Seagull calligraphy

Writing in the sand ...







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Watching where we step

On a mile-wide, featureless, sandy beach, what is there to see, besides sand and sky? Plenty. But it's mostly in hiding. I've been having fun blowing up our photos of Sunday's walk to full size, to see what we missed.

Sea lettuce and a mudflat snail, Batillaria attramentaria. No telling what's underneath.


Brown seaweed, probably a dulse. Eelgrass and roots.

So far, so good. Eelgrass and seaweed are easy to see. But look again! See those little yellowish dots on the eelgrass? They're egg cases, possibly of the Black Dog Whelk, Illyanasa obsoleta*.

Here are some more, doing their best to blend in with the bubbles.

Brown tuft, navel-lint algae. With eelgrass and snail eggs.

The snails are even better at hiding; they burrow right under the wet sand. I dug a few out; mostly Black Turbans, and a whelk or two. One on the upper left, below, looks like a mudflat snail, going by the shape.


In a photo of seaweeds and eelgrass, I found this tiny collection:

White tube discarded by a worm. And what looks like whelk eggs. (Nucella sp.)

If I had seen this at the time, I would have taken a close-up. But they were so small, I missed them even on the first two examinations of the photo.

This tangle of weeds and -- something -- is intriguing:

What is that red, segmented, tentacled thing? Worm or weed?


A close-up of the end, with "tentacles". Some kind of spaghetti worm? **

This is a worm, at least. We found it writhing in an inch of water. It's about 6 inches long.

Red-banded Bamboo worm, Axiothella rubrocincta. The red rings are bristled. (Barely visible.)


Clear view of the tail end. The head is already back under the sand, and digging fast.

Their tubes were scattered here and there around this area of the beach, mostly poking just an inch or so above ground. The worms stay in these tubes; I wonder why this one was on the surface.

On the opposite side of the bay, at Boundary Bay Beach (and this is all Boundary Bay, but this side is Crescent Beach), the sand is dotted with the fecal castings of lugworms. On the Crescent Beach side, the coils of worm poop are less frequent, smaller, and finer. Look for them around these geoducks:

Pacific geoduck, Panopea abrupta. Up to 9 inches across the shell, and 20 lbs. Lifespan: 168 years!

When I touched this geoduck (pronounced gooey duck) with a toe, it retracted itself back under the sand, squirting at me as it went.

A horse clam, covered with algae and seaweed, and accompanied by grey mounds of worm poop.

(Update: I had identified this as a geoduck. I was wrong. Looking more closely at the siphon mouth, I realized that the edge of the mantle is tentacled; this identifies it as the gaper, or horse clam, Tresus nutalli. (The tentacles are green, which distinguish it from T. capax, where they are gold. I still think, though I could be wrong, that the first one is a geoduck. Neither it, nor one other similar one that we photographed show any sign of tentacles, and the other one has the characteristic one siphon, two openings of the geoduck.)

Look in front of the clam siphon; that brown coil is not lugworm poop; it looks more like a ribbon worm of some kind.

Mouth of the gaper clam.

One last critter. There were quite a few of these. But we never saw them unless we were about to step on them; then they shot out of the sand, sped a few feet away, and -- disappeared, even though we were looking right at them. One moment they were swimming, the next, there was not a trace of them.

Can you see the tidepool sculpin here? I have increased the contrast to make him stand out.

Tidepool sculpin, Oligocottus maculosus. Supremely camouflaged.

So many new things! So much to learn! What fun!

* Photo in Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest, MC198, p.228. Also, see my last year's post, No boots, no bags, some goodies anyhow, for macro photos.

** It's really an eelgrass root, with its rootlet "tentacles".

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Clouds of sandpipers

We could have almost walked across Boundary Bay. Almost. If we were as light as birds, and could jump a couple of rivers, we probably could have.

On Sunday, the tide was the lowest I've seen it at Crescent Beach. We walked right out to water's edge, probably about a mile out; the beach had been flat all the way out, but there, it dropped off sharply into deep water.


The Google satellite view shows the intertidal zone; we started at the "B" on Crescent Beach, and walked straight out to the tip of the green triangle. It's about 10 kilometres over to the Boundary Bay beach on the other side of the bay. All that greenish-blue, stripy, finny sea-monster thingy on the northeast is mud flat, also exposed at low tide.

From about half-way out, looking South. Shallow pools, less than ankle-deep. The point of land at the far right is the tip of Point Roberts, across the border.


Looking straight across the mud flats to South Delta farmland.


Southwest; the hills on the left are in the US.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and the water in the tide pools was warm. The sand steamed. A mist rose up, about waist-deep, all across the upper intertidal zone. It made distant figures shimmer and break up; many appeared to be walking on air. Our photos turned out vague and greyed, but that is what we were seeing, too.

Steam, walkers, and something in the distance that looks like a sailing ship. It isn't.


Looking back towards the shore, and the hills of Ocean Park. (Imaginative name, eh?)


A couple and their dog, far ahead.


More ghostly walkers.

But look closely; see the sandpipers? Far out in the bay, several flocks played an elaborate game of follow-the-leader, skimming the surface, then soaring, wheeling, drifting as if wind-blown, or suddenly reversing direction. They were barely visible, just a dancing greyness in the mist.

Runner and sandpipers. With a probable heron or two.

What we found in and on the sand, next post.

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Steller's Jay

Crescent Beach, yesterday:


"Private Parking," the sign says. The Jays agreed. They tolerated a few photos, then ducked behind the fence and yelled at us. "No Parking!"

