Stuffed ducks

We survived the trip to Reifel with the little ones. And they got to see birds bigger than themselves: a trio of young sandhill cranes.

Blurry photo of Sophia distributing her first bag of bird seed.

There were a couple or three elementary school groups on the trails; most were well provided with feed. One of the leaders was carrying it in buckets. The mallards' crops were bulging.

Photos tomorrow.
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Hawk on a pole

Isn't he beautiful?


And we're babysitting tomorrow; taking the girls (2 1/2 and 6 y.o.) to Reifel Island if it's not raining too hard. So this is it for tonight. I need all the sleep I can get.

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Wordless (almost) Skywatch post

Boundary Bay, last week:

Sandpipers.


Youngster


Tide flats, with lugworm mounds


Eelgrass




Dead purple starfish


Flying high


Mount Baker at sunset.

(A Skywatch post)
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In praise of dead trees

How do you recognize a healthy forest? Plenty of greenery, good colour? Birdsong? Variety of plants? That fresh, wet, "green" smell?

One clue will be a fair proportion of dead material, not only the fallen leaves of last summer's growth, but needles, branches, and entire trees. Without them, the forest becomes sterile, a pretty park needing the careful hand of the gardener, bearing seeds and new plants. Leave it alone, and it will start to die, and spring into new life.

Shelf in Watershed Park, with fallen tree making a "clothesline" far overhead.

Raw materials. Branches from last year's storms.

Bushwhacking through the Watershed this week, without the summer froth of salmonberry, huckleberry, trailing blackberry, deciduous saplings, and so on, we noticed the deadwood more than we normally would. And it's bursting with life.

Storm casualty.

There were many stumps like this one, twisted and torn by windstorms, then stripped of their bark. Assorted slimes, lichen, and fungi creep over the surface, and dig into the wood. Beetles and larvae burrow through them; birds hunt for the insects.

A few of the stumps have been burnt, whether by lightning strikes or human intervention, we can't tell. The burnt places host their own special vegetation.

The ghost of the stump; a knight in armor to my eyes.

This springboard slot on an old stump has been burnt over. Now it's turning green. So is the stump itself: see the roots hanging down the side? A sapling takes advantage of the extra height (more sunlight) and the nutrients in all that rotting wood, to get a head start.

A large tree, fallen and broken off, becomes a den for larger animals, a hiding place, a dry spot on a rainy day, or a passageway.

Tunnel.

And, of course, the various fungi are always there. Sometimes they bring about the death of the tree:

Infested, top to bottom.

By the time the first of these shelf mushrooms show up on the bark, they have already taken over the woody interior. The shelves are just the fruiting bodies. These trees will stand upright for a time, rotting faster in this position than if they were on the forest floor. Meanwhile, they provide food for insects and birds, until a good windstorm topples them.

And down she went. A new crop of fan mushrooms takes over.

Once downed, as well as nutrients, they provide shelter for small, tender things:


On the lower slopes, we came across this pair of snags:

Woodpecker trees.

The bark has been stripped away, right down to the heartwood. Chips are scattered on the ground, with a pile right at the foot of the snag.

Wikipedia says of the pileated woodpecker,

"They often chip out large and roughly rectangular holes in trees while searching out insects."

A government site calls the holes "diagnostic". And Canadian Biodiversity maps them here. I haven't seen one, but I have heard them. Holes low down on the snag will be searches for food; nest holes are built much higher, in the central cavity of the tree. Last year's nests will serve as homes for many other species of birds, in their turn.

An old cedar stump, flaky as the pastry my grandmother made, "iced" with green icing, has a series of dents on one side, possibly the work of a sapsucker:

Bird barcode?

Laurie was following a small woodpecker, who, as they always are, was invariably on the far side of the tree*. I wandered off in another direction, and came across these red things on the ground:


At first, I thought they were some kind of mushroom that I hadn't seen before. Then I realized that they were scattered all around an area about 30 feet across, an area devoid of all but a few bare twigs, and dead leaves. They were lying loose; no stems, no connection to the ground. I picked up a few of the chunks.


They had the texture of rotted wood, and a whitish skin on one side. Bark?

I called Laurie, and he came over, looked straight up, and found the source:

Far above our heads.

Bleeding tree.

As far as we can tell, in the winter when there are no leaves, it's a red alder.

