Determined? Persistent? Or just plain stubborn?

Summer has arrived in Cougar Creek Park. The early waterfowl are gone, except for a few mallards, the trees are completely leafed out, and the water is high.

That's the edge of a beaver dam at the bottom of the photo. Laurie climbed under the bridge to look at it from the downstream side:

"The Canadian Beaver is Canada’s national symbol. ... (It) is symbolic of independence, creativity, and determination ..." (From ArticleClick.com)

The beavers have plans for this small lake; they've been building dams and enlarging the waterways since before people decided to turn it into a park. Their ideas conflict with the city's pretty schemes, and the two parties are feuding. The beavers build dams; someone clears away the piles and removes felled trees. The beavers build again.

The city (Surrey) trapped and killed a male about this time last year; in family-raising time. The female raised her brood, and during the winter, they dammed the creek leading into the pond, widening the creek and gathering enough water to wash away the trash that littered its bed. The dam, and much of the topsoil was stripped away. The beavers felled more trees, and started over. Wire fences went up around the biggest tree trunks. The beavers chopped down a row of new alders and dammed the outlet.

Now, someone has devised a new strategy: wire netting, with scrap wood jammed in to give the beavers something to chew on without damaging the tree.

I don't know who will win this argument; neither side seems inclined to compromise. But the lake does look lovely, with the water now covering the muddy banks.

Green, green, and green. Even the duck.

The beavers aren't the only busy ones in the park:

Bee on wild rose.

Very pale, big-eyed bee on white thimbleberry blossoms.

The first salmonberries of the season. Not quite ripe, but tasty enough.

Chickadee hanging upside-down, feeding from the willow catkins.

Cedar waxwing.

The tall evergreens were a-flitter with tiny birds we never got close enough to identify, a robin pair sang in a small cedar, finches and crows kept up a lively conversation. A clump of cattails has taken root along the edge of the beavers' widened creek, yellow irises bloom where the heron fishes, ninebark and Indian plum are flowering.

And on the tame side, a variegated lilac leans over a back fence.


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Such fun!

We bought a new camera yesterday, a Nikon CoolPix P90. I'm still in the process of setting it up to Laurie's and my preferences*, but I took a few quick shots of a humongous (and frantic) ant that crossed my path. I took them again with the old Olympus (SP55OUZ), for comparison.

This one is from the Olympus:

And this is from the Nikon:

The colour seems better with the new one, and it gives me more detail. And I had a better ratio of acceptable shots to lousy ones with the Nikon, too.

I think I'm going to go redo all my carpet beetle and spider photos. The other thing we're hoping for with this camera, is a better zoom on distant birds. We'll do some experiments on that, tomorrow.

*Reading manuals and doing setups is my job; I actually enjoy it.

Oh, and the ant has been set free to continue her journey.

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The case of the pregnant mummies

"Aphid mummy." I never would have thought to Google that phrase on my own.

Fellow bloggers are so helpful! In my previous post, I was stymied and asking for help; within a couple of hours, Christopher, then Seabrooke and Neil were there with information and ideas on where to find more. (Thanks!)

So I Googled and examined my tree, and looked at photos on BugGuide. Here's what I've found out, so far.

First, the mummies. (I love that concept; mummies in my maple tree!) A small wasp lays one egg in a live aphid. The aphid continues to develop, fattening up as the wasp larva matures (almost as if it were pregnant). It changes colour, becoming silvery-brown. When the wasp pupates, the aphid dies; later, the adult wasp cuts a hole through the mummy's back. These are the holes I saw.

I examined all the branches that I could reach on my maple tree. I found no more mummies, but plenty of aphids:

Brown aphid on maple flower.

This aphid has the same pattern of hairy studs that the mummies had; two lines of studs on the back, one on each lower edge. Here's that photo of a mummy, again:


BugGuide has a photo of a mummy colony, and one showing the hole with a sort of trapdoor lid. These are not the same species of aphid; they were found on bamboo, and have no studs.

Next, the parasite: Google (and Neil's hint) gave me Aphidiinae, small black wasps that lay eggs in unfortunate aphids, and a photo that almost matches the ones I found.


One of the mummies in my tin seemed to have something dark in the abdomen, even though the hole had been cut through. I wondered if maybe the wasp was still inside, so I replaced the lid and waited. Sure enough, in the morning, this wasp had emerged. He has a narrow wasp waist, a sharply-pointed rear end, and those kinky antennae Christopher had noticed. I found several others like him on the tree.

"Each aphid parasite species attacks only a few aphid species and they will not attack any other (nonaphid) group of pests." From Illinois Natural History Survey.

There were a couple of green spitbugs on the maple. It looks like they don't have to worry about the wasps.

Also on the tree, confusing the issue, were many tiny black flying critters, about the same size as the wasps (1/8 inch, more or less, not counting that extra-long wing):


It turns out that they are the winged form of the aphids; I found a photo here. They are Periphyllus, or maple aphids, as Neil had suggested.