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"Mr. Bumpy"

I found a little beetle, so that Beetle was his name,

Weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus.

And I called him "Mr. Bumpy" and he answered just the same ...


But someone let my beetle out --


Yes, someone let my beetle out --


And Beetle ran away.

(Apolgies to A. A. Milne)

More on these weevils, later.

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The long winter has ended!

All winter long, my garden sleeps in sunless shade. Sometime in the first week of April, the first rays of sunshine glance off the lawn, a few minutes at a time. Later, afternoon sun briefly touches the edge of the garden, and the potted honeysuckle, inspiring it to burst out in leaf.

And now, I have morning sun!

8 AM garden, with chickadee.

The first rays kiss my little juniper, and move on to highlight the Creeping Jenny, sneak through the Lily-of-the-valley patch, and settle on the violets for a few minutes.

Top o' the morning!

Then it moves on to waste itself fruitlessly on a bare wall, and shuts itself off in frustration. But it will be back in the afternoon, to encourage the sprouting perennials for half an hour.

We, my garden and I, are so grateful!

Begonia. Doesn't mind the shade; provides its own cheer.


I found this tiny wild violet around the corner, where the sun shines every day.

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These books you must -- must -- see!

I'm passing on a link from BugGirl's Blog: she found

"... this lovely artwork from BiblioOdyssey. It’s from a Ukiyo-e book from the late 1700’s."

There are 3 books; Insects, Shells, and Birds; and well over 100 paintings, each with its associated poem and translation.

There is even a bagworm page!*

This link takes you directly to the online museum exhibit. (You have Flash, right?)

"OMG is it beautiful." says BugGirl.

*Bagworm poem:

On a pitch-dark night
when one can't even guess
which way is East or West
the bagworm hides his lust
in a cloak of invisibility.

It wouldn't apply to Canadian bagworms, would it?

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Lazy afternoon

We weren't feeling ambitious; it was a day for dawdling along on flat land, on easy trails. So we went to Richmond again, and ambled around the tip of Terra Nova Natural Area. We parked at the dead end of Westminster Highway, and followed the dike to the end of River Road, then back across the fields just inside the dike; a short walk, but full of discoveries.

From the dike, we look west across Sturgeon Banks; marsh, mudflats, and shallow waters of the Fraser River estuary. The cattails here were hopping with male redwings, each proclaiming his territorial rights. We took oodles of photos, all alike, of pale brown cattails with black silhouettes enlivened with one or two sparks of brilliant red.

On the landward side, three headless mallards floated in the ditch:

Maybe a mallard/ostrich cross.


New fertile heads of giant horsetail, on the banks of the ditch.

There used to be farms just inside this dike, and here and there the plantings of old homesteads mark the boundaries. Just beyond this tree, a bit of yellow in the shrubbery is an old forsythia.

Yellow tree.

Atop a hill of dirt and gravel dredged from the newly-cleared slough, a stream-side flower blooms:

American brooklime. Usually found on the edges of slow creeks.


Twinberry leaves and flower buds.

The twinberry, Lonicera involucrata, is a native plant, usually seen in sunny areas near water. We found them thriving on Finn Slough, and I was familiar with them on Vancouver Island years ago. I always thought the shiny blue-black berries were poisonous; somebody must have told me this early on. I did try one, when I was a kid. It was very bitter, and I spit it out. Now I read that they are edible, and sometimes palatable.

"Fruit - raw or dried. A pleasant taste. Not tasty enough to be widely sought. The only form we have tried has an incredibly bitter taste."

I'll have to repeat the taste test this summer.

Unidentified weed, going to seed.


Rich brown trunks and branches. Beauty that will soon be hidden under a green blanket, also beautiful.

At the tip of River Road, a slough divides presently occupied land from heritage sites. We turned here and followed the slough back to the new pond.

Terra Nova Slough.


New buds.


Apple blossoms in an abandoned garden.

In a grove of trees beside the mound of dirt, several Yellow-Rumped Warblers teased us, always being just behind a branch, directly between us and the sun, or not where they were when we pressed the shutter. Not even in the same tree! I got this male from the top of the hill, getting up at eye-level to the trees. He didn't give me a second chance.


Back along the trail on the landward side of the ditch, clumps of garden plants, daffodils and tulips, more forsythia, Pieris, marked the location of long-forgotten front stoops . Under the protection of nettles and blackberry canes (Vicious! One jabbed a thorn deep into the top of my scalp.), we found these Spring Snowflakes, Leucojum vernum:

About a foot tall, slightly fragrant, glowing white bells with green pinched petal tips.


One was handily turned face up.

I had never seen these before, and was awestruck. So elegant, so graceful, so modest withal! I am going to be looking for some for my shade garden.

And to top the afternoon off, a flock of geese flew south overhead, honking and chattering among themselves as they travelled.


Time for tea in Steveston! Well, tea and a muffin for Laurie, coffee for me. And then home, well content.

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At home in the garden

It was Earth Day. And I spent most of it up to my elbows in the stuff. Earth.

First, I re-potted and trimmed all but one of my houseplants. Then I moved outside, and repotted most of the outside container plants, divided the hostas, transplanted some of the London Pride*, trimmed the evergreens, ripped out a mountain of moss, top-dressed the second half of the garden with manure, and repositioned a wire fence.

A pleasant, contemplative day; I love digging in the dirt!

For the smaller hostas, I decided to use a planter box that had spent the winter upside-down in a dry spot. When I flipped it over, I found it full of spider webs. I brushed some away, and a big Tegenaria rushed out.