From BCAdventure.com;

"The name red alder comes from the fact that the inner bark turns orange-red when exposed to air."

What kind of woodpecker makes these holes, I have been unable to figure out. Do you know?

*Laurie never did get a clear view of that elusive woodpecker.

And what kind of creature left behind this piece of dead tree, I can easily guess.


It was less that two dozen steps from a litter barrel. I counted. And I filled the bag with the rest of the scattered lunch wrappings (some were foil, some plastic) before I dumped it.

Dead branches fit here in these woods; not dead painted paper. Nor foil, nor plastic. For shame!
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Whatever the weather, there are always 'shrooms

We went mushrooming at Watershed Park, Sunday afternoon. The ground was frozen, and some of the logs had a sheen of ice on top. We had to watch our footing, but at least, when we needed to kneel (or crawl) on the ground, we didn't get wet.

And we found mushrooms:

Assorted sizes and colours of the turkey-tail type.

These were rotting peacefully in the soggy soil by a creek at the bottom of the hill.

All across the upper reaches of the Park, these white cones were scattered.

More layered fans. These ones were tied together with the fine fibers of another fungus.

And attached to the log with more of the same.

A Douglas fir cone. I was hoping for Douglas fir collybia, Strobilurus trullisatus,* but it looks like I got bird poop.

*It's probably 'way too late for them. The last time I saw them was in November.

What else we found, tomorrow.
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Seen in passing ...

Moss and lichen on a burnt stump, Beach Grove, last Friday.


Look closely, and you can see the beginnings of red tips on the taller lichen stalks. It's one of the Cladonia, maybe C. bellidiflora, or lipstick cladonia, C. macilenta.
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On a grey day, all the colours

It was a good thing we'd started on our way to Reifel Island early; with a stop for lunch, and all the stops in between to look at birds, it was well past 2:00 when we arrived at the parking lot, barely 2 hours before sunset.

The mallards were out in force, some in the parking lot, more along the first part of the pathway, where new visitors would have fresh bags of grain. I dispersed a mere handful, though; I had other customers in mind.

Kid contemplating mallards.

Mallard with orange belly.

Between the office and the first crossroads, the LBBs (no-name brand: Little Brown Birds) set up shop. In the summer, the feeders are kept full; this week, they were all completely empty. But the scrubby bush there is full of food; dried blackberries in abundance, full heads of weed seeds, dried grasses, holly berries, and more. The birds chirp and sing happily in the tangle of stalks.

I tried to entice them out with my bag of grain, without much luck. We managed to get blurry photos of brown -- somethings -- before they hopped back into hiding. Oh, well; the ducks would get the bait instead.

A few LBBs, however, sat on the fence, and even stayed put as we took photos.

All puffed out against the cold.

House sparrow.

Golden-crowned sparrow in the blackberry canes.

We turned into the paths bordering the waterways. Now, the predominant birds were ...


... mallards, of course.

But there were a fair number of pintails:


... wigeons:


... coots, mergansers, and a few shovellers. We saw no geese, which surprised me.

Laurie got this photo of a male bufflehead, in all his female-luring glory:


I've always thought of buffleheads as black-and-whites, but when I looked at the photo, I noticed the sheen of blue on the head, and saturated the colours a bit more, just to see what they were. Here's what I came out with: (Click on it for a large copy, to get the full impact.)

Black and white. And blue, green, and burgundy.

I wondered; what do the females see? Do their eyes pick up all this display of colour? How much are we missing of the scenery here at Reifel?

Back to Google. I found this page: Causes of Color - Color Vision in Birds.

Only recently have we begun to grasp that vertebrates such as birds and fish possess more sophisticated color visual systems than we do. While we are trichromats, having photo-pigments with sensitivities at three peak wavelengths, birds have photo-pigments with sensitivities at four or five peak wavelengths, making them true tetrachromats, or perhaps even pentachromats. In some species, the visual spectrum extends into the ultraviolet range, once thought to be visible only to insects.

It is as hard for us to imagine how birds perceive color as it is for a colorblind person to imagine full color vision; it is outside of our experience. This impacts the study of bird behavior, and our grasp of how birds navigate during migration, classify objects, and interact socially and sexually. For example, some species we see as having identical male and female plumage differ when seen in the ultraviolet range - a difference apparent to the birds themselves.