I've collected a fresh batch of maple leaves, and shut them up in the aquarium. They came with a batch of aphids, and at least one wasp. I hope there are more. I want to see if I can catch them laying eggs.

At least one website calls these wasps "beneficial". It all depends on your point of view. If you are a gardener, they're great; not so much if you're an aphid.

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Two for the price of one

Last week, while I was harvesting fresh maple flowers for my carpet beetles, I noticed a couple of silvery-brown lumps on the underside of a leaf, so I cut that, too. They turned out to be tiny fat beetle-like insects, decorated with four neat rows of studs, each with its own blond hair. They were stuck firmly to the middle vein of the leaf, and didn't respond to tickling with a paintbrush. Dead, dormant, or in the middle of some buggy process? I couldn't tell.


I put the piece of leaf into my little viewing tin, where I could watch and see what happened next. Later on, I had a better idea, and looked over the tree until I found two more leaves with the sleeping bugs; these leaves I harvested with stems, and put them in water in a small aquarium with a good lid.


These "beetles," like the first two, were also lined up on the central vein of their respective leaves.

I've been watching all week; nothing changed until tonight, when I noticed that one of the tinned bugs had a big hole in the rear abdomen:

Evacuated bug on a drying leaf.

A tiny fly was flitting around in the tin. I checked the aquarium; sure enough, both bugs had holes in more or less the same location. And a tiny fly raced up and down the walls.

And another on a still-fresh leaf.

The flies were very small, very fast. I managed to photograph one:

Black fly on a vintage cats-eye marble.

The other, the one in the tin, I trapped (it took me a while) and dumped in a container where a lame spider was resting; he woke up and caught it in less than a minute.

"Just what the doctor ordered!"

So what has been happening? Were these bugs parasitized by the flies before they settled on the leaves, or afterwards? Or are they a previous stage of the flies themselves? (This doesn't seem possible, but I keep running into "impossible" things.)

Help! I don't even know where to start looking for these. Any and all hints, suggestions, wild ideas are welcome.

*Update: see comments for answers, also the follow-up post, The Case of the Pregnant Mummies.

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Wordless Wednesday

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It's that time of year again ...

Every river has its feathered babies.

On the bank of the Little Campbell River, Semiahmoo Reserve, this mallard led her brood through the grass:

Three little heads

They jumped off the edge, to join Daddy in the river ...

... got themselves organized, and swam off upstream.

With mallards, there's always a straggler.

And on the shores of the Nicomekl River, ten obedient little goslings stayed close to their parents:

Ten babies.

I love those big, floppy feet!

A cutie.

Under the parent's watchful eye.

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Flicker nest

In an alder and blackberry strip of bush, in Semiahmoo Reserve, looking down on us from a fungus-ridden snag:

A flicker, on the nest.

It was very curious, and never took its eyes off us. Otherwise, it barely moved. We'd never have seen it, except that we were checking out the fungus, a bit greyer than our usual bracket fungus.

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Very bad, very blurry, wonderful photos

I'm not very good with binoculars. I get lost; I go branch to branch on the tree where I just saw that bird, always on the wrong branch. And when I find the target and start to zoom in on it, my hand shakes and ... I begin again.

Once I discovered the auto-focus mode of my first digital camera, the bins got left at home. Now I zoom in, watching the whole scene on my screen, then halfway depress the shutter button, and -- Aha! A cormorant! Or another crow having an argument with an eagle!

Sometimes, though, I zoom as far as the camera will go, focus, and say, "I don't know. A seagull, maybe. Or a fishing boat float?" If I'm curious enough, I'll take the photo anyway, and see if I can clear it up at home.

I delete zillions of photos of unidentifiable birds. Or maybe fishing boat floats.

And occasionally, I discover a bird I had seen, and yet not seen. A lifer, even. This past week, there were two. And one that didn't show up.

Far away, at water's edge off Semiahmoo Reserve, (White Rock area), we saw a line of black and white specks; they turned out to be (probably) Caspian terns. First time I'd seen these and knew it.

Sterna caspia

They are definitely terns, but conceivably could be another species. The Caspians are occasional visitors to this area, are about the size of a medium seagull, have a black cap and large red bill. The photo in my Audubon Field Guide shows black legs; other terns have orange legs. And the Caspian has a slight crest on the head; in my photo, the "caps" often seem peaked towards the back. The Audubon's photo shows a black tip on the bill, but the write-up does not mention it. I can't see one on any of these birds.

At the western end of the White Rock beach, near Kwomais Point, three bumps slept on a rock. They turned out to be Harlequin ducks.

Harlequins, two males and one female.

At this distance, the colours (slate blue and chestnut) are almost gone, but we identified them by the white markings; the faces are hidden under the wings, but the strong "V" at the neck is plainly visible, as is the bold stripe across the shoulder area. Another first for me.

By the way, their Latin name is Histrionicus histrionicus. Meaning a double show-off?