Tegenaria domestica, probably.


Good view of the row of eyes.

Several clumps of frass hung in the box; I fished this one out to examine it.

Frass

I thought I could identify what she's been eating, but other than that ridged thing, which I think is the remains of a woodbug, nothing there is identifiable. Yet it all came from her food, since nothing could fall into her cozy upside-down house; it all walked or slithered or crawled in through the cracks between the boards. She's quite a tidy housekeeper, and ties up her garbage and hangs it out to dry well away from her nest area.

There's always the worry, with these; is she a hobo spider, T. agrestis? Does she bite, is she aggressive, is she venomous? I went back to check my list of identifying marks from last year.

Let's see: I didn't get a look at the underside, nor the top of the cephalothorax. But she has dark rings around her legs, and pointy pedipalps. She's not a hobo; no need to evict her.

I put the box back where I found it, and found another planter for my hostas.

*This (the London Pride link) was from my previous blog. Reading it over, I found a few posts that I think are worth reposting on this blog, starting with my "Shade garden" series, since we're in planting season again.

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A trio of snails

Pink snail found next door:


Striped mauve and black snail found on my bergenias:


These two are probably both Cepaea nemoralis, the grove snail, which comes in many colours and patterns.

And a yellow snail, found at an antique fair, last Sunday:


No identifiable species for this one.

And, a little more sensibly, a couple of interesting links:

A six-kilometre trek on the back of a snail: from Not Exactly Rocket Science.

For long journeys, the shell of a snail hardly seems like the ideal public transport. That is, of course, unless you're an even smaller snail...

And Aydin Örstan, of Snail's Tales, writes about Battillaria minima, sea snails, and their social behaviour, in Clustering of the intertidal snail ... He says,

"the distributions of these snails were often patchy: there would be areas 2-3 meters wide where I would see none of them and then there would be a cluster of 50 or 100 snails."

And then does a simple experiment to watch them congregate.

Laurie was just commenting on this last week, watching our local Batillaria attramentaria at Boundary Bay. It's interesting that it doesn't seem to be just an effect of water currents, etc.

I wonder if it's mating behaviour, spring fever and all that; or do they hang out in groups all year round?

More experimentation is needed.

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To spin or not to spin

I will never catch up. Ever.

I've got half a dozen bugs in bottles and boxes on my desk, waiting to be blogged about; my extra hard drive is full of folders labelled, "Blog these"; I've got bookmarks, books, lists of links; the garden is growing, the bees are visiting ...

I need a week, just now and then, with 9 30-hour days in it. Please?

Or I can just get a move on. Starting with a batch of spiders.

1. I flipped a rock today. On the bottom, I found this large web:

Spider web. With average-sized dried maple leaf for comparison.

I didn't want to disturb the spider inside, but I did get a bit of her in one photo; there's a fat, round, brown and black spider body visible just under the centre, and the tip of a couple of legs on the left side.

Funnel-web spider.

2. On the rhododendrons along the walk, the pretty cross spiders are setting up shop. They're still very tiny; barely bright dots where the sun hits them.

Araneus diadematus.

They all, without exception, arrange their round web in front of the vegetation, and sit motionless in the centre, always with their topside facing out, head down.

3. I found this Philodromus dispar in my hallway, captured him, and photographed him in the viewing tin. He (his pedipalp has a thick, blobby end, which identifies him as male) didn't appreciate the attention, but frantically ran around and around, looking to escape, so I quickly let him go, beside the door to the outside, leaving him to make the choice; outside or inside. He chose inside.

I saw him later, roaming in the bathroom. The next day, he was on a lamp in the living room, and later on the wall over my desk. He doesn't make a web. He's a hunter, looking for a mate, probably.

Black and white running crab spider. Always recognizable, because he's lost one of his pedipalps.

4. And this is my Brownie, lurking in her jar:

Steatoda bipunctata

She makes a messy web, with lines going every which way, some sticky, some to be used as paths or signalling threads. She hangs upside-down, after the manner of a house spider, but chooses different spots according to her whim of the moment. Usually, she is under some sort of shelter; a leaf or a clump of frass. Here, she is under the thick stem of a dried leaf.

When a woodbug (her favourite food) falls into the web, she springs into action. But instead of heading directly to the bug, she climbs to the top of a thread, then angles down to reach the bug from overhead. She bites it, then ties it up with silk, using her back legs to manipulate the threads. Once it's tied up, she drags it off, and hides it under another leaf to eat later on.

5. I found this big spider on a garden wall in Tsawwassen:

Large hunter, Tegenaria sp.

Tegenarias are web spiders, but I often see them laying in wait under a bit of shelter, without a web. This one was under the overhang of the top of the wall. A couple of feet away, I found an egg mass, probably hers. You can see the individual eggs under their blanket of webbing. (Photos of egg sacs of other Tegenarias, here and here.)

Spider egg mass.

6. This is a jumping spider that I have never seen before. The usual jumpers I see are those zebra-striped ones. This was a bit bigger, a lot more curious; he kept dancing around, trying to get a good look at the camera.

Phidippus borealis? Tsawwassen.

See those headlight eyes! No fly can sneak by, unobserved! I have seen a jumping spider leap almost 4 inches to catch a fly in mid-air. No web is needed.

Jumper. Side view. Eyes on the top of his head. Handy.

And for a change of scenery, here's a corner of my garden.


I didn't see any spiders on this plant.

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Birthday Party

Sophia's birthday:

Anticipation


Three!