Wandering through discussion groups and GoogleImages, I learned that some birds glow under ultra-violet lights. The males only, at least in some species. And the females pay no attention to them if they are somehow prevented from seeing the UV. (Sunglasses?)

From Wikipedia:

Some animals can distinguish colors in the ultraviolet spectrum. The UV spectrum falls below the human visible range. Birds, turtles, lizards, and fish have UV receptors in their retinas. These animals can see the UV patterns found on flowers and other wildlife that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. ...

UV and multi-dimensional vision is an especially important adaptation in birds. It allows birds to spot small prey from a distance, navigate, avoid predators, and forage while flying at high speeds. Birds also utilize their broad spectrum vision to recognize other birds, and in sexual selection.

Something to mull over. Something to think about in these grey days; maybe we are surrounded by unseen, unimagined rainbows.

Maybe not so dull, after all.

And here's a rainbow, even for our limited eyes: the male wood duck.

Handsome pair.

On our way back to the car, I stopped off at the washrooms. And while I was there, I checked out the swallow's nest at the side of the building.


Still there, still in good repair. I'll look for violet-green swallows there this spring.

I wonder how many colours they really wear.
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Such a beautiful day!

The sun burned away the fog! The sky was blue! It was warm (sort of)!

We got carried away; walked for hours along the beach, the dike, and through the town, watching eagles and feeling the warmth on our backs.




And now I am so tired I can't stay awake. I keep finding that I've been "reading" with my eyes closed. I'm off to bed.

'night!
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Mute swans and a not-so-mute heron

I love mallards. They're beautiful birds, and funny, too. Even when there are hundreds of them, all quacking at once. Even when they mob me for a few seeds, and I have to push them aside with my feet to walk. Even when I have to inch my car through the parking lot, and they don't see the need to move until the front fender almost touches them. (They remind me of range cattle in the Chilcotin, that way.)

But after you've taken a couple dozen photos of mallards, the cameras get clogged with green head feathers; they crave variety. And on this last visit to Reifel Island, that's what they got. We saw so many different birds that I haven't been able to even sort through all the photos until tonight. And there are too many for one blog post.

May as well get going:

Eagle's nest in the mist.

The fun started even before we got to the bird sanctuary. At the bridge to Westham Island, we parked and walked over (and back). The fog limited our vision to the near at hand:

River's mouth

On the Ladner side, Laurie checked out the eagles' nest we saw last year; one eagle was standing guard. At the river's edge there is a marshy area, enclosed by a log breakwater. A white goose dabbled in the mud there.

It always amazes me how they stay so bright and shiny, digging through all that goop.

Nice clean goose.

Double-crested Cormorants lined up on the breakwater.

Western Grebes, downstream.

One of a pair of Mute Swans. More unspottable white.

We drove on. Passing the last farm before the entrance to Reifel, we stopped again, to watch a heron in the ditch, and startled a hawk. I managed to get a photo, very tiny, very misty:

I think it's a Harrier.

We had interrupted its dinner.

More white feathers, still bright in spite of the situation.

Another hawk was in the trees nearby. I don't know what this is. The more I search through my books, the more confused I get. They don't even look the same from one book to the next, let alone from one time of year, age, or sex to the next. Help!

Sitting raptor. At least that much I know.

On to the heron:

Through the branches.

He wasn't in the mood for photos. Laurie got a bit too close, and the heron took off with the loudest, angriest, harshest, longest "Graaaaaaak!" I had ever heard. Sorry this next photo is blurred; I was laughing too hard to hold steady. If you look closely, you can see his open beak.

"Graaaaak!"

Another heron, standing one-legged, looking like an old woman in a shawl.

Next: we finally get to the starting point.
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Contortionist

Pintail, preening:

Reifel Island, Monday.

I'll post the rest of our Reifel birds, tomorrow.
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Awwwwww!!!

Cuddling coots:

Reifel Island Bird Sanctuary, Monday afternoon.

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Contains Lead. And soap.

Saturday, chasing blue sky, we ended up in Cloverdale. We stopped in, as we often do, at Red Barn Antiques. At the door, a hand-made sign gave us unwelcome news; after 40-some years, they are going out of business.

Looking backwards at the Red Barn

I've known the Red Barn for over 20 years, and always enjoyed visiting. Laurie looks for Japanese porcelain in the display cabinets up front, but I also like to wander around the back rooms, intrigued by the hodge-podge of battered oddities, decorations, and necessities that show up there.

