... y un Próspero Año Nuevo!

Only 21 hours left in 2010, at least here on the Pacific coast. Time to review the last year, good and ill, and get all philosophical about it; time to make resolutions that I will never keep; time to party!

Forget those first two; time's a-wasting! It's celebration time! 2011, here we come! (There; I've used up those last left-over exclamation points, saving one for the photo caption. Must fill the quota, or I won't get as many next year.)

So, here's to all my fantastic co-riders of the dancing electrons, and to my amazing "real-world" family and friends; may 2011 be the best year ever for you and yours.

Happy New Year!

And now, off to make silly party hats ...

Like walking through a door

At the beginning of what would be a long, stressful day, crossing the Alex Fraser bridge from cold and dark Delta, a view of morning sunlight on new snow greeted me:

Bridge supports and trucks. Snow beyond.

On the down slope. North shore mountains and Burnaby centre.

I really needed that. The sun shone all morning, too.

Short winter

My hellebore plant decides the winter is over:

New flower heads sprouting.

Trees in their bones

I love bare trees. Branches under a blanket of snow convey a hushed silence, calm sleepiness; springtime trees covered with yellow-green leaf buds whisk away the heaviness of winter; summer greenery just sings; and the fall yellows and reds bring hope; after this brief cool spell, the sun will come back.

Bare winter trees give, to me at least, the feeling of strength, of endurance, of patience; "Never fear," they say, "we have sturdy bones; we'll outlast the ice."

We took these photos at Centennial Park last week. The pond was still liquid but the wind was vicious.

Catching the wintry sun

Reflection in a puddle, with discarded leaves.

Reflection

Duck pond, no ducks.

Reflection

Moon across the Bay. No branches here.

Howling at the moon

Last light

Unlucky in love

Barnacles have a problem. They have settled for a peaceful, uneventful life; except for a brief period of freedom as young Nauplii, they are entirely sedentary. They glue themselves to a likely-looking foundation; a rock, a shell, a larger animal, a boat or sunken trash; build a home, and never leave it again. With their heads firmly hidden away from the larger world, they wave their hind legs in the water, fanning edibles towards their mouths.

Depending on their choice of homestead, this works out pretty well for them; the castles they have built for themselves are roomy, the walls strong and easily locked down in case of enemies. But, opting for security in place of freedom, they have sacrificed choice.* If the area becomes polluted, or if food is scarce, they have to put up with it. If they have chosen a mobile base, such as a crab shell or a ship, they are at the mercy of the whims of their transport, or condemned to its fate, if it dies.

Some of the barnacles in my aquarium were lucky, sort of. They attached themselves to a crab, which died and was cast up on the beach. Many of their companions died, too, exposed to the chill, dry air. But I rescued a few and added them to my nice, nutrient-rich tank. Ahhh! Except that the tank also houses three trophon snails, hungry barnacle eaters. And a few shore crabs, which also appreciate a nibble of barnacle flesh, and even more often, flip the chunks of crab shell upside down, leaving the barnacles out of the current, combing through sand like a snail.

Every day, when I feed my critters, I flip upside-down barnacles over with a chopstick and they begin fanning again.

Crenate barnacle, feeding, while hermit crab looks on.

There's another aspect to this problem; finding mates. They can't go in search of one, and the mate is likewise cemented to a rock. Maybe it's close by; barnacles usually live in tightly-packed communities. But often they are separated by the movement of their base, or by predation.

There are a variety of strategies to overcome this; some sessile (non-moving) animals just dump sperm out into the water, in the hopes that it will find a receptive female. (Corals, for example.) Others simply clone themselves; the aggregating anemone is one of these, at least sometimes.

The barnacle has another approach; he has the longest penis for body size of any member of the entire animal kingdom. Depending on the currents, it may reach to 8 (or 10) times his body length. The tip is prehensile; when he finds another barnacle, he inserts it and fertilizes her. Since barnacles are hermaphroditic, with both male and female organs, he need not look further than the closest receptive neighbour.