Fourteen children.
Piñata.
Filled with candy.
Fingerprints in the icing.

'nuff said.
Goodnight!

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Decorator bunnies

A half-dozen or more of these browsed in the grass beside a carlot.

Easter-egg rabbits, on spring break?

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Watching for rain, hoping for sun

We were keeping an eye on the sky. I had to take the car in for its spring checkup, and if the weather behaved, we could walk around the Richmond Nature Park while we waited. It was raining when we left home, but by the time we got to Richmond, the sun was shining. Yay!

The park is split in two by a highway and its cloverleaf. To the west of these, there is parking, a Nature House, picnic tables, and a network of paths, with maps and signs. That's where we usually go. Yesterday, we took the east half of the park; a small paved area off the side street led to a sign, "Richmond Nature Park", and a wood-chip trail beyond. Around the curve, there was a roofed picnic area, then a fork in the trail. No signs. No map.

Not raining. For the moment.

We chose the west arm of the "Y".

Spring is barely getting started in the bog. Some of the trees are beginning to show leaves; many are still in their winter skeletons. Below, spindly twigs are dotted with tiny green buds. Salal and evergreen ferns provide a green carpet between the chocolaty puddles. There wasn't much else to see; some shelf fungus, moss, a bit of lichen. A few salmonberry flowers. Birds sang, but far, far overhead.

The winter has not been kind. Many birches were down, snapped off halfway up or broken from the roots. One lay across the trail. Others had been cleared away, chainsawed into manageable lengths. Broken limbs rotted in the pools. Overhead, the remaining branches formed awkward tangles.

Looking up.


Looking down. Reflections in a ditch.

We walked. And walked. And walked. Each turn in the trail (and there were many turns) revealed more of the same; wet trail, wet salal, bare branches. Never any signposts, never any alternate routes. Just the trail going on and on. Surely the park wasn't this big!

Variety: brand new boardwalk (wet). Otherwise, more of the same.

It was going to rain again; I could feel it in the air. I hoped we'd come to some shelter before then. We didn't. When the rain pelted down, we stopped under an evergreen and bundled up, closed down the cameras. A few more turns in the trail, and the rain stopped. The sun came out.

Sunny trail in a gentler part of the bog.

On and on, the trail went. We walked for over an hour before we finally came back to the same fork in the trail we started from.

This part of the bog is less than a kilometre long, and about half that wide. The trail must zigzag through the centre of this area, crossing and recrossing it many times, never meeting itself.

At the trail head, there is a bit of lawn; the elderberry is leafing out, and tiny flowers dot the grass. We sat for a bit and watched a hawk wheeling over the forest, and a pair of eagles. A flicker sat and watched us.

Two broken trees, and a few leafing out. And a flicker.


Zooming in on the flicker.

It was a good, pleasant, quiet walk, in spite of the worry about rain. But a map, or a signpost (Trailhead - 1k forward, 2k back) would have been appreciated.

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He followed me home ...

... Can I keep him?

Smiley the crab

At Boundary Bay beach, I scooped up a couple of clamshells full of sand, hoping I had caught at least one of the worms that were in it. I dumped them in my little bottle, tipped out an adventurous crab, and filled it with water from the next wave.

At home, I spread the sand out in a bowl. Smiley, here, had come along for the ride. So had this black turban snail.

Black turban snail, 7 mm tall. Smiley in the background.

Unfortunately, we will not be going back to the beach for several days. I'm trying to keep them alive with homemade artificial seawater (sea salt with de-chlorinated water, at about 3 parts per 100), but Smiley's not doing too well. He stopped moving, and stuck his legs out at weird angles until I added lots of plain, unsalted water. The water on his beach, especially at the upper levels, must be heavily watered down with creek and rainwater.

Not that it matters; it's just a crab and a snail, out of billions. But that appealing smile!

Anyhow, the worms:

Three turned up in the bottle of sand. Two of them were joined together at the head, and not happy about it; they were thrashing around, as if one were trying to shake free.

Unidentified polychaete worms

I wasn't sure what was happening; some kind of mating dance? Or predation? After a while, I managed to see enough to know they were different species. The segments were different shapes; so were the tails. So, predation it was.

Both were somewhere between red and green, depending on the light. The legs were green.

I couldn't see them clearly while they fought. With a needle and a paintbrush, I tried to separate them. It was difficult, and I finally managed only by injuring the long one. It bled, red blood.

Looking at them separately, now they were quiet, didn't reveal too much more information. The shorter, greener one has thicker, shorter legs (parapodia), and some kind of tentacles around the mouth end. I think I saw pale spines along its back.

I can't possibly identify either of them beyond the class level: the Polychaetes, or bristle worms. The Marine Life encyclopedia has photos of 79 different species, many very similar to these.

The other worm was thinner, and of variable length; while I watched, it stretched out from about 1 inch long to almost 3. It has a thicker head end, then a long body in a rainbow of colours; first blue, then red, then blue-black, then red, then pale blue, fading out to green at the tail.

Another Polychaete.

According to the Encyclopedia, at least 836 species of polychaete worms had been discovered in the Pacific Northwest, 20 years ago. And more are being found all the time. It seems strange that these are the first I have actually seen. (Poop doesn't count. I've seen plenty of that.)

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Antennaria to Womb

I was half-lying, half-kneeling in a parking lot. A couple of kids sitting on the curb laughed, but stopped when I looked in their direction. When I passed them, a bit later, I held up the camera and said, "Tiny wildflowers!"