There's colour:

Detail of stained-glass window.

Six of the seven dwarfs

1950's nostalgia

Pink pay phone. Yes, there is a slot for your dime. And it gives change.

Everyday household basics:

Canning jars and milk bottles

Rinso Soap and Salada tea bags.

New and improved paint. Dries overnight.

Traveller's needs:

Rooms for rent. With baths.

Gas pump. "To be used as motor fuel only."

Animals, wild and tame:

Real, live, chirping budgies in a carved wood cage.

Buffalo.

Can you identify this?

He's a dino-moose!

We went on to the Antique Mall, where I found this:

A vintage painting, with lamps reflected in the glass.

We didn't buy anything this trip. Near the closing date, the prices will drop; we'll be back.
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All the flowers are dying

No, this is not a post on the weather, nor about flowers. It's the title of the book that occupied all my afternoon and evening.

I picked up a copy of Lawrence Block's "All the Flowers are Dying", (possibly the last of the Matthew Scudder series) and made the mistake of opening it at lunch. I couldn't put it down until I had finished it. And it's now 3:30 in the morning.

So the post I had planned will have to wait until tomorrow.
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Blue sky search

This time of year, fog often settles in over the low-lying areas of the Fraser Delta, blanketting us from Langley to Ladner, wiping out distances and colour. Yesterday was typical.

There was a hint of blue sky to the south-east; we headed in that direction, driving to Cloverdale on farm roads to the south of the highway. The mist drew a curtain around us, isolating us in a circle with one or two items at a time:

Gateway to a field.

Entrance to an unseen home.

Ditches.

U Catch Em.

(Trout swimming in the mist?)

Soggy field and rusty barbed wire.

We stopped to photograph two eagles in a tree, just over our heads; all we got were grey shapes. A hawk on a telephone pole was a brownish silhouette. We found a heron in a ditch:


When Laurie's flash went off, the heron rose and flew away, disappearing almost instantly into the fog.

Laurie leaned out the car window to take a photo of starlings on a lawn; they didn't approve:

"We're outta here!"

Meanwhile, on the driver's side of the car:

Ignoring the car a few feet away.

We never did find that patch of blue sky. Maybe tomorrow.

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Prohibition

Seen on a house facing the English Bluffs beach, the other day:


Spoiled all our plans, it did.

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Heron condos

If the city of Delta is a lumpy old boot, Brunswick Point is the heel, the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary the spurs, Tsawwassen the ball of the foot, and Point Roberts is the toe. (See the Wikipedia map.)

The entire sole area, spurs to toe, is prime bird and marine habitat. Smack in the middle of this are the ferry terminal and Deltaport, with their high-traffic highways. And at the corner where the ferry causeway leaves the mainland, a large, glassy condominium complex glares out at the bay.


Tsatsu Shores was controversial from the first planning stages; it was expected to be an evironmental disaster. It is the only multi-unit housing on that coast, which otherwise is limited to single-family dwellings, farm land, or wildlife preserves. And there it sits, like a sore thumb on the beach, at the bottom of a cliff where herons and eagles nest.

From the front of Tsatsu Shores.

At least they haven't "improved" the beachfront too much; birds still have it more or less to themselves.

A glimpse of part of the front aspect.

We went there looking for herons. We would have climbed down the steps at Fred Gingell Park, as usual, but the weather was iffy, and I wanted to be closer to the car. We parked in a pot-holed clearing the other side of a blackberry patch, and took the trail through to the beach.

And, at Tsatsu Shores, there were the herons!

Roof decoration. And wall decorators.

I counted 6 herons from the front; we saw one, later, in back. Some stood on the ridge of the roof, but the privileged ones each had their own fenced (and heated, maybe) lookout post:

Standing on a foot-warmer.

We walked down the beach in front of the cliff, scanning the trees for nests, eagle or heron. It was a dark day, with the sun barely yellowing a tiny area of the sky; not good nest-hunting light. We saw no nests.

But click on the photo above; see, through the crack in that front corner, a bunch of sticks? A beautiful spot for a heron's nest! Maybe every tower has one. It seems that the herons, at least, have adapted to the human encroachment on their land.

On guard.

I don't usually get to look at herons from this angle. I suddenly got an inkling of what it would be like to be a frog, looking up at that vicious beak, those staring eyes. Scary!