The Harlequin Duck takes its name from Arlecchino, Harlequin in French, a colourfully dressed character in Commedia dell'arte. The species name comes from the Latin word "histrio", "actor". Wikipedia

This next was not a stranger, nor a surprise; we heard him calling long before we saw him. But all we could see was a silhouette against the sky. A very odd silhouette.

A kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon.

Bad hair day.

And last, a sparrow. Another silhouette, lightened up and cleared of a rainbow effect from shooting directly into the sunlight. He was singing so beautifully that he deserved his 15 minutes of fame.


He can stand in for the flock of swallows we were trying to photograph. Impossible! They were in a narrow ravine, cutting down the cliff by Kwomais point, and had made burrows in a tall clay cliff. We could see the holes that they went into and out of, the swallows swooping around, up, down, across the ravine, zipping into the holes again. It was a good place for them; protected, out of reach of all but the most ambitious teenagers (who had carved their initials into the lower part of the cliff), and, with a trickling stream at the bottom, home to a cloud of gnats.

We took many photos of the cliff face. No swallows appeared in them, not even shadows of swallows. And the nest holes were indistinguishable from the dents and flakes on the wall.

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Weevil's evening out

Black vine weevil:

Otiorhynchus sulcatus. Look at the pretty antennae; like a chain with a golden pendant.

Wearing her best jewelled shoes in lieu of earrings, since she has no ears.

Dressed in her finest threads.

Ready to go partying!

Lights, music, -- dance!

Kick up those heels!

(The pink wall is a synthetic ice pack; I brought it out to slow the overactive weevil down, but instead, it went crazy trying to climb up the side.)

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In shallow waters

We had arrived at Boundary Bay shortly after high tide. The beach was a network of sand and ankle-deep rivers. We decided to wade out to the last sandbar.

Off Maple Bay. That's the Canada/US boundary marker out in the water.

But when we reached that last sandbar, there was a new one beyond it, risen from the waves.


And one beyond that, again.


And another; they kept appearing from where, moments before, there had been nothing but water.


And even more, farther out...


And we never got even knee-deep in water.

We had to wade carefully; I had open-toed sandals, and the crabs were out in force. Can you see this one?


Here's a little green one:


And a pair. I think the small one may be dead. The other was very much alive.


And this one was big; at least six inches across the shell.


A clump of dead eelgrass. But, careful!


I watched a big crab scuttle under a tangle of seaweed. I waited for it to come out the other side, and when it didn't appear, I kicked the clump away. There was no sign of the crab. It must have buried itself under the sand. After that, I avoided anything that could have been a hideout.

(Why is it, I wonder, that I have never minded crabs pinching my fingers, but the idea of them pinching my toes gives me the shudders?)

On the way back, of course, the water was shallower -- warmer -- shallower -- and gone. So were the crabs.

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Why do we call it "vacant"?

It had been a stay at home and catch up on chores day, so after supper, Laurie suggested a walk across the street to the vacant lot.

The lot is a block wide, maybe two blocks long, and divided in two sections: half has been abandoned ever since I first saw it, a good five years ago; the other half serves as a gravel and construction materials dump, and gets more or less levelled every year. The first half is turning itself into swamp and young alder forest.

As we neared the edge of the gravelly half, a few steps before the trees start, a killdeer called, off to our right.

Killdeer, almost hidden in the weeds and dirt.

Looking worried.

We followed it, trying to get a clear photograph; standing still, it disappeared into the background, but never for long; a moment later, it would call, flash that white neck at us, and run again. After a bit, its mate joined it, beckoning us on, even treating us to the broken wing pantomime:

"I'm injured! Come and catch me!"

We weren't fooled; we gave up the chase and went back where we first saw them to look for the nest, a mere scrape in the dirt, out in the open. We didn't find it. One of the birds flew over our head, panicked and crying, so we backed off and left them alone.

Killdeer running over old rocks and construction leftovers.

All the vegetation on this half had been torn up last winter and buried under fresh hills of gravel and piles of broken concrete. People have been using the site as a dump for old carpets and lumber. But nature can't be beaten; new growth is springing up everywhere.

Buttercups

Red grasses, swaying in the wind.

Tiny yellow flowers, with purple leaves.

Mushrooms. This one looks like one of those Mexican breads, pan de dulce. Or a lemon meringue pie. Yum! A slug has been nibbling at it.

Horsetails, just starting out. They will cover this hillside in next to no time.

And we found another bird:

Smiling duck.

Daisies are about to bloom, thistles are growing apace, so are grasses and plantains, dandelions and the first of the tiny pink vetches. As we left to come home, I gathered a handful of broom to brighten my table.


After I'd put it in a vase, small critters started dropping out, and walking across the table. Tiny things, just walking dots. I caught a bunch with a paintbrush and examined them; they're leafhopper nymphs, barely two millimetres long.

Leafhopper nymphs.

