The strangest sky ever

Laurie has an old camera that he rarely uses. We just emptied it, and found these photos from a month ago. I've never seen anything like this!

Really strange clouds

Tentacled sky critters?

The middle range. Forest of fuzz.

And the top level. Hag's hair.

What causes this? Anyone know?

Circus of the Spineless coming up soon!

Just a reminder: today is the deadline for submitting your post for the next Circus of the Spineless.  Send them to me, at wanderinweeta AT gmail DOT com, before midnight, my time (PST).

Thanks!

Winter delights

At Reifel Island:

Towhee

 The insects are gone, so are the blackberries. But there's still good food available:

Small wild crabapples, frozen solid. Delicious!

Mountain ash berries. A favourite treat, winter and summer.

Early to bed. If you're a crow.

Sunset (4:30 PM; the days are short now) from Lee Valley Tools, at the bottom edge of Vancouver:

Tree lace against pink and blue sky

There's a drift of crows just at tree height.

 The whole time we stood there, a flock of crows was passing by, coming in from the coast on their way to the Stillcreek area, where thousands of crows always roost at night. I counted by fives as fast as I could; after about twenty seconds, I gave up. I had reached 80, but I'd missed a few.

40 crows.

A Skywatch post.

Beaks full of snow

Backyard birds, last really cold day. (For now.)

Varied thrush.

Another.

Junco

Bushtits. The streaks are wet snow pelting down. Rain's a-coming!

Fox sparrow, keeping warm. No snow here.

House finch.

Squirrel eating all the yummy nuts.

And now it's raining. The snow has turned to brown mush sprinkled with fallen evergreen cones and needles, where it's not gone altogether. Back to Lower Mainland normal.

Hung out to dry

We weren't planning to stop at Westham Island bridge; it's always cold and windy there in the winter. But then we saw the cormorants ...

Looking north-east from Westham Island bridge. A light sprinkling of snow on the hills, and five double-crested cormorants on a log. 

They usually sit with their bills slanted upwards. I wonder why.

Drying his wings.

 Most water birds have "unwettable" feathers, so that they dive or dabble and come up dry. Cormorants' outer feathers, in contrast, are "wettable"; this may be helpful, reducing their buoyancy as they make long dives in pursuit of fish. Because of this, they need to air-dry their wings; the water doesn't just roll off. So they are often seen sitting with the wings spread out.

Biologists once thought that deficient production of oils from the preen gland necessitate wing-drying behaviors. We now know, however, that the degree of waterproofing of feathers is primarily due to their microscopic structure, not to their being oiled. ...

Spread-wing postures may serve different purposes in different species. Anhingas, for example, have unusually low metabolic rates and unusually high rates of heat loss from their bodies. ... Thus, it appears that Anhingas adopt a spread-wing posture primarily for thermoregulation -- to absorb solar energy to supplement their low metabolic heat production ...

Cormorants, in contrast, apparently use spread-wing postures only for drying their wings and not for thermoregulation. Although cormorant plumage also retains water, only the outer portion of the feathers is wettable, so an insulating layer of air next to the skin is maintained when cormorants swim underwater. This difference in feather structure may explain why cormorants can spend more time foraging in the water than Anhingas, and why cormorants can inhabit cooler climes, while the Anhinga is restricted to tropical and subtropical waters.

(From Stanford Birds)

I don't know why they "gargle".

The feather patterns are beautiful. It's worth your time to right-click - open link to get a good look at them.

Sandhills on ice

We're moving into the sixth day of this cold snap, and it's finally warming up. It's snowing again; that will help.

On Tuesday, the sun was shining, and the wind had died. We went down to Reifel Island to see how the birds were faring.

The ponds were all frozen hard. Mallards and wigeons and coots thronged around the warming cabin, where there was still some open water, but beyond that area, the ice was still and empty. A few herons stood miserably  against the banks, all puffed up, with their necks buried in the body feathers. Several redwing blackbirds and a squirrel were at a feeder in a sheltered spot. Only the chickadees and juncos went about their life as usual.