There were few other birds around. Wrong time of day, wrong tide; it was high and coming in. A seagull floated on the waves; a line of geese flew overhead. And just offshore, a cormorant sat on a barnacled rock. I think it's an immature; it's dressed in dappled browns. (We photographed it against the light, so the colour turned out spotty.)

Double-crested cormorant.

We were freezing. With two pairs of gloves on, I could barely manage the camera shutter, but my finger-tips still ached. We hurried back to the still-warmish car and went for coffee.
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By the BCFerries terminal ...

... on a cold, cold, afternoon.

Ferry coming in.

Docking.

Off-loaded cars racing down the causeway.

We walked on the beach at Tsatsu Shores.

Traffic and teasels.

On that beach, a kid had been imitating adult behaviour:

Bumper to bumper.

We had gone to see herons; we found them. Story tomorrow.
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Doggie in the window

Seen at the vet's, Crescent Beach:

"Are you here to take me home?"

He wanted out, so badly. And by the time I got the camera from the back, he was losing hope.

I've been working too hard, these last couple of days, glued to the screen most of the time. I can relate.

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Dripping wet, but ...

... it wasn't raining. Not really, anyhow; the water in the air was just a Scotch mist. We took a chance on it not getting wetter, and went down to Cougar Creek Park.

It's a grey spot, in the winter; grey trees, grey water, grey skies, grey bridge. And black and white birds, mostly.

A drop of yellow in the willow, red in the canes. Hints of a future spring.

Last summer, we saw a cormorant here several times, and I was hoping it would stay. It did; today we saw three of them.

Double-crested cormorant. A fish-eater. Unexpected in such a small "lake".

These mergansers were here last spring, too.

Hooded merganser, male.

It's the beginning of breeding season, and they are wearing their most showy finery. This next photo is blurry, but I liked it because one of the males is strutting his stuff to impress a female (the one in the brown hairdo.)

"Look at me! See how white my breast is! How tall I am!"

Wigeon, on patterned water.

A spot of welcome colour.

And, of course, the mallards. A flock of them slept on the mud bank at the far end of the lagoon, a few wigeons among them. This one came over to see if I had any goodies. I didn't.


Far end of the lagoon, where Cougar Creek enters. That's the remains of an attempt at making a beaver dam at the curve; the beavers keep building it in different spots, and someone keeps tearing it up.

Protected tree. Felled anyhow. Its branches ended up at a new dam at the outlet.

The old heron was still there, still as grumpy as ever. He waited until I was a few metres away, with the camera ready, then dodged behind the bushes and flew to the far side. As usual.

Other than that, there were a few common merganser males. I didn't see any females. And the trees by the creek were full of little brown birds, assorted sizes. We identified bushtits, a small woodpecker, several robins. And sparrows, of course.

LBB, very cold.

The trail went on past the schoolyard, but our batteries were failing, and there wasn't a dry spot to change them. Tim Horton's time!

Path in the mist.

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On a cold, rainy, snowy, slushy, icy night ...

... it's always sunny where Jaya hangs out.

Bird.


A cheerful Humpty Dumpty?


Flowers spring from the hands of the artist.

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Philosophical question, sort of...

Why is it that I can take photos of a squashed crab I find on the beach, or of the innards of a dead nudibranch or a skeletonised fish without a qualm, but when I come across a freshly-dead seagull, I feel that I am invading its privacy by pointing the camera in its direction?

Not that that stopped me for more than a couple of seconds. Here is the seagull:


It was clean and bright, with no smell, no other signs of deterioration. Nor of injury, although I didn't flip it over to be sure.

But it was so beautiful, even in death, that I had to zoom in for a close-up or two.

The underside of the wing, with raindrops.

And the beak, showing the red spot. Which has its own black spot. Interesting curves and angles. And a stylish nostril.

And the breast feathers, seen up close, were eye-blinding white, much too bright for the camera, brighter even than they seem when I see gulls in flight. Only the eye, that challenging, curious, proud seagull eye, was dulled and sad.

I keep wondering, now, what killed it? And left it high and dry at the edge of the park?
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Hugh beat me to it!

But here he is anyhow:

The sad remains of our beloved Frosty
R.I.P.

If you haven't already, go look at Hugh's Venus. (Bad pun territory; don't say I didn't warn you.)
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Good enough to eat!

