How big is little?

In the winter, the sun never shines on my garden. It lies dormant, mostly in shades of brown and grey; the evergreens surrounding it add life, but at a cost. In the gaps between the branches, I can sometimes see glimpses of sunlight on the surrounding neighbourhood. Not here, not until well into mid-spring.

I'm a stubborn sort (that's a polite way of putting it); in spite of the low light, the gloomy greys, I persist in trying to take photos of my birds, themselves mostly grey and dull browns. On rainy days, dull, overcast days, when the sun refuses even to warm the neighbours, there I am, aiming the lens at sparrows and juncos. Little Brown Birds. Little Brown Bouncy Birds.

Sometimes, I am pleasantly surprised; I get a recognizable shot.

So I happened to have the camera in my hand when this tiny, tiny wren dropped in to take a bath:

A blurry shot, but I'm happy; this is the first time a wren has come to visit.

A chickadee stopped at the edge of the bath for a couple of seconds while the wren splashed around. I was amazed at the difference in size. The wren, probably a winter wren, would measure between 4 and 4 1/2 inches, beak to upturned tail; the chickadee is not much bigger, at 4 3/4 to 5 3/4 inches. But that's a full 25 percent more. It showed.

Even tinier are the bushtits that come for suet: 3 3/4 to 4 inches, half of that tail feathers. A dozen or more swarm around the feeder, covering it like pins on a pincushion for a minute before they blow away into the trees.

 A few stragglers, getting a final bite before they follow the rest of the flock to the next feeding station.

The junco is about twice the size of a bushtit; 5 to 6 1/4 inches. They take turns at the feeder; at most, one per side.

We do see an occasional flash of colour, here one moment, gone the next. A pair of red-breasted nuthatches (4 1/2 - 4 3/4") dashes over for sunflower seeds and suet; so do a few house finches (5 - 5 3/4"). Towhees search the ground under the suet feeder, picking up any crumbs the squirrels drop. Mostly, though, they stay in the deep shadows under the hedge, so that they're more recognizable by their size (7 -8 1/2") and their chicken-like scratching than by their colour.

And the last few days, a varied thrush, a brilliantly painted giant at 9 - 10", has joined the towhees. So far, any photos have been silhouettes, nothing more. He may as well be brown, too.

Colourful tapestries

Blue:

Purple:

Yellow:

Red and yellow:

And white:

In the courtyard at the Surrey Art Gallery.

The art was beautiful, too: our favourites were a "Quilt of Belonging", 36 metres of fabric creations celebrating Canada's various peoples, and Ruth Scheuing's "Silkroads". I wrote about her work when we visited her studio in the 2008 Culture Crawl. (Sweeping nudes ...) She has set up her computer-operated loom in the Gallery, and will be working there until April, creating large Jaquard woven tapestries incorporating,

"the patterns and geography of this important historic trade route (The Silk Road) with key historical textile designs that were instrumental in bridging the cultures and economies of East and West. "

This time, we could only look through the door; her Gallery hours are Thursday mornings and Saturday afternoons, 1 to 5, though April 3rd. Well worth a visit. We'll be back.

Those halcyon days of summer. In January.

It felt like summer. Half-way down the beach, a couple of days ago, we had to strip off our jackets and hide them behind a log; no way we were going to carry them, in that heat! A bit later, I was wishing I'd worn shorts and sandals. Even the water was warm.

Laurie has a little thermometer attached to his hiking stick; it read 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That can't be right! It's January, the coldest month of the year. We're supposed to need those jackets, and hats and gloves, too!

Barrow's Goldeneye, male.

I know how to make a duck dive; just focus the camera on it. A mixed flock of goldeneyes were diving near the point and we took many photos of holes in the water like the one just in front of this guy.

Barrow's goldeneye, and Common goldeneye, both males.

I have trouble remembering which is which; Barrow's or Common goldeneye. The Barrow's male has a comma-shaped white mark on his cheek; the Common wears a round patch, a period. And the Barrow's has a dotted line along the back, but less white overall than the Common. Of course, the females are almost indistinguishable, except that the Barrow's is an egg-head, with the point upwards.

I can never remember that on the beach, though. Maybe if I repeat it enough ... Barrow's, comma and dotted line; Common, period. B, ... C. BC birds; B, ... C. A mnemonic! Now I shouldn't forget.

We love poking through the shallow water; the White Rock beach, especially, has a great variety of stones; all textures and colours, solid or translucent, streaked, spotted, crystalline ... I always come home with a pocketful. In this little puddle, a purple shore crab is hiding. Can you find it?

Holding down the snags.

Looking back to White Rock and Blaine, with Mount Baker barely visible under the clouds.

Laurie loves to break the rules; he took this next photo directly into the sun. We both like the result.

Mid-afternoon sunshine.

A Skywatch post.

Hermit Rex gets his portrait done

Hermit Rex has been challenging me through the glass of the aquarium. He sees me passing by, and rushes to the front, waving his big claw; "Look at me! Aren't I gorgeous?" I bring out the camera and he sits happily for his portrait.