The leafhoppers have been disposed of. Now there is a tiny spider in the bouquet, looking for them. Sorry, spidey; I've emptied your larder.

All in all, the perfect ending to the day. (The spider may not agree.)

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Distant heron

Livingstone Lake, Van Dusen Gardens:



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Living with carpet beetles

Over the past year or two, winter and summer, I have been finding the occasional carpet beetle on my walls. Mostly, I have killed the larvae, observed and photographed the adults (and blogged them), killed the survivors. (I check behind the laundry basket for larvae daily.) After all, I don't want larvae in my sweaters and books.

But I had questions; how do the adults get here? How do they survive; what are they living on? How long do they live, and where, when it's freezing outside? How often do they breed? How long do the larvae live in our closets before they pupate; where are those pupae, and what do they look like? How long are they in this stage?

Most of the books and websites I found were focussed on discussions of control methods; how to eradicate carpet beetle larvae from your home and lab. Information about life cycle, especially the adult stage, was scant and brief.

Carpet beetle, in the wild.

When, with the advent of warmer weather, carpet beetle adults started showing up here more regularly, I found a glass container with a good lid (an old butter dish), and started keeping them alive on my desk.

"Pet" carpet beetles, on flower petals.

They live for at least a week with no food available. I give them a drop of water every couple of days. In a couple of websites, I read that they eat flower pollen. One named the flowers: daisies, asters, spirea.

Hmmm. The daisies and asters aren't out yet, and there are no spirea near my place; what have they been eating before they decided to pay me a visit? I've been treating them to the small flowers from my garden. They like maple flowers, dead nettle, apple blossoms; they seem to ignore violets and pansies. And they live longer than before.

They sleep often; sometimes I think one is dead. I have learned to mark its position. Hours later, when I check, it's "dead" somewhere else. They don't try to escape; their walls are glass, and they don't climb them. And their wings are used mostly for helping them flip back on their feet after they take a tumble. They don't try to fly out when I take off the lid to observe them. (Other beetles aren't so cooperative.) Awake, they trundle about, nibbling at the flowers, occasionally stopping to sip at a droplet of water.

Carpet beetle in captivity, on apple blossom stem.

How about breeding? They lay their eggs in sheltered locations; under baseboards, in crevices in the woodwork, and so on. I gave my "pets" an inch-square piece of coloured paper for a hiding place. That should provide the illusion of shelter and the eggs will stand out on the paper.

I can't tell which is male and which female, but once I had four or five live adults in the container, I figured there would be at least one couple. I kept a close watch on them, and caught a pair in the act:

Love in the springtime.

And there are eggs on the underside of the paper! In a couple of weeks they should be hatching. I'm planning the nursery already; a tightly-lidded, double-sealed container made cozy with old wool scraps. Maybe I should give them a stuffed Teddy bear.

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Pie filling

Four and twenty black birds.


I only count 18 here, but there were more, many more. And they were making the most unholy racket!

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A hairy, bug-eyed beauty

In Van Dusen Gardens last week, the damselflies were hunting over the ponds.

Pacific Forktail, Ischnura cervula

It's probably a male, because the female torsos (photo) are not usually blue; they are a mix of browns and orange. The four tiny blue dots on either side are also a male characteristic.

The name, "Forktail" refers to a tiny bump on the tip of the male's abdomen, not visible without a lens.

I was surprised, examining my photos, to see that they were haloed by white hairs. I had to look at a stack of damselfly photos to convince myself that this is the way they are, that it was not an infestation of some sort of fungus.

Hairy damselfly.

These hairs are useful, and important; the female lays her eggs underwater, while the male holds her, and rescues her once the job is done. The hairs retain bubbles of air, which enable both of them to remain underwater for up to ten minutes.

The lower part of the face, including half of the eyes, looks, here, as if it were clouded. In other lights, it glows a vivid green.

And while we're at it, I adjusted the colours of a photo to bring out the spots on the wings. One spot per wing, a pale brown oval with a dark center.


I looked these up. The wingspots are called pterostigma, and in an insect that hunts on the wing, are essential for survival:

"The purpose of the pterostigma, being a heavier section of the wing in comparison to nearby sections, is to assist in gliding. Without the pterostigma, self-exciting vibrations would set in on the wing after a certain critical speed, making gliding impossible." Wikipedia

Stabilizers, in other words, like those on an aircraft. In most species of damselflies, as in this one, they are located on the leading edge of the wing.

And this was supposed to be a quick post; load a pair of photos, name them, and off to bed. But I made the mistake of Googling those hairs, and look where it led me!

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The tenacity of worms

On the White Rock beach at low tide, little worm tubes stuck up out of the sand. Laurie pulled at one to see what was inside. It resisted, and when he pulled harder, it broke. He tried digging another out, then another; even though he gripped them a few inches down, they stayed put until the tube broke. No worms appeared. They won that round.

We did find out one thing. The empty tubes left in Laurie's fingers matched the ones we were wondering about last winter. (Photo)

(A later photo revealed the owners of the tubes to be those Bamboo worms. Tough little critters, they are.)