On a wet log above the tide line on White Rock beach:

Lemon yellow jelly fungus.


Or corn-kernel yellow.


Maybe yellow gumdrops?

This one doesn't look so appetizing:

A tiny shelf fungus, about an inch wide.

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Something old, something new: same thing.

No matter how much it snows, there's always something to eat on the beach. And sometimes, the worse the weather is, the more food is available, as plants and animals are ripped from their hiding places and tossed helter-skelter on the shore.

The crows and seagulls were feasting on Monday.

Emptied clam, dead crab on rockweed.

Leftover from a crow's dinner.

Seagull poop on barnacles. I know; ewww! But I liked the pattern.

Barnacles and snails. These tiny ones are safe from the birds, but I have seen great patches of the larger barnacles broken off to get at the meat.

Snow on salt water is the same as rain. In this climate, it's the way things are. The real disruption to life on the White Rock beach in the winter is due to the shape of the land. From the far side of Kwomais Point to the last houses of White Rock, the shore is lined with high cliffs. Even at the beach area, the buildings facing the pier have their backs jammed into the hill; the streets here go up so steeply that each level of houses looks over the roofs of their neighbours. So as this heavy snowfall thaws (finally!), meltwater rushes down onto the beach and into the salt water in torrents.

One of the drainage outlets. We usually step over this; it's barely a trickle.

The results; uprooted seaweeds and eelgrass:


Small dead animals: The crab above, the starfish I posted yesterday, and this:

Melibe leonina, the hooded nudibranch.

This was a large sea slug, about 5 inches as it lay. We found 3 of them, very dead, barely more than grey blobs on the sand. I have saturated the colours on this photo, to show the network of green tubes in the body. This is the digestive gland of the slug. The tentacles around the lip of the hood turned out to have some colour, too; usually they seem as translucent as the rest of the body. Here's a typical photo.

At water's edge, I noticed these:

Looks like a bit of upholstery piping.

I picked one up.


It was about the thickness of a drinking straw, smooth and flexible, open at both ends. Part of it was full of what looked like sand.

Once I had noticed them, I saw that they were all over. Most were in small pieces, but many were well over 6 inches. Most of them were empty.




I have been on this beach hundreds of times, starting when I was a kid. I have seen piles of these, in smaller pieces, many times. I have never noticed them before; it was only when I knew what I was looking for that I remembered having passed them by. How blind we can be!

But what were they? We looked everywhere; every puddle, every crack in the rocks held at least one. The waves washing in on the shore carried more. But none seemed to have any live animal with them; just the empty tubes.

The seagulls and crows weren't eating them.

They were about the same thickness as the torn-up roots of the eelgrass; I brought one home for comparison.

Eelgrass root.

At home, I emptied them into a bowl and examined the contents. Nothing but sand.

The tubes were paper-thin, white, semi-transparent. They had no segmentation, no markings, no fibers that I could see, even at 40x magnification. When they dried, they felt and looked like thin paper. The dried root stayed brown, was bumpy, stiff and hard.

Dried tubes and eelgrass root.

I've been searching the web and my books, trying to identify them. I think -- I could very likely be wrong -- that they are probably the papery tubes of a Nemertean, a kind of marine worm.

These worms can be very long; one of the common ones around here, Tubulanus polymorphus, the orange ribbon worm, may stretch up to 3 metres. Tubulanus sexlineatus, a brown worm, averages about 20 cm, 8 inches, and may stretch up to 50. They are found from Alaska to California. Kozloff reports them in our area.

T. sexlineatus is a non-segmented worm, up to about 1.5 cm thick, that makes itself a papery tube described as delicate, long, white, transparent, parchment-like (Kozloff), open at both ends. Sounds about right.

Kozloff writes,

"... specimens in captivity soon secrete new tubes around themselves."

So, obviously, they do leave their tubes to forage for food.

It is common, according to Kozloff, around floating docks and pilings. Like the pier at the end of the bay. The other worm, T. polymorphus, hangs out on rocky shores, like the one we were on. I couldn't find anything about tubes associated with it, however.

How these tubes all turned up, in such numbers and such large pieces, on the beach, I don't know. Were the worms killed by the influx of fresh water? Or were the tubes just ripped off their sites, leaving the worms to build new ones? How did the sand get inside?