But the photos rarely turn out; there's always a bit of seaweed in the way, the inside of the glass usually has a coating of algae, a limpet or snail slides across while I adjust the lighting. Hopeless. I needed a better system.

I may have found it; a small plastic jar with flat, clear sides, not too badly scratched, wide enough for Rex*, and even for Boy Blue**, who still insists on wearing a shell two sizes too big. It's deep enough to add stones to make it feel more "homey". With a divider made of a pane of glass, I can shrink it to size for the crabs. Maybe I can even get one of the big worms to show off her shimmery coat. And between uses, it can be cleaned thoroughly; no algae, no limpets!

I started out tonight with the hermits.

Hermit Rex, looking pensive.

Boy Blue, showing off his red antennae and polka-dotted claws.

I'm pleased with this first practice sitting. I'll have to make a few adjustments; figure out how to eliminate the reflected light, maybe replace the stones with clean sand as a backdrop for my tiny crabs.

Rex, true to his outgoing personality, seemed to enjoy his outing, exploring the rocks, then watching me and the camera, antennae waving enthusiastically. Boy Blue paced like a caged tiger; I cut short his sitting before he got too frantic.

I've noticed, in the tank, that all the smaller hermits, the same species as Rex*, are confident, even aggressive. They steal goodies from the larger crabs, from poor Boy Blue, from each other. I've seen a couple face off with Rex, four or five times their size.

Boy Blue is timid. He waits his turn. He'd rather go without than fight. I wonder if that is a characteristic of the species**, or is it that he's the odd man out, the bottom of the pecking order? I'll have to find him a companion; see if that helps.

*Rex is probably a hairy hermit, Pagurus hirsutiusculus. Out of his shell, he's hairy all over, and the colours are right; banded legs, green banded antennae.

"An active species that prefers a tiny and easily abandoned shell, ..." (Marine Life)

That's my Rex!

**Boy Blue, I think, is a grainyhand hermit, Pagurus granosimanus. Olive green, light granules (blue), orange antennae. (Looks red to me.)

"It prefers a large shell that seems almost too bulky to manage."

And that's Blue, down pat.

Overheard at the beach

A heated argument:

"You're a loud-mouthed, black-hearted, thieving scoundrel!"

"How dare you! You hatchling of a rotten egg! You greedy gullet! You blot on the landscape!"

Shocked -- shocked! -- at the language.

Bored audience. They've heard it all before.

White Rock beach. An otherwise quiet afternoon.

Tree lace

Ever since I first had a camera in my hands, I've been trying to take photos of leafless trees. I love their shapes, the arrangements of branches, twigs and buds, the nests revealed in the grey light of winter. But most of the photos turn out as mere graphs of a tree; the soul has fled.

I try again, and again. Maybe someday I'll capture what I see.

These are a couple of my recent attempts. Half-way there, maybe.

Like the edge of an old-fashioned doily, the ones grandma had on her occasional tables.

Cold nest

Pixie cups on the fence

Does it ever happen to you? You walk along a path you have folllowed time after time, and suddenly you notice a large item in plain sight, something you couldn't possibly have missed before. But surely, that old mossy stump or that hilltop didn't just grow overnight, did it? How did you never see it?

We took our regular route past the school a block away, and entered the pedestrian access to the next block. We've been down that path dozens of times. And then we noticed the wooden fence; from one end of the walk to the other, it was overgrown with mixed lichens. And we'd been blind.

Unfortunately, the city government has prudently installed a chain-link fence a few inches in front of the wooden one; no telling when those irresponsible homeowners would have torn down their fence and invited the schoolkids to trample their garden. And then what would define the passageway? Better safe than sorry.

So we had to jam the camera lens through the links in the fence and lean on it to keep it from bouncing.

Mealy pixie cup, with a leaf lichen. Note the brown soredia at the edges of some cups. The glossy black underside of the "leaves" can be seen in spots.

I've given up, for now, trying to identify individual lichens. About all I can manage is to sort them into types; at least that helps me to see them more clearly.

Lichens come in many shapes and colours. By shape, they can be classified (more or less) as:

• Dust lichens. What that sounds like. A dust on the rock or wood.
• Crust lichens. (Crustose, in the formal descriptions.) Pasted on, like thick, dried paint. Or caked mud. e.g., from our area; Bark Barnacle, Bulls-eye. (I love lichen names!)
• Scale lichens. (Squamulose.) Tiny, round flattened shapes. Bottom side is cottony. e..g., Cladonia scales.
• Leaf lichens. (Foliose.) Small to large leaf-shaped lobes, non-cottony underside. e.g.; Punctured Rocktripe, Lettuce Lung.
• Club lichens. Upright stems. e.g.; British soldiers, Waterworm.
• Shrub lichens. (Fruticose.) Lots of branches, in tufts. Reindeer lichen, for example.
• And Hair lichens. Hairy. e.g.; Methuselah's Beard, Speckled Horsehair.