Ok, so fingers aren't the best digging tools. That week, I invested in a child's toy shovel, just the right size for my bag. And, while I was at it, a box of the best freezer bags in the store. Now I was ready for reluctant worms.

On Boundary Bay beach, the next week, I dug in deep beside a worm tube. The shovel broke when I tried to lever the tube up. I held the handle below the break, and turned over the sand; the worm was long gone. Worms 2: Us 0.

Down at the lowest level of the low tide, I scooped sand indiscriminately into a freezer bag with the remains of the shovel. In a separate bag, I collected a litre of saltwater. At home, I examined my loot; here's what I found, and what later transpired:

1. A whelk, a little over an inch long, covered with barnacles and very much alive.
   
   
   
   Snail, looking back at me.
   
   
   I put it in a small container, added sand and a couple of rocks, poured salt water around it.
   
   
2. Half of a worm. Sorry about that.
   
   
   I thought it was dead, so I lifted it out of the water. It moved, feebly, so I put it in with the whelk, not before I took a few photographs. It stayed on the surface, making no attempt to bury itself.
   
   
   
   Underside of the good end of the worm.
   
   
   More on the worm, in a minute.
   
   
3. A few tiny white specks, that under the hand lens turned out to be clams.
   
   
   
   Tiny, tiny clams. Still alive.
   
   
   
   And an even smaller clam, barely visible under the lens. I noticed it because it was moving, jerking around at intervals of a few seconds.
   
   
4. A whole batch of tiny worms, of at least two different species.
   
   
   
   Polychaetes, in a container 2.5 cm across.
   
   
   
   
   A greenish polychaete that swims like a snake.
   

No tube worms. So that's Worms 3: Us 0.

On with the tale. I put the bulk of the sand in a large container, added water to a depth of an inch, returned the worms to the sand. The tiny clams went to join the whelk and the broken worm. The rest of the water I put in the fridge for later. Both containers went outside, out of the heat of the house.

The next afternoon, Sunday, I checked my menagerie. The snail was alive. Some of the clams were on the surface of the sand, still closed. (Alive, then.) The worm looked dead, but when I touched it, it writhed. I poured off the old water, gently, and replaced it with water from the fridge.

The used water freshened up the large container. There, some of the worms were floating, dead. But the sand, viewed through the lens, was bubbling and squirming; something was alive down there.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, ditto. Everything was alive, even the wounded worm.

This morning (Friday), I looked everything over carefully. I discovered some animals I had missed before, maybe because they were so very tiny:


I think this is a sculpin. In a teaspoon, reflected in the stainless steel. At least, it moved like a sculpin would.

And these, even with the lens, are tiny swimming dots. They move more like fish than like the green crustaceans I expected to see.

Barely more than an eye and a spinal cord in a strip of transparent flesh.

But my poor broken worm was the real surprise. It is moving more strongly now; it still rests on the surface of the sand, but it responds to light (or heat?), movement, and touch. And the broken end, where before I could see the opening of the intestinal tube, is closed and growing.

Wow!

I found the worm in a University of Alaska site; it's a Nephtys caeca, a Sandworm. (Sandy, for short) It's a burrower and blind, it feeds on other worms and crustacea, and may live as long as 7 years. And it ...

demonstrates powerful regenerative capabilities. The animal can regenerate tentacles and heads that have been removed by predators.

I think its head is what I left behind on the beach. It's probably busy building itself a new tail now.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will collect another litre of seawater. Maybe I can keep poor Sandy alive until it's healed. I'll try.

And I'm taking my gardening hand shovel this time.



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It's a Secret

A couple of years ago, one of the friendly locals near Boundary Bay encouraged us to visit the "Secret Garden". I asked for directions, and he waved towards the beach; "Down there, turn right; it's up near the end. You can't miss it."

We did. We have driven and walked up and down that area, and never saw it. It's a Secret.

Last Saturday, we parked near a walkway to the beach that we have used often. As we collected our gear, a family biked towards us. The woman called ahead to her kids, "Do you want to go into the Secret Garden?" I took the opportunity to ask where it was. She pointed inland. "Just down there at the end of the block. You'll see it."

Not really. At the end of the block, a dirt trail led down a weedy right of way and curved out of sight. No sign of a garden. We followed the trail around the corner, and -- now, finally, we couldn't miss it.


A tall wooden fence, draped with vines and flowers, hid the garden behind.

Akebia vine

Inside the gate, a root monster welcomed us to his green lair.


The Secret Garden is the creation of Brian Whitehouse, a retired roofer, whose house backs on to this right of way. Eight years ago, he and his wife started gardening on the gravelly, weedy site. Gradually they have transformed it into a quiet haven.

Unrolling ferns.

The garden fills a long, narrow strip (about 10 - 12 metres wide) shaded by the high walls of the adjoining homes. The south side is therefore in almost constant shade; here grow an assortment of ferns, hostas, rhododendrons, bleeding hearts and other shade-lovers.