This is what I saw in the early hours of Christmas Eve; one of the barnacles was looking for a mate. For about 10 minutes, I watched as he extended his penis parallel to the sand, waving it about slowly, exploring. At the farthest reach, he was searching about 4 times his body length away.

A bad location for a lovelorn barnacle.

Unfortunately, the barnacles closest to him were shut down tight, probably because the trophon snail was busy eating his neighbour. The next few were just a bit too far away; maybe he would have gotten there in time, but a hermit came along and rolled him over. Back to chewing sand!

In this photo, the penis is barely visible, as a smooth tube. The feeding cirri are feathered and clustered around the mouth of the shell.  There is a clearer photo, and more information, at BogLeech.  NewScientist has an interesting article about the effect of current on penis length. Wikipedia contributes information on predators and competition. The life cycle is described on MESA. (And my previously-posted photo is here.)

*This is not a parable; it's the way things work.

Second day of Christmas, but no turtledoves

December 26, 1:45 AM, our West Coast time. Boxing Day. My daughter just posted a video of family moments since Christmas, last year. My kitchen is clean again, the laundry done, the new goodies are finding their places. Christmas is over, except for the Boxing Day sales, which I have learned to skip. And Dia de los Reyes, the "real" Mexican Christmas, but that's two weeks from now, on Twelfth Night.

I hope you, all my wonderful family, fellow bloggers, old and new friends, everyone, have had as happy a Yule-tide as we have.

It was a wonderful end to the year; most of the family crowded into three rooms, babies, pre-schoolers with important things to discuss (like feeding the ducks), teenagers ("Oh, you've gotten so big!" And the teen addressed this way, for the umpteenth time, politely refrains from rolling his eyes.), out-of-towners, new additions, adults displaying their culinary skills, grandpa Mark making goo-goo noises at the latest infant, someone playing the guitar in the hallway (the only space with elbow room), wrapping paper, baby clothes (So cute!), books and chocolates and flashing cameras ...

The turkey worked out ok, the salad had pomegranate seeds and avocado chunks mixed in; yum! The surprise dish was a Mexican dish, potatoes in a tomato and serrano chile sauce, northern cuisine, really good.

Even the critters participated. Laurie noticed how they were running around excitedly, looking out at the goings-on. The tank is in a quiet corner, but people kept coming in to look inside and point out hermits and crabs to the little ones. I had made out a list of easy-to-find inhabitants:

11 hermit crabs, 3 big shore crabs, 1 small crab, 1 tiny, tiny crab. 3 coonstripe shrimp, 3 trophon snails, several small grey snails (Nassas), 1 green amphipod, barnacles, anemones, limpets, and a tiny black periwinkle snail.

I doubt that anyone was able to do the count, though; not the way the critters were dashing about. They must be much more aware of their surroundings than I thought.

Holly at dusk, White Rock

... and a happy New Year!

(Tomorrow, I'll explain the barnacle photo.)

Exciting stuff, and Christmas, to boot!

Christmas Eve, and the family coming! No time to blog, even about this:

Seeing is believing.

So I'll leave it to you to figure out what's happening. I'll have more on this later.

For now, I must get a bit of sleep before the alarm goes off, and the turkey goes in the oven.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas moth

Last month, little brown moths were coming in my window to die; Seabrooke identified them as Bruce Spanworm moths. They are the last of the year's moths, still flying in November.

For the last few days, one has been hanging around by the front door. Every time I passed by, it was there, but in a different spot; it's still awake, even at the tail end of December. I eventually brought it inside.

Yes, it's the same as the last one.

I was intrigued by the antennae; each segment has two tiny prongs pointing downward.

Side view, showing body rings.

 The moth was very active; he kept wandering around, heading for the exits, as I tried to get a decent photo. (Only male Spanworm moths fly; the females are crawlers.) So why, when I called it quits, did he decide he liked my light box and wasn't going to leave, after all? I wanted to fold up the box and put it away, but the moth ignored my shooing motions. I set the box aside to put away when "Spanny" left.

Two hours later, he's still wandering around under the light.