They were nice kids, really. They apologized profusely, and I laughed and told them I was used to looking ridiculous. Smiles all round.

Here's one of the photos:

Common draba, probably Draba verna, aka. whitlow grass.

We indulged in some undignified ground-crawling on Iona Island last week, too. What we saw:

Pussy-toes and Roadside Rock Moss, Racomitrium canescens. And a single Haircap moss stem.

Pussy-toes is a generic name for flowers of the Antennaria genus. Several of them grow in the Lower Mainland. I couldn't find any that matched this one, though. It has the tiny, spoon-shaped, hairy, basal leaves, the white wool on the single stem, the compact flower cluster, white flowers; it is growing in open, dry, well-drained land. But see those cute three-pronged stem leaves? I could find nothing to match them; most Pussy-toes stem leaves are lance-shaped (a long, pointed oval).

The Roadside Rock moss is one of the most common mosses in this region. It's even identifiable as you whiz past in the car; a yellow-green carpet on sunny rocks or meadows.

A forest of sporophytes on their stalks on unidentified moss.

Juniper Haircap moss, Polytrichum juniperinum. Like little starry flowers underfoot.

More Juniper Haircap.

Unidentified red moss, with Draba.

The Drabas are also called Whitlow grass, because

"they were formerly used for treating "whitlows" (inflammations of the finger-tip, especially next to the nail)." (Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Pojar & MacKinnon)

I looked to see if they were still in the herbal remedies for infected fingers, hang-nails and the like, but now the herbal remedies include neem, plantain seed, eggplant, or, in stubborn cases, onion. Whitlow grass has been found ineffective, evidently.

And I found an ancient treatment plan in an extract from The Lady's Assistant: Family Physician. The relevant passage is here. Warning: rather gruesome. And it veers off-topic, into "Womb, Falling down of"; not for the squeamish, at all.

And now, I have veered off-topic, too. I'd better quit while I'm still in the general vicinity.

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Blogger swallowed my post

I should have saved it first.

Patience ...

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A couple of non-singing residents of Iona Island

At first I thought it was a rock ...

Just a grey blob, not moving, far away on an island in the pond. But then, any rock there would be covered with reeds, I thought. So I took a photo.

Turtle, catching a few rays.

This one was moving, and fast. Laurie found it in the blackberry patch:

Garter snake. At least, part of a snake. Almost patternless.

The turtle could be B.C.’s only remaining native pond turtle, the Western Painted Turtle, or more probably, the imported Red-Ear Slider. They are distinguishable mainly by the red patch on the side of the red-ear's head. These are often released by bored pet owners; most turtles we see in the ponds are red-ears.

The snake is a native, probably the Northwestern Garter Snake.*

*Update: PSYL asks, in the comments, why the garter snake has no stripes. I really should have "shown my work" in the post, so here goes:

I am used to seeing very stripy garter snakes.

However, quoting from the BC Reptiles page on Northwestern garter snakes, "adults are black, brown, or olive in colour. This may be accented by a stripe down the back. However, the width of the stripe varies, and sometimes the stripe is missing entirely. ... The colours can appear muted because of the strongly keeled scutes (scales with a ridge running from front to back), a trait shared with all other Garter Snake species."

If you click on the photo to see it full size, you can see a very faint yellowish stripe down the side. And the ridge along the back is there.

Thanks, PSYL!

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Treasure in a failed photo

The drier areas of Iona Island were clothed in a variety of mosses. We took a bunch of photos, of which more later. This one didn't turn out:


Looking straight down at the moss, the camera balked at the contrast between sunlit "flowers" and shady ground, so that it washed out the colours, but left the background almost black. I was going to toss the photo, but zoomed in first to see if I had missed any clues to the identity of the moss. That's when I saw the lichen.

I have never seen lichen like this. It's a club lichen, standing upright like Cladonia, but is weirdly branched, and in spots, almost leaf-like. And on those branches, it has tiny fruiting bodies, like little balls. Little purple balls. (It helps to click on the photo to see it full size; the fruiting bodies are really small.)

I tried adjusting the colour balance of the photo, thinking the fruiting bodies should be grey, but the closer the moss came to its true colour, as we saw it, the bluer the fruiting bodies grew.

I finally gave up, and over-saturated the colours; even the grey body of the lichen turned out to have a purplish tinge.


I don't know what these are. They're not in my book. I am going to browse through the thousands of photos on the Sharnoff Lichen website to see if they're there. Wish me luck.

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Too much of a good thing. Far too much.

When I was a kid, half a century or so ago, we lived for a year in White Rock. I walked to school most days down Buena Vista, rather than the slightly shorter route straight along Thrift from our house. I liked Buena Vista; one of the houses* had a hedge made of Scotch broom, and in season, the yellow pea-flowers were heaped high over my head. In winter, the hedge was dense and green, while everything else was just bare sticks.

Mom said it was a bad weed, but I didn't care. It was beautiful.

So I find it understandable that Captain Grant, back in 1850, brought seeds from Hawaii to plant in his garden on Vancouver Island. Only three germinated. And from those three seeds, the "bad weed" jumped his property line, galloped south to Victoria, crossed the Strait to the mainland, and dug itself in, evacuating any of our native flora that stood in its way.

Scotch broom, Cystisus scoparius, is a stiff, dusty-green shrub that grows to about 3 metres tall. It was probably called "broom" because of the long, flexible, but tough new growth; a couple of branches bound together would make a quite acceptable broom.** The leaves are small and inconspicuous; off-season colour is provided by the new green branches. The flowers are a glorious, sunshiny yellow and cheddar cheese orange. In the fall, it produces thousands of seeds in black pea-pods.