Baby fern

Bleeding heart

Trilliums and hosta leaves

What is this? It's beautiful.

The northern wall is in full sun and the plants are chosen accordingly.

Ginkgo tree, sprouting new spring leaves.

Stonecrop

Spiky plant. Another I don't recognize.

Heuchera

The plantings are enlivened with a variety of containers and found items:

Echeveria in a hanging basket

A piling with a hole serves as a shaded planter

Old lumber, a rusted motor, a metal pipe pouring out green leaves

London Pride around a rock pile.

At the far end, where the ground is (as yet) unworked, planks set on stumps hold pots of seedlings and potting tools. Leftovers and broken shards, to be used later, lie against the wall.

Broken clay images in a pot of shards.

On the way out, we pass a lawn mower. I wonder if it gets oiled and used in the summertime.




Just inside the gate, as we go out, I stopped to examine this green mound. It is a plant so tiny, so dense, that the individual leaves can't be made out and fingers don't penetrate the surface, a plant as improbable as the gardener who tends it.

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Computer difficulties

My computer is acting up, and it's taking it forever just to resize a photo. I'm as perplexed as this little bird:

Which side is inside?

Must give the machine a good talking to. I'll be back in the afternoon.

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Appetizer

I'm still sorting photos from the weekend. I've narrowed the ones from the first garden we visited (The Secret Garden of Boundary Bay) down to 33 worth posting. These are three of them. (Now it's down to 30.)






Tomorrow, I'll do the final sort on those, and post my favourites.

After that, in no particular order, I'll blog a passel of worms from Boundary Bay, miniature clams, some strange bird behaviour, an antique church turned wedding chapel and its garden, a bit of up-valley scenery (Chilliwack area), and a window into the life of carpet beetles. That's enough to keep me out of mischief for a while.

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Home again, yawning all the way.

Two days. One long beach, full of worms. Two beautiful walled gardens. One walk down a country road. One antique church building. One party, with kids and excited puppy. Hundreds of photos, hundreds of kilometers. And two beetles, one red, one green.

Red beetle, on yellow wild mustard. Chilliwack.

Tidy design, but awfully hairy.

Green beetle. Unfortunately, it got mushed in the door of my car, and arrived home dead. Beach Grove.

And I am tired, tired, tired.

Full reports, as soon as I catch up on my sleep.

Update: The red and green beetle is a Scarlet Malachite, Malachius aeneus. Thanks, Dave.

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Diez de Mayo

Big day tomorrow. Mother's Day dinner for all the mothers in the family (three generations of us!) I should have been in bed hours ago.


Happy Mother's Day to all, then, and goodnight!

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The shape of sand

I think I could recognize at least three of our local beaches blindfolded. I'd just need to run a hand over the sand.

I remember, as a kid, how I ran over the White Rock beach barefooted, feeling the firm, regular ridges bite into my feet. Good sand for digging, for making sand castles, it holds the shape of the wavelets as they push and tug on their way out. Even at high tide, those ridges remain underwater, roughly parallel to water's edge.

Rippled sand. White Rock.

From the far eastern end of the beach, with a break in the pier area (flat muddy sand, a bit sticky), then on west until the rocks begin, this pattern holds.

On Boundary Bay beach, there are spots like this, but the ridges aren't as firm. To the north, the sand is muddy, flat, and covered with lugworm castings. Towards the south end, the sand takes on a curious rolling shape, like a freshly-plowed field after a heavy rain.

Contour "plowing". Boundary Bay beach, off Maple Beach.

On Crescent Beach, on the Blackie Spit end, the sand is looser, full of shell fragments, so that any ridges are transitory. The beach here slopes sharply, and little streamlets wend their way down to the retreating river.

Around the corner, facing west, the sand is still loose, but the beach is flatter. At high tide level, the sand forms irregular ripples. A slab of white-painted plywood cast up there, and washed over by several tides, highlights the pattern:

Wave pattern on plywood. Crescent Beach.

Farther down the beach, the sand is finer, more responsive to the small critters and plants; even a blade of eelgrass, sweeping over the surface with the last wave, will leave a track. I noticed, in a photo of a gaper clam, how the tiny sand grains curve in towards the intake valve.

The beach is bumpy, without a discernible pattern to it.

Black and white sediments in tiny depressions in the sand.

And far down the beach, at the low tide level, the sand lies in sharply-defined overlapping layers, deeply pitted as if by a troop of pogo-sticking kids.

Layered leaves.

The edge is tattered like the hem of old jeans.


The sand is more liquid here, and it shows how the water currents swirl around obstructions; for example, in this little valley ...


... each shell lies in its own little hollow.


This may explain the "pogo stick" holes; there is probably a shell at the bottom of each. Next time, I'll look. I've got a shovel in my beach bag, finally.