The worms are the anteaters* of the marine world. They eat other worms, molluscs, small crustaceans, even barnacles**, catching them by everting a long, narrow, sometimes venomous proboscis to capture the prey and drag it back to the mouth. The proboscis could be almost half the length of the body.

*Reading this reminded me of Julie Zickefoose's blog post on anteaters.

** That makes two things that I know of now that prey on barnacles; the birds and the nemertean worms. And I thought they were unbeatable!

*** A good write-up on the creatures to be found on our shores is the Oregon Estuarine Invertebrates (pdf). 224 pages of detailed information.
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Too much of a good thing

Monday's walk on the White Rock beach was too fruitful; I have a folder full of photos that I absolutely must share. And I haven't finished sorting yet.

So, for now, here's a sampler:

Misty headland. Looking toward Kwomais Point.


Barnacle tracks on yellow stone.


A score of crows.


Empty sand.


Pink starfish, eelgrass, and mystery tubes.

Story tomorrow.
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Balancing act

It finally stopped snowing. We dug ourselves (for the last time, I hope) out of the parking lot, and drove down to White Rock for some salty air.

It's green down there! Snow lurks in dark corners still, but the road and sidewalks are clear, the lawns are green. Laurie even saw a dandelion!

So far South. The banana belt of BC. We felt as if we'd been transported to Hawaii. (Well, not quite; it was still cold.)

We walked towards Kwomais Point from the eastern tip of the park. The tide was going out, but still high enough that we had to stick to the rocks at first. There was plenty to see, a couple of things to wonder about; I'll write about them tomorrow.

A good ways along the shore, Laurie saw these balanced rocks, and pointed them out to me:

"Seated woman"
Photo on the diagonal, to include the surrounding multicoloured rocks and stones.

I have always been intrigued by these towers, and this one was unusually beautiful, almost like a sculpture; I took dozens of photos from all angles.

A "robe" of barnacles

I ended up sitting on the wet rocks to get it against the sky.

Detail of balance point. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been seeing it.

Clear view. And beyond, the artist himself, working on another tower.

"Let's see; this one fits this way ..."

Adding rock #4.

Considering.

Second tower, as it stood when we passed, going home.

I spoke to the artist; his name is Gary, and he has a nice smile. And loads of talent.

I found a YouTube documentary (4:11) about a well-known local rock-balancing artist, Kent Avery. I've seen his work on English Bay. Amazing!

*Update, February 7th: Here are Gary's Flickr photos: some more amazing work!

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And a flood of Cheer and Loveliness spread ...

They promised us rain. We got snow. And more snow. It's snowing now, has been all night.

The snowman doesn't seem to mind.

I entertained myself inside, in the warmth, with a candle in an orangey glass and the camera.

This was all the lighting I needed.

I wandered around my darkened room with the candle, taking photos of small collectibles:

First, a self-portrait by candlelight.

An old, utilitarian tin with a pincushion lid.

Antique Japanese fabric, sandwiched between cardboard and glass, with a sewn-on cloth edging.

Reflection of the candle in a small table mirror that lost most of its silvering decades ago.

A rose Laurie cut for me, long ago.

"The toilet of good shoes." That's what it says. Meltonian White Cream tin.

"Just You and I" by Laurence Hawthorn. A Buzza Motto, 1927

This picture is one I inherited from my grandmother. I think she framed it herself; the backing is cut from advertising copy, an ad for the new-fangled electric lights.

I reproduce here the part my grandmother used:

"... into the Forest Haunts of Robin Hood. Now it leads us to this June Night in Provence, the land of the Troubadours. The Italian Wars were things of the past and men's minds so long burdened with horror now sought refuge in the pursuit of beauty. All the Arts gained a fresh impetus and artificial Light, heretofore strictly utilitarian, became recognized as a decorative factor, the stuff of which Beauty and Enchantment could be made.

What those far-away disciples of beauty dreamed has today become an established (real)ity. Gone are the messy, smoking lamps of that bygone age and in their place Science has produced the MAZDA lamp. More light than even our grandfathers thought possible is now concentrated in less space than their cumbersome, ineffectual lamps required and can be released and used for far less cost. The enchantment of light is now the heritage of all mankind: for the genius of Edison and the organized research signified by the mark MAZDA have not only produced light such as the fondest imagination never dreamed but they have placed it within the reach of even the most humble homes and the most limited incomes.