Out by the far dike, we met three young sandhill cranes standing, one-footed, on the ice.

It's their first winter; what a shock!

I scattered a large handful of bird seed on the ice for them.

And four more cranes that had been sunning themselves on a sand bar came over. I spread more seed.

Walking carefully; their feet slip backwards with each step.

Oops! Where the sun reached, colour returned. Otherwise everything was grey and cold blue.

Warm feathers, cold feet.

I gave them the rest of my bird seed and wished I had more. All their usual food is under that hard stuff.

One went over to the far bank and hurried up and down, (Oops! Slipped again.) looking for something.

Water! Right where the bank meets the ice, there is a crack big enough for a sandhill beak.

They eat (when people aren't feeding them)

Mostly grains and seeds, some insects, other invertebrates, and small vertebrates. (Cornell).

The insects, frogs and snakes will all be in hiding now. But the grasses are plentiful, and topped with seeds. On the paths, there are frozen berries and crabapples. They should be all right, once they get the hang of it.

Eviction Notice

or, Even Hermits Have Lawyers.

Hermit crabs* are generally very polite to each other, even across species** lines. They greet their neighbours when they meet, tolerate their whims and eccentricities, queue up for food and housing. They rarely squabble, and then it's only a few seconds worth of waving pincers and tentacles; no-one is harmed. If little Joe wants to sit on Big Red's shell to get a better view, well then, Red will sit still and not try to shake him off.

And when there is a property dispute, they solve it legally, under the supervision of the law.

I happened to glance into the aquarium as a case came to its close. Three hermits were lined up, shell to shell; two in small, white shells; the third was the largest of all the hermits.

There was no time to run for the camera. The court reporter was on duty, instead.

The big hermit -- Big Red -- was holding onto one white shell. Its resident lay still, submitting to examination by the third, who was poking his front legs and antennae into the middle shell. Big Red made no move, but watched closely.

Suddenly, the challenger (#3***) backed off to arms' length, and gave the other's shell four or five sharp jerks, back and forward. As soon as he stopped, #2 scrambled out of the shell, and stood naked against the wall. Another pause while Big Red gave the empty shell a quick once-over, then #3 slipped out of his shell and into his neighbour's. He flipped it over; it seemed to fit.

And then the evictee came forward again, and slid into the abandoned shell. Big Red released the middle shell and stepped back. #2 turned and left quickly.

Usually, when hermits move into a new shell, they spend a few minutes afterwards, double-checking it. They stretch their second set of legs back and over the shell, taking its measure. They squirm down deep inside, then stretch out again. If all seems well, they keep the shell, but as often as not, they change their minds and switch back.

#2 aborted this procedure by leaving so abruptly with the old shell, and #3 didn't seem too happy with the results:

"He never told me there were no closets!"

What's done is done. Big Red went about his business, and after a while, #3 did, too.


*My hermits, anyhow. They're good Canadians.
**These three are Grainy Hand hermits; they share the tank with Hairy hermits.
***I usually name my animals for ease of description, but these mid-sized hermits look like twins. And they switch shells frequently. I can't tell them apart. Maybe I'll give one red toenails next time I have them out of the water.

Brrrrrrds!

In the last two days, the temperature here has plummeted, far enough to match what I usually expected up north, in Bella Coola. At the moment, in Vancouver, it is down to -8° C. (Fahrenheit = 17.6°), with a strong, chilly wind blowing so that it feels like -13.

(For comparison, over the last 30 years, the average November temperature has been 7.1 C., or 19.5 F. The lowest on record in that time was back in 1985, at 9.9 C (14 F.). Not too much lower than tonight.

My poor birds! It's not so much the cold, but the abrupt change. One day, they're bouncing around, picking up bugs and taking baths; the next, their water has turned solid, and the bugs are gone. And they are shivering and hungry! I made sure they had a variety of seeds and suet all day, but by afternoon, I was running out. I went down to the store for more, and there wasn't a bag of seed or a block of suet to be had. I'm glad. It means many people are paying attention, doing their bit to keep the birds alive.

I finally found a small package of "gourmet" seed mix; it will do for a couple of days. And I think I'll make up a batch of Zick dough.