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Does not share well with others

Envy and greed and general cussedness on the White Rock beach:

I saw it first! Give it to me now! It's mine!


Well, who wants a nasty old worm anyhow? I've found this delicious big black clam!


It's mine. Don't even think of stealing it. Mine. Mine. Mine.


No, no, no, NO! This is mine, I tell you! I'm not sharing. Never!

And he didn't. He escaped the mugger and flew off down the beach to smash the clam on the rocks and eat it. All by himself.

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But cats sleep most of the time

I haven't photographed many ants. They're easy enough to find; I know of two active anthills within a minute's walk. But they never sit for a photo. They never rest. They're always running, milling about, disappearing down cracks. Busy, busy, busy.

That doesn't stop me from trying.

A very tiny (4mm) ant hitched a ride on some Japanese knotweed sprouts that I was bringing home for supper. I rescued her (I'm assuming she's not a drone) before she went down the drain, and put her aside to calm down (Hah! Dreamer!) in a plastic container. When I looked at her again, she was energetically grooming herself.

Cleaning a middle leg.

She ran each leg and the antennae through her jaws, she combed each leg with another, she scraped at her backside with the cleaned legs, and washed the legs again, as thorough as a cat. And like a grooming cat, she tied herself up in the most amazing knots.

Four legs on the right, two on the left.

Now, four legs on the left.

At times, she would bend her waist at a right angle, with the final segment (the gaster) straight up in the air. A minute later, she would be scrunched into a ball, with no waist visible.

The ants' anatomy is always a source of wonderment to me. How is it that they carry all that big weight at the end, on such a tiny support beam? But then, they carry around leaves and twigs and wasps many times their size, holding them in their jaws. A balancing act; the big butt at one end, the large square head, with cargo, at the other. But that waist does look so fragile!

Ant underside. Trying to find a crack to escape through.

The ant is now wandering around a few maple flowers in a pill bottle. Day and night; does she never sleep? When it stops raining, I'll take her back to the knotweed patch.

This thing about looking insects in the eyes: it has consequences. You can't just think of them as "bugs" any more; can't just squash them. You have to be responsible. You have to be polite.

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Is this a pterodactyl?

Laurie says it must be, just the head and neck. It was trying to climb up the side of the pipeline from the Iona Island sewage pool. Perhaps it's just a nestling, not able to fly yet.

Pterodactyl?

Whatever it is, it was near this large Mudflat Gryphon, seen preparing its nest on the riverbank.

Mudflat Gryphon

Ok, Ok, I'll settle down and be sensible. Proper beastie photos coming up in a bit.

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If the light is just right ...

Reflections are strange beasts. These are from the slough at Terra Nova.

Squiggles and loops:


The wall that made the squiggles:


We couldn't find the source of the loops.

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Somewhere the sun is shining ...

Spring comes late to my garden, since it's in deep shade all year round. Last week we walked around the block to see what was growing out in the open.

Starting at home, with early spring flowers under a rhododendron:

Pansies, miniature daffs, and perennial violets, just starting to bud.

Down the block, and around the corner:

Monkey puzzle tree


Somebody is clearing out the garage.


Pink and white on a garden wall.


In-your-face poppy.


On the snail tree (in a row of three, they are always on this one, not the others.)


Bleeding hearts in a shady patch.


I love this colour.


Dandy lion.


Not a flower.


Unknown "scrunchy" tree, about 5 feet tall, and weeping. Leaves and flowers all crammed together.


A promise of lilacs.


Chives in the children's garden at the church next door.


Tiny yellow-green succulents.


Snail in the shrubbery.

And back home again. One of the rhododendrons is sporting its first blooms of the year.


It almost feels like summer.

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Fugitive moth

It's still pretty cold outside for moths. This first one of the year has come out of hiding in the house. It is very small, maybe 1/4 inch, and extremely exitable. I let it calm down in the fridge, then took three preliminary photos in a plastic bag. But it was panicking already, and losing feathers. (See them in the photo?)

"Don't fence me in!"

I unzipped the bag, preparing to transfer it to a larger container where it might calm down, and it slid through the crack to freedom. It's flitting around the kitchen now, a tiny blur of wings, always just out of reach, uncatchable.

Oh well. There will be others, now the season has started.

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Doing my homework

Last Wednesday, I wrote about some of the animals we found on Crescent Beach at low tide. In that post, I identified two clams as geoducks, but I later had to retract that. (I amended the post.)

The clams, at least one of them, were gapers, aka horse clams, or horseneck clams. Here's how I know:

• First, gaper clams and geoducks have a one-way digestive tube. It has two openings, an intake siphon and an excurrent siphon, both of which travel through the neck. In geoducks, these siphons share an exit "mouth", which can look almost like paired nostrils. In gapers, the two separate; each siphon has its unique, round opening. In all our photos, but one, the "mouths" were of the gaper type.

• Second: a gaper clam has tentacles at the mouth of one of its siphons. Geoducks do not. Our clams did.
  