Old branches, new branches, dead wood, of Scotch broom. Iona Beach Regional Park. No leaves or flowers yet; it's early spring.

Broom is well equipped for survival in our climate. It grows well on poor or disturbed soil, because it is able to fix nitrogen from the air. Photosynthesis goes on even in the winter in the green branches, giving it a head start on other deciduous plants. It is winter-hardy, tolerating temperatures as low as -25 Celsius. And it produces seed in abundance; up to 3500 seed pods per plant, with about 7 seeds per pod. That comes out to about 20 thousand seeds. Per plant. And it throws them as far as 5 metres from the parent. Then they can wait up to 10 years for conditions to be best for germinating.

Add to this, toxins that protect it from foraging animals, deep roots and a waxy coating that prevents water loss in periods of drought, and a tendency to acidify the soil, which prevents the growth of native meadow plants. No wonder three plants were enough for an invading force!

Mom was right. It is a"bad weed". If it were well-behaved, and stayed in the gardens where we planted it, things would be fine. But rampaging over the fields, it is a destroyer. It crowds out native forage plants, out-competes evergreen seedlings, grows too densely to serve as cover for small animals. It is highly flammable; even a healthy plant always contains dead wood, and the fresh branches are high in natural oils. It is mildly toxic to animals and humans, and unpalatable to foraging animals.

Eradicating a patch, digging it out, leaves a gaping hole where nothing will grow, until the dormant broom seeds take advantage of the empty space. Burning it off stimulates the seeds.

Clearing land, whether for infrastructure, construction projects, or even logging, opens new ground for broom. Once it has a foothold, it prevents the regrowth of forests, even dooming tree-planting operations.

Iona Beach, where I took the photo above, has the worst infestation of Scotch broom in all the Vancouver metropolitan area. In Surrey, we have found it on the cleared strip under the power lines; a great highway for rapid expansion. On the Island, it is moving north rapidly.

Mom's generation had a saying; "Beauty is as beauty does." I guess broom is not so beautiful, after all.

*The hedge on Buena Vista is gone now; I checked. So is the big old farmhouse I lived in, the sloping meadow behind it, the little maple wood we played in, the henhouse and the fox that haunted it. It's all close-packed housing now. We're invasive, too.

**Or, more likely, vice versa. See comment by Christopher Taylor

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Blue, white, silver

Skywatching at Iona Beach:

Over (and in) the pond.

Over the beach.

Over the jetty.

Over the river.

And sky with swallows.

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Brand-new old favourite

Beach and jetty, at Iona Beach.

Iona Beach Regional Park. Marsh, logjams, quiet ponds, sandy beach, muddy river banks, dune meadows, concrete jetties. And sewage lagoons; what more could anyone want?

We've been intending to visit for a long time. Yesterday, we finally made it. And I'm stuck for words to describe it; maybe just a hearty "Wow!" will have to do.

A few bird shots, for starters:

One of the ponds, with goose. We saw buffleheads, mergansers, shovellers, as well as the usual mallards and geese on the water.


Three ducks over the river. North Shore mountains in the background.


Canada goose.


Beside the sewage lagoon, a pair of sleepy geese.


Rufous hummingbird.


Same hummingbird. Because I couldn't decide which photo to use.

In this area, between the sewage lagoons and the park proper, a narrow trail leads through and around deciduous forest, blackberry thickets, patches of Scotch broom, banks of purple-pink flowers. The grass is studded with pinpricks of white; two different miniature white flowers. And everywhere, small birds were singing. Redwing blackbirds called in the dried grasses, robins provided rhythm with their repeated "Cheer-ups", birds I couldn't recognize trilled, chirped, whistled. Chickadees, of course, were dee-dee-deeing in the background. Laurie saw a bright yellow bird, unidentifiable. Overhead, tree swallows did acrobatics.

Something about it all seemed so familiar, so right, like a fleeting memory of paradise. I got shivers down my spine.

Tree swallows, by the river bank.


The pilings along the bank are outfitted with swallow nest boxes. One had a long line stretched to a post on the dunes.


Swallow, wings akimbo


Nesting mallards.

Back at the parking lot, there have to be crows.

More Iona photos (I've still got oodles to sort), tomorrow.

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There's always more to be seen.

Below the birds singing at their carpentry tasks in the treetops, there's the understory. And below the understory ... in Ladner Harbour in the springtime, there's mostly mud and dead grass. And a few mossy logs.


(On the beach, I usually carry a folded piece of heavy plastic to kneel on and stay dry. I didn't have it with me at the park. Well, as the farmer used to say, "It was clean mud." Brushed right off, once it was dry. Most of it, anyhow. Note to self: put that plastic in the jacket pocket and leave it there!)

This short length of log was host to a bright clump of Red Roof*, or Fire, moss:

Ceratodon purpureus

*At least, I think it's Red Roof; it matches the photo and write-up in my book (Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Pojar & MacKinnon). It is the most common moss in the world, and grows anywhere from the Antarctic to city sidewalks. Young sporophytes (the tall fruiting bodies), have reddish stalks when they're young, turning purple as they age; the mature capsules on top bend over and become ribbed. So this is a young moss clump.

The greyish growth at the end of the log is a cladonia:

A pixie cup cladonia

They look like bent nails from a demolition project.

More cladonia, possibly a different variety, and a different moss.