Beauty and Charm lie at your fingertips. Gloom and Glare, those twin enemies of artistic decoration, may be banished with a touch and a flood of Cheer and Loveliness spread ..."

No 7-second sound bites in those days! Unfortunately, this is where Grandma cut the paper.

The reverse has most of a 1926 calendar, and the header:

ENCHANTMENT
CANADIAN GENERAL ELECTRIC
COMPANY, LIMITED
Lamp Sales Department
TORONTO, Canada

The candle, again. The flame is reflected in the melted wax. I like that.

I just checked outside. It's still snowing, but it's very wet. Maybe ...
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When the evergreens are black

I have resisted, so far, the urge to join the Skywatchers. Because I'm lazy. And it is always too difficult to choose; our skies are so beautiful, day after day.

And because they say Skywatch Friday. And I'm always late. Like now; it's Saturday night, almost Sunday morning. But, as my Momma done tol' me: better late than never.

So here are four sky shots. Laurie took these off the upstairs balcony after our first snowfall.

Dec. 21st, about 8:00 AM, looking East.

A few minutes later, looking South.

Next morning, same time. Looking West.

And looking East again.

And now, off to post my link!
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Fat or Preggers?

Wren asked, in yesterday's comments, if Scruffy could be pregnant.

I don't think so; it's a bit early. These squirrels normally breed in March or April.

But you be the judge:

1. Here's Scruffy, this week. Notice how uniformly rounded she is. She still has the scar on the upper back, which shows as an indentation in this photo; it's hairless.


2. Here's Scruffy, last January 14th, almost a year ago. (Aside: compare the background; snow vs. green grass.)


She has a distinct "waist" in the older photo. It's gone, now. And now her body dwarfs her thighs.

3. Here's Scruffy, probably pregnant, the 12th of March, last year. (Counting back from the date the kits were weaned. 36 to 40 days gestation, 6 to 9 weeks of nursing.)


She still has a bit of a waist.

4. And here's Scruffy, no longer pregnant, June 4th of last year. The kits turned up for snacks a week later, so they must have been at least 5 weeks old when this photo was taken.


So: what do you think? Pregnant, or just well-fed?
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Random meanderings

The night is calm and clear. No snow, no rain, no wind. Nothing to shovel tomorrow.

My desk is clear; so is the calendar. The bills are paid. The next event is a whole week away.

Let-down time. De-stressing. And I wander around, picking things and ideas up, putting them down, unable to settle.

So here's a collection of random notes and randomly-chosen recent photos.

House finch, at my feeder today.

1. My oldest grand-daughter just announced her engagement. I'm not old enough for that!

Reflection of condominium tower in an office building, Metrotown. A couple of days ago.

2. The "Tumbledown Dairy" we photographed a couple of weeks ago collapsed in the snowstorm. Only the rear part is left standing.

Bench beside our walkway. Freshly upholstered.

3. My grandson gave me a book for Christmas; "Does Anything Eat Wasps?" by New Scientist. It is a collection of short answers to questions posed to the "Last Word" column of the magazine. It's light reading; the perfect bathroom book. I've been reading about how the British Isles are like a teeter-totter (Scotland coming up, England sinking for now), how they get the bubbles in Aero chocolate bars, and how fast the wind has to be blowing to keep the mosquitoes from biting you. (That one, at least, is a useful bit of knowledge in BC.)

And the wasps? I have seen ants eating them, spiders do, too, frogs love them, birds ... What I found unexpected in the book was the story of a crab eating a wasp.

Orchid. Taken in IKEA, on Boxing Day. Not a great shot, but I was surprised that it came out at all.

4. Scruffy the squirrel dropped in today. She is fat! Really, really fat! Her fur is still dull and ratty and missing along the spine, but she bulges all over. It looks like someone has been very generous with food, now that the weather is so bad, and she has been taking full advantage of it.

It's a difficult winter for our wildlife; we feed some because they are cute or pretty, but others have to struggle to survive, in a climate that until now had been kindly. Many won't make it. Huckleberry described the plight of herons, the other day; the photograph of the mourning mate haunts me.

Sofia does Mastermind. Her rules. Last night.

5. I don't make New Year's Resolutions. That way, I don't break them. Good planning, huh?
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Backyard visitor

Frosty, here, just popped in to say,

"Happy 2009!"

And it's snowing again. He's growing instead of melting.
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