I'm going to bed. Sorry, Spanny, I'm turning off your sunlamp. Goodnight!

Christmas menu, 2010

Never the same twice; that's Christmas in my family. This year, everyone is gathering on Christmas Eve in my tiny apartment; we'll be packed in wall to wall, using every available flat surface as dining tables, and everything that can remotely be considered seating pressed into service. The house is cleaned, the decorations are up but don't intrude on the space, dishes sorted, breakables removed from the reach of tiny hands, menu planned and shopping done. The turkey is in the freezer, the hall closet emptied, waiting for jackets ... I think I'm ready.

The meal will start out as a traditional Canadian Christmas dinner; roast turkey, backed potatoes in their jackets,  homemade cranberry sauce, several veggies, a salad. But then we go off the rails. There will be cornbread and Mexican hot sauce. My son is bringing something unnamed, probably a Punjabi dish. For dessert, there's Mexican flan and assorted cheeses. And we'll end with Café de olla, Mexican coffee.

Here's the recipe, as we make it:

In a clay pot*, bring water to a boil, one cup per person. Add one cinnamon stick per cup of water, and simmer for a few minutes to bring out the flavour. If you have piloncillo, the traditional Mexican sugar, add it at this time, and simmer until it disolves. If not, substitute brown sugar or unrefined sugar; you may add this now or later, to taste.

While this simmers, grind well-roasted dark coffee beans, to a medium grind, and measure out one tablespoon of the ground coffee per person into a bowl.

Depending on how long you have simmered the sugar and cinnamon, you may need to top up the water to the original level. Bring to a boil again, and remove from heat. IMMEDIATELY add the coffee, all at once. Stir it down if it foams, and cover it with a lid for about 5 minutes.

Add sugar to taste, and serve from the clay pot with a ladle, pouring it through a fine strainer into clay mugs, if you have them.

Possible additions; semi-sweet baker's chocolate, to taste, simmered with the cinnamon. Or a few cloves, just enough to give a hint of spiciness.

*The coffee can be prepared in a glass saucepan, but it will not have the earthy flavour of coffee made in an olla.

Vultures in the winter?

Sunday afternoon turned out bright and sunny, so we drove down for a short walk on Boundary Bay. As we neared the parking lots at Centennial Beach, we saw two mature eagles posed nicely in a tall tree. We stopped.

Two black specks with white heads

Walking closer and zooming in. Regal birds.

Before we were able to get much closer, the pair lifted off and flew across the field to a distant stand of trees.  As they went, they disturbed another large bird sitting alone; the three of them swung around and around the new chosen resting place for a while, like a dog turning three times in his bed before settling down for a nap.

Housing, bare trees, and just visible, three large flying objects.

At home, something about that third bird struck us as a bit odd, so we blew up our photos to the maximum.

Not an eagle. A turkey vulture.

This is an eagle. Big, puffy head, solid body.

Turkey vulture. Small, bare head, thinner body. Black wing linings, dark grey flight feathers. Splayed primaries.

There were at least a pair of these vultures; we saw two over the marshland, again, not recognizing them.

They're not supposed to be here; turkey vultures breed in BC, but winter from California on south, or on the east coast around Florida.  Maybe, as our local climate warms, the range may be shifting northwards. Or it may just be that Tsawwassen has always been hospitable; it's our banana belt, after all. Whatever the reason, we'll be looking for them in the future.

*UPDATE; Several of the commenters think they're immature bald eagles. They may be right.

Can't see me

... I'm hiding!

He reminds me of some kids I have known.

My annual countdown: one more day to Solstice; tomorrow, the 21st at 3:38 PM, here on the West Coast. Three more days until the day is as long as yesterday was. Sunrise at 8:04 AM, sunset at 4:15 PM; 8 hours, 11 minutes, 46 seconds of daylight.

Four days to Christmas Eve, when the (large) family will gather in my (small) apartment; I'm busy sorting out chairs, tables and dishes. Such fun, already!

Reflections on a dead weed.

Just a weed ...

Dried flowers, Reifel Island.