At the far tip of the spit, on an dead cottonwood, still standing, we found these mushrooms:

Big, fist-sized 'shrooms, stemless.

The surface cracks as they age, so they look like freshly-baked meringues.

Forcing their way out from the inside of the trunk, breaking that thick bark. The inside of the tree is probably a mass of fungal threads.

The gills, from the underside.

Hugh, at the other end of the park, found some similar ones. He thought they might be oyster mushrooms. Maybe his were; I don't think these are. They didn't quite match any of the photos I found. I didn't pick one to take a spore print because they were too beautiful to disturb.

Higher up on the same tree, these smaller, stemmed mushrooms poked out of a branch scar:

Big tough tree, bested by tender little morsels. The battle is not always to the strong.

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Green lights in the understory

Nothing says "spring" to me like the bright yellow-green leaves in the brown understory of the forest. Every year I wait and watch for them; every year they're new and magic.

Indian plum, each new bud like a burst of green flame.

Yellow-green, or chartreuse, is

the most visible color to the human eye because it sits directly in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. (Wikipedia)

I didn't know that. I did know that a ray of spring sunlight, angling down between the heavy evergreen branches overhead, and shining through a spray of fresh-sprouted salmonberry leaves, catches my breath away.

The newest baby horsetails.

Willow over the slough.

Willow catkins, close up.

Salmonberry leaves.

Elderberry; coarser, tougher, fast-growing. In a couple of weeks, the flowers will be in full bloom.

The holly and the ivy. Dark evergreens, but now even they are fringed with golden light.

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A little bit of link love

April showers; it's raining cats and dogs. And a world of other beasties, too:

GrrrlScientist has posted the latest Circus of the Spineless. I submitted one of my posts, and other people submitted three more. Grrl included them all in this Circus! Thanks, all!

The next issue of CotS will be up on May 4th. Send submissions before then to Amber Coakley at The Birder's Lounge.

Kevin posted the latest Carnival of the Blue at Deep Sea News in an abbreviated poetry format. Every line is a link, all of them interesting. The next host will be Ken, at Sea Notes. I think the appropriate address is kpeterson AT mbayaq DOT org.

Adrian, at Evolving Complexity posts a weekly list: My Sunday Best. He has included my posts three times; what a boost to my spirits that is!

I and the Bird #97 is up at Great Auk - or Greatest Auk. Or not. Pinguinus apologizes for the lack, since her co-editors (Charles Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe) faded out on her. All that's left is the (pretty substantial) ghost of a post.

The next edition of IatB will be at Biological Ramblings. Send your submissions to pagophila at gmail dot com by April 14th.

Friday Ark #237. That's 237 weekly issues! The cats and dogs are here.

Happy Face. Crescent Beach.

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Ladner Harbour Park: the itinerary

The other day, Hugh, at Rock, Paper, Lizard, reported on an outing to Ladner Harbour Park; it was lousy with woodpeckers, he said, and the hummingbirds were buzzing over the lagoon. We couldn't resist. Sunday afternoon, we headed down there.

We started at the far end of the sewage lagoon, where the hummingbirds had been. Everything was quiet. No buzzing hummers, no redwing blackbirds, no chattering sparrows, even.

At this time of year, the wetlands are clothed in mud colours; drab browns and greys. There is no softness to the land. Blackberry canes and scratchy shrubs alternate with rustling stands of last year's cattails. Dead grasses sprawl in oozy mud. Kayakers in the waterways provide occasional flashes of colour.

White kayak, yellow jacket

Not a kayak.

Cattail fluff, blowing away

Over the marsh, two hawks patrolled; one, small and elegant, with a white tail, flew in that characteristic "flap-flap-flap, coast, flap-flap-flap, coast" pattern; the other, a large red hawk, sped along in a straight line, making a beeline for somewhere else. When they were gone, a flock of ducks goofed around in the air, going nowhere.

We walked around the lagoon, and passed the "civilized" part of the park, and took the path through the cottonwood forest. And yes, there were woodpeckers.


This flicker was digging a nest hole high in a topless snag. It was deep enough already that he would disappear inside, except for the very tip of a tailfeather. After a few seconds, he backed out, posed, dropped his chip, and dove back inside. We took umpteen photos, all of his silhouette.

A few steps further on, a brown creeper started up a cottonwood just a few feet from us. After the manner of his kind, he spiralled around to the far side the minute we'd got the cameras focussed. Still, we'd seen him, and fairly close-up.

Cottonwoods, far above. Probably lousy with woodpeckers. We heard them.

We took the trail out to the viewing platform at the end of the spit, took the wrong turn at the fork, and ended up on muddy marsh, with a view over the river. Those black spots in the water aren't ducks; they're deadheads. But there's an eagle's nest far across the water.


Then back through the forest behind the office, and on to the road. We followed the road back past the harbour where we saw the mallard hybrids and a fishing heron.

Awkward pose.

Grasses beside the canal.

We never saw the owl, nor its nest. But all the way back along the canal, we were treated to a red-wing blackbird song-fest; the males, busily staking out their territory before the females arrive, and by the sound of it, very pleased with themselves.

And here's a bird we never expected to see in the bush:

Free-range chicken.

And this is for Hugh's collection: this one must have died of old age.

R.I.P.

What else we saw in the park, the green stuff, will wait till tomorrow.

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And I'm typing with my eyes closed, too.

With a friend from out of town, we checked out the flowers on the Quay, drove across town and back, shopped, ate, found (not quite legal) parking, shopped some more ...

I'm so tired, I could sleep on a curb, like this garage sale offering.