Club-like Cladonia species. Look closely; some have the bright red tip that probably identifies them as Lipstick Cladonia. A few Pixie Cups are intermingled, some growing out of a base of a crust lichen.

One of the frustrating things about lichen is that their shape may change as they grow. Some start as scales or leaves, then later develop the clubs and cups that turn up in the guide books.

Things to look for;

• Apothecia, the fruiting bodies. Little saucers or cups. These will bear little balls or warts, which can be washed off, to sprout in another location. Where are they placed? What shape are they?
• Podetia, the club-like stems. Smooth or warty? Branched or straight?
• Soredia, the little "fruits" or balls, sometimes pin-head sized, sometimes quite large. Or cephalopodia; warty. They come in a variety of colours; red, brown, black, orange ... Do they come off easily?
• "Leaves". Really, lobes of the thallus, or body; not individual sections. Colour? Shape? How are they attached?
• Location. On rock, wood, trees, soil?

Scale Cladonia, I think. Tiny leaf-like thalli, curled upwards at the edges, showing the whitish underside. Below is a larger leaf lichen.

Very neat little Pixie Cups, growing out of a crust lichen base. Some of the cups, though are ragged, something like an anemone in a stiff current. Could be older clubs.

Growing up the wall. Blue-green leaf lichen at the bottom, then Cladonia.

I don't know whether that black crust is a lichen, a slime mold, or a fungus.

Decayed fence post, with lichen "garden". A bit of everything, including some pale brown variants.

And I didn't touch the lichen, nor smell them, which I had promised myself to do. That would have helped in recognition, eventually. My excuse? It was starting to rain again. I'll go back another day and finish the job properly.

Dave Ingram has a couple of posts on lichen of this corner of BC: Taking a Lichen to Lilac,  (groan!) and  A Pleasing Peltigera.  No Cladonia, though.

Yellow

Hints of spring along our street:

First crocuses

Alder catkins

Forsythia

Primulas in an abandoned garden

Checkerboard. Blooms year-round.

And we found an alley-long collection of lichens; tomorrow's post.

Between water and clouds

Sometimes, along our shores, there are moments when there is nothing, really, to see, yet it takes your breath away.

From the Westham Island bridge.

Same bridge.

Afternoon nap

Boundary Bay

Tree, Reifel Island

Evening clouds. Reifel Island

I don't usually like photos of me, but this one is different, somehow. Boundary Bay.

Practice session, Boundary Bay

North Shore mountains

Another Skywatch post

In a sprig of fir

Last week, Carol, of Black Jack's Carol, posted photos of a Short-Eared Owl in flight. It looked, to me, like a Douglas fir cone with wings and eyes attached, and I told Laurie about it. So when he went out this afternoon, he brought me back a Douglas fir branch tip with five cones on it.

I think that right-hand one will make a good owl if I add paper wings and painted eyes.

 "It probably has bugs on it," Laurie said. A bonus!

And yes, it did. I put the branch down on the kitchen table, and immediately little black dots popped out of it and started hopping. I ran for my bug containers. They were springtails, the tiny fat, purple-blotched globular springtails. Cute, but so tiny! The biggest one of that batch barely measured 1 1/2 millimetres. I had to use the microscope to get photos.

These two were interesting, if not exactly in focus.

Dicyrtomina ornata, I think.

This little guy had lost his footing, and was struggling on his back. It gave me an opportunity to look at his jumping mechanism. See that long V structure along the belly? It is attached at the tail end.

"The main locomotor organ is a forked, tail-like structure (called a furcula) which is folded forward under the abdomen when the insect is at rest. The furcula is held in place by a clasp-like structure, called a tenaculum. When the tenaculum is released, the furcula thrusts downward and backward against the substrate, allowing the springtail to jump consider able distances." From U. of Nebraska.

And here the furcula is released and the springtail leaps.

Six inches or more in a single bound, easily six inches high. Pretty good for a pinhead!

The crab spider hiding among the needles wasn't so anxious to be out and about; after all, her hunting method relies on being invisible. I had to tip her out with a paintbrush.

Xysticus, female. With a springtail for size comparison. She's about 4 mm. long.

Now she's in a cosy tin, with some springtails and a stray Indian meal moth in case she gets hungry.

All eight eyes are visible here. One row in front, one on top.

Just before I put the branch outside (because springtails were still popcorning around it), I noticed a glimmer of amber. It moved when I touched it.

A ladybug, not hibernating. After all, it seems like spring, these days.

I had never seen one of these. It's a Mulsantina picta, the Painted Ladybeetle.

The photo doesn't do justice to its colouring; the richest of warm amber wing covers, and, with the light at the right angle, a bright yellow pronotum. The head is black, with a creamy yellow crown pattern between the eyes. Before I could coax it into a better light, the ladybug spread its wings and flew away. It's probably looking for aphids on one of my houseplants by now.

We'll meet again, I'm sure.