed, the curly "beards" wet and glistening. In among the leaves, large spiders caught raindrops and flies. And there was a bit of shelter in the lee of the fence; out came the cameras again.

Raindrops are falling on my web.

There were at least two different species here. I don't recognize Spider #1. I saw two of them. This is the underside; I couldn't get a look at the topside.



Spider #2 (there were many of these) is the Cross Spider we find everywhere. This one has a pretty yellow fly for supper.

And this last one, in the dry(ish) shade of a huge arbutus, was big, and brave, and planning to eat Laurie. (Or so it seems.)



She hasn't made a round web like the other Cross spiders, but has a few long strands from the tree to the ground. And she stayed there while Laurie and I swarmed around, taking photos from front, back, and underneath.



Laurie, on one side, takes a photo of me, on the other. Spider as peanut butter, in the middle.


Isn't she beautiful?

Note the raindrop on her front leg.

We were cold and wet. We left the spiders to their traplines and went to our favourite deli in Ocean Park for hot coffee and tea. Ahhhh!

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The only constant is change.

Maple leaves

I've been reading commentary and watching clips, mostly on the blogs, of our concurrent debates, Canadian and American. Laurie watched ours on TV. There were some good moments; Elizabeth May surprised us with her knowledge and resolve. We won't be voting Green, but still, "Go, Elizabeth! And we hope to see more of you."

Harper was as arrogant and condescending as we expected, Palin not quite as inarticulate, ("you betcha!") but just as mendacious as ever. Half the time, I haven't known whether to laugh, moan, or rant.

But all thoughts of the bumblebees I was planning to write about have jumbled themselves up in my head with the buzz of the debates. I'll leave them for a bit, and report, briefly on what's happening in our neck of the woods.

• We've finally brought home a car. A 2003 Toyota Echo. It looks sturdy and reliable enough, and will be economical to drive, a prime consideration given that gas was almost $1.30 here yesterday. That's around $5.00 a US gallon. (I found it strange that in the Toyota dealership, all the new cars are big or bigger. The same thing applies across the street in the Nissan dealership. SUVs, even. I thought we were supposed to be burning less gas!)
  
• Now that we have wheels again, it's raining.
  
• The juncos are back for the winter. And a couple of towhees. Yay!
  
• The leaves are finally turning colour. I think fall just might have arrived.
  

Fiery reds and yellows in an oak.

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Report on a quiet afternoon

"Grandma," she said after school, "Let's go downstairs and you take pictures of my kitties!"


So that's what we did. Grandmas are good at being bossed about.

Blue eyes and grey-green.


Friends for life


Still toddlers. Rug cats, as it were.


Complacent Mamma.


Imaginary mouse


Long, long thoughts.

Then we went back upstairs and tackled weighty problems, such as "How hot is hot milk? And "Do we have any more bananas?"

I needed a day like that.
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Happy hour.

Bees on fall asters:




A dozen or more little cups of nectar on each flower head. Many flower heads. And the plant a-buzzing with the buzzes of delighted bumblebees. Happy hour!

Sometimes I envy the bees. No laundry and dish-washing, no money troubles, no elections to worry about, no what-ifs to spoil their meals.

Three or four other species of bees/wasps/flies were busy on this little clump. I may even have a decent photo of one or two. But I'll be babysitting in 7 hours, so I've no time to look tonight. Tomorrow.

There's always tomorrow. A whole new day; who knows what delights await us in it! (Do bees look forward to good times? No? Maybe I don't envy them, after all.)

Hasta mañana. Or "hasty banana", as my Dad always said it.
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