Zzzzzzz...

See you tomorrow!

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Ducks with almost human eyes

Three ducks seen yesterday at Ladner Harbour Park:


As far as we can figure out, they're mallard hybrids. Mallard crossed with what, I don't know. The eyes remind me of the female wood duck's. (Look at the photos full-size.)

Showing off their white bibs with spotty edges.

We've had four very busy days, and another starting a few hours from now. After that, once I've rested up a bit, I'll have a load of photos to show you; birds, beasties, 'shrooms, and places.

For now, goodnight!

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A temptation too strong to resist

This varied thrush lives in our evergreens. Until now, he had rarely ventured beyond their cover or the shadow of the hedge. But he loves suet. Loves it so much, he has forgotten all his shyness; he even allows me to open the window and poke the camera out. It used to be that even my shadow moving inside the house was enough to send him scurrying back into the trees.


He's a ground feeder, so he contents himself with scratching for the crumbs that the chickadees and pine siskins drop from the hanging suet cage.

I wonder what he would think of Zick dough. I'll set some out for him tomorrow.

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Shadows of joys to come

I babysat all day today, (Friday). The sun shone through the windows ...

Shadows of Jaya's window art on the curtains.

Mmmm... Boiled egg!

... and Sofia and I went out to explore the garden. There was plenty to see; daffodils, periwinkle and forsythia were in full bloom. So were two dandelions; Sofia picked them to put in a jar for Mommy. (Mommy thought they were just beautiful.) The old pear trees were putting out the first buds.

Budding pear branch

Early pear bud

The buds are not pretty at this stage; they remind me somewhat of the head end of a carnivorous marine worm. (Photo here.) They're even hairy, like the worm. But in a week or so, they'll have opened up into mountains of delicate, snowy blossoms.

The magnolia tree's packaging looks more like a mouse than a bud. A coarse-haired mouse, at that. Or a rough cocoon for a butterfly; a more appropriate metaphor, given the flower that bursts out and unfolds into spectacular fly-away petals.

Grey-haired mouse, with escapee.

First of the opened blooms. And look inside! There's a stowaway.

I found this old "cage" on the ground; all that's left of last year's flowers. I'm not sure what they were. but the new ones are sprouting.

Cage for a ladybug.

This was sprouting, too. (Don't ask; I don't have the faintest idea.)

Emergence!

And I found my first outdoor spiders of the season; a friendly jumping spider that put on a good show for Sofia, and this one:

Juvenile cross spider, with web.

And we brought in, to show Mommy, three pillbugs. Sofia calls them "picklebugs".

While I was away, Laurie went for a walk and brought home three big-cone pine cones for me. "They might have some bugs on them," he said. He knows what I like.

And yes, I found a globular springtail:

Collembola, about 1 mm.

Now that's what I call a proper spring day!

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Sometimes I wonder what she's thinking

Sasha, considering.

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Still waiting for spring

MacLean Park, Strathcona, April 2nd:

Trimmed ivy against a red wall.


Summer shade.


Vacant nest hole. Good location, quiet neighbourhood. Reasonable rent.

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In like a lamb ...

... out like a lion. So they say. March started for us, with sunny, warm days. I left my jacket at home.

And now ... does this look "lionish" to you?

Blackie Spit, March 30th.

Appearances are deceptive. The wind was blowing; chill and strong, so strong it pushed me along the beach, willy nilly. Facing it, I could barely breathe. I couldn't stand still to take photos; I rocked back and forth in the wind unless I was holding on to a fence or bench. My fingers went numb.

In spite of the flying branches along our streets and the invisible hand pushing the car here and there on the highway, we had gone down to Blackie Spit. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the tide was out; it would be a good time to explore the lower reaches of the beach.

The beginning of Blackie Spit, at low tide.

Ah, but look there, far down the beach; see the whitecaps?


Blackie Spit is a hook forming a protected bay at the inner end of Boundary Bay, at the outlet of the Nicomekl river and the Serpentine, both slow-moving, gentle streams. The water is shallow all the way across the inlet, and at low tide, exposes wide mud flats. Only in the centre of the Nicomekl channel is there depth enough for boats.

It's a quiet spot, where waterfowl of all sorts dabble in the stream and sleep on the mud. Usually they do.

Brown water in front; the Nicomekl. Then mud. Then the blue line that marks the Serpentine.

Here's that quiet water, day before yesterday:

The Nicomekl, disturbed.

Four ducks bounced through the waves. A seagull tried to walk along the shore; most of the time he was moving sideways. He found a clam, and flew up to drop it on the rocks to break it open. The wind blew him backwards, and he missed his aim. He struggled back to the clam, flew up and dropped it again three times while I watched, missing the rocks every time. I've never seen that happen before. Around the bend, in the shelter of the headland, a few seagulls and an eagle rested.

We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves. Farther inshore, three teenage girls played at leaning on the wind; a car parked, a couple of women got out, then quickly got back in and drove away.

Empty beach.


Empty headland.


Empty benches.

And it was beautiful, exhiliarating. The air smelled fresh and salty. The sky looked as if it had been just re-painted, piled with new cotton clouds. And our legs and lungs got a thorough workout.

A lion, but a friendly lion.

And April? Isn't it supposed to be spring? Then why is it snowing tonight?

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On our knees in the garden

Tiny plants in the garden next door:

Very tiny unidentified weed


White and yellow


Miniature creeper


Flowers within a flower


Pink and white


Last fall's seed pods


Not so tiny, but pretty: ivy against the wall

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