Click on this to see the golden tentacles at the mouth. Probably Fat Gaper, Tresus capax.

• Third: see that white blur between the tentacles? Here it is again, a bit clearer:
  
  
  
  Gaper Pea Crab, Pinnixa litoralis.
  
  
  It's a tiny white crab. These crabs live inside the mantle of the Fat Gaper. I see no mention of them with Geoducks.
  
  Here's another:
  
  
  
  Female Pea Crab, in Gaper Clam siphon.
  
  
  So I was wrong about the species of a big clam, and here I am giving the sex of a tiny white crab, based on a few blurry photos. That's because these crabs are easy; the female has a space between the pincer tips when they are closed. The male doesn't.
  
  Each clam, when the pea crabs are present, has two, a small male and a larger female. There may be others, but they will all be sexually immature.
  
  The crabs don't seem to harm the clam. They eat food scraps in the cavity.
  
  And here's a clear photo of pea crabs in gaper clams from Washington State University.

More info on these clams:

1. Horse clam. From Wikipedia.

   The horse clam (Tresus nuttallii and T. capax) are related to the Geoduck, though smaller, with shells up to eight inches long (20 cm), weight to 3–4 lb (1.4–1.8 kg). Two similar species of horse clams inhabit the Pacific coast intertidal zones: the pacific gaper, Tresus nuttallii, more abundant south to California; and the fat gaper, T. capax, more abundant north to Alaska.

2. Entertaining instructions for digging out geoducks, with photos, from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. (Aren't fish "wildlife"?)

   The clam's name, pronounced "gooey-duck" is of Native American origin and means "dig deep." It is variously spelled goeduck, goiduck, or gweduck.
   

   Also includes photos of siphons, exposed and retracted.
   
   
3. Flickr photo of geoduck siphon.
   
   
4. Photos of horse (gaper) clam siphons, underwater, and with pea crab. From Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

By the way, remember those worm tubes sticking out of the sand? Here's one. It's about an inch tall.


And here's another, with the clam siphon and crab pincers for size comparison.

Worm tube and clam siphon

This tube has the worm's tail end sticking out. I'd never seen that before. It's a Bamboo worm, the same as the one we found on Crescent Beach last week.

A few feet away, something else left a tube:

Not a worm tube.

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Acres of sand, miles of sky

White Rock Beach, sun, low tide, and Sunday:

(sorry, KompoStella: couldn't resist. Close your eyes, maybe?)

Catching crabs


White houses in the sun


Light on the mountain


Pink and yellow town


Big sky


End of a perfect afternoon.

Linked to Skywatch
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Fishies three

We don't often see fish on the beach, except for the tiny, almost invisible, tidepool sculpins. But down at the water's edge, at the low-water mark, we found three this week. Two of them I had never seen before.

This Pacific Sand Lance was on Crescent Beach.

Ammodytes hexapterus

This was one of three, all about 6 inches long, all dead. None showed signs of injury. The mature Sand Lance grows to about 11 inches long, so these were young ones.

They swim, at times, in huge schools, and I think they are the ones I watched, years ago, off Deep Cove dock. As adults, though, they bury themselves in the sand, especially at night.

"Some species are inshore coastal dwellers, and digging for sand lances to use as a bait fish has been a popular pastime in coastal areas of Europe and North America." Wikipedia.

That's a new concept for me: digging for fish.

Wednesday we walked the low-tide level at White Rock. In a shallow pool, this white-headed sculpin lay, barely moving, watching us. He didn't burrow into the sand, the way the usual sculpins do, relying on his unfishlike shape and immobility, perhaps, to avoid notice.

Unidentified sculpin, possibly the Buffalo sculpin, Enophrys bison.

About the Buffalo Sculpin, the Marine Life Encyclopedia says, "Usually motionless and always well camouflaged ..." Stranded on a grey beach, though, the protective coloration doesn't exactly work.

"These medium sized sculpins are immediately recognizable by their proportionally large head. When threatened they will erect their sharp opercular spines which somewhat resemble the horns of bison." E-Fauna

E-Fauna's photo of a Buffalo Sculpin shows a green head. Sculpins, in general, come in a variety of colours within the same species. The Encyclopedia has a red-headed Buffalo, and a grayish one.

Crescent Gunnel, Pholis laeta.

In the shadow of the pier, we found this snake-like fish, about 7 inches long, half in and half out of the water. It is a beautiful, translucent green; the photos don't do justice to it.

In this exposed situation, (it usually hides in seaweed) its best option was to play dead, but when I came down a few inches away, trying to get a head shot, it moved away slowly, slithering snakily.

Eye to eye

Frequently in intertidal areas, in tide pools or under rocks protected by seaweeds. May remain out of water under rocks or seaweed. Probably feeds on small crustaceans and marine worms. Breathes air when out of water. Fishbase

This explains why, when the gunnel put its head underwater, it exhaled a series of bubbles. An amphibious fish on our beaches; will wonders never cease!

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