If all goes well, and they found a warmish place to sleep, these birds will all be back in a few hours:

Junco de-husking a seed.

A different junco, with my stone angel.

Blurry Varied thrush. Very shy; I don't dare go near the door, even, to take its photo. And it stays under the hedge, in the shade. I put plenty of seed there for the timid ones.

Towhee under the hedge

Cold metal, cold feet!

Chickadee and black oil sunflower seed. And house finch, waiting his turn.

Chilly house finch.

Another junco, scratching at the snow on top of the hedge, tossing it for seeds.

A few sparrows showed up, and three fat squirrels. (They're regulars.) I kept watching for the flicker that has been dropping in, but didn't see him, nor the Steller's Jay. I hope they found food somewhere else.

Spinfish

Lifting seaweed and turning over rocks on the beach this summer, we often startled (and were startled by) a frantic fish, thinking we were herons, probably. Like this one:

When in danger or in doubt,
Spin in circles, scream and shout.*

 I'd never seen a fish spin like a top before. "Where's the heron? Which way should I go?"

We disturbed clingfish like this one on several beaches. Eventually, when they couldn't escape, they lay still, hoping to be invisible.

Northern clingfish, Gobiesox maeandricus. With a northern mudworm, Paranemertes peregrina.

 On their underside, they have a large suction disc, which enables them to stick to rocks even in high current areas. They are smooth, scaleless, and have no spines. (No, they are not spineless; they do have a spinal cord. The spines they don't have would be on their fins and heads. Words are tricky things, sometimes.)

Right-click on the photo to see it full size. See how smooth it is? It looks almost as if it were varnished with that thick polyurethane stuff popular a few years back. These little fish are covered with slime; it's almost impossible to get a grip on one with your hand. The harder you grab, the faster they escape.

Camouflaged sculpin

These sculpins don't panic; they rely on their cloak of invisibility.  Like most sculpins, they ambush their prey, blending in with their background until the hapless critter ventures too close.

Gunnel, captured and peaceful. I'm not a heron, after all.

The exposed beach is a dangerous place.

*Except that fish can't scream, I think. They would if they could, though.

Makes my day!

This morning, Seabrooke, in a comment on Facebook, broke the news that her blog, The Marvelous in Nature, is on a list of the 50 best biodiversity blogs.  Understandable; her blog is always interesting and informative. I wouldn't miss her posts, and often return to refresh my memory of an older one.

I am familiar with about half of the other 49 blogs, such as Myrmecos, the Catalogue of Organisms, Deep Sea News, A Snail's Eye View, etc. And - WooHoo! - this blog, Wanderin' Weeta, is among them!

As I said, makes my day.

Check out the list; there are sure to be some future favourites for you there.

While the snow turns to slush ...

... the juncos feed in the shade of my shrubbery. This one stepped out into the light for a brief moment.

SNOW!

Snow! It's early; last year, our first snowfall was in the middle of December. It sprinkled off and on all day, but after dark started in earnest. When I looked out at midnight, it was about an inch deepp.

I tried to get photos, putting the camera on a tripod and reducing the speed to one second. It didn't work; one photo was blown out, the rest too dark. I ended up going outside in my night clothes and sock feet to take photos with flash.

My little stone angel, hugging her knees to keep warm.

The flash freezes the snowflakes, showing them up as perfect little pentagons. The colours here are "noisy", and they make me think of NASA photos of deep space, with all the stars. Five-sided stars, but who's counting? 

Snowflakes falling, falling, against the backdrop of our cedars.

I love to watch it snow, especially at night. It is so silent, so peaceful, softening all the outlines, hiding the work not finished, and yet so inexorable, falling and piling up steadly, relentlessly.

And I love the morning light through my window when it has snowed overnight. It has a different quality than everyday sunlight or cloudy sky light; it's cleaner, fresher, more revealing, even in the shadows. A blue light without the overtones of yellow from normal daylight, it changes the look of rooms, making them look airy and cool.

I'm looking forward to the morning, so I'd better go to bed. G'night!