... as if a plant could ever be "just" a weed. How many beetles and ants and plant bugs did this one provide nourishment for in its prime? How many buzzing bees and wasps hovered over it? How did it scent the breeze, or anchor the mud? Did sparrows sit on the top and pick off caterpillars for a snack?

And now, in its decreptitude, it still provides joy; the pleasure of structure, of tiny flower shapes (which are probably the base of long-departed seeds), the dry rustle of dead leaves on a silent afternoon, the warmth of browns on a grey-blue day.

The birds and the bugs know best; catch them saying, "just a weed"! Never.

Haunted mountain

Three more days before Solstice; then the days start getting longer again. I'll be glad to see daylight on our way home before supper time. Still, the low-lying sun does produce some interesting views.

Here's Mount Baker, usually so smooth and white in the distance, now, just before 4 PM, draped in long shadows and ringed with spiky, jagged rocks, tinted pink.

And poor old Mount Baker; he's haunted! I was looking for a heart for Clytie, and instead, I found a dozen faces peering at me out of the snow. How many do you see?

A Skywatch post.

Feliz Navidad

Busy, busy, busy. It's Christmas week, the first day of the Posadas, the day Mexican Christmas celebrations start (and continue until the 6th of January). It's the day I usually put up my Christmas decorations. That's done, at least. Now, for the tail end of the shopping and the wrapping of presents ... Blogging may be light for a few days.

Mexican tin mirror with straw bell (Mexican? Swedish? I don't remember.)

The price of convenience

Warning; this post may give you bad dreams. Read it anyway; it's important.

Every so often, we come across an unpleasant sight on our beaches. A dead seabird, usually a gull. We always take photos, but at home, I delete them; they are too sad to share. I changed my mind; here is a gull we found a couple of days ago.

Found just above the high tide line. No visible injury.

Recently dead; the eye is still bright, the surrounding flesh, pink.

I have seen a few live gulls with broken wings or injured feet, but the ones we find dead have uniformly seemed uninjured. What killed them?

The most likely culprits are the plastic bags and/or other plastic debris left on the beaches by human beach visitors. As I walk on the beach, we collect any bags we see, and take them to the nearest - accusingly near! - trash can. This last time, I filled a grocery bag (also found on the sand) with other bags, plastic cups, and even a broken toothbrush.

Gulls are particularly vulnerable to this abandoned trash. When I was a kid, I watched a gull on our beach down a huge pile of fish guts. The mass was all connected, and the gull had to struggle and strain to get it all down. I was astounded when he succeeded. Even an entire grocery bag is more maneuverable and smaller than that; the sheer difficulty of swallowing it would not be a deterrent. Lying in water, half-buried in sand, the bags look surprisingly like bits of fish skin, or jellyfish. They even smell like food, as often as not.

All this is well known; entering "Gulls plastic bag die" into Google brought up over 73,000 sites. One of the first was this; "Gulls can't read ...", incorporating this video.

(One of the comments on YouTube asks why the photographer didn't stop this. The answer is in the post: "He was in an elevated postion and was unable to go the herring gull's resuce - but the reality of what was unfolding before his eyes meant he kept his camera on.")


Researchers estimate that around 95% of all sea birds have eaten plastic litter. (Here, here, and here.) Worse still, is the multiplying lethality of these bags; after a killed gull rots away, the plastic, still intact, is released into the sea to lay in wait for another luckless bird or other animal (a turtle, a whale, etc.) And again, and again. The bag will last for centuries. (Even a so-called "bio-degradable" bag will remain intact for a long, long time. And once it has broken down, the plastic is still there, just in tiny pieces. It can still kill; it just won't choke a gull.)


Thanks for watching and "listening". You know what to do.

When in Rome (or Boundary Bay) ...

Laurie noticed them first. We were watching peeps along the water line at Boundary Bay. They foraged in small groups, about a half to one dozen at a time, strung out as far as we could see either way. Most of them were these:

Sanderlings in winter plumage

Small, round, pale grey. bright white. Black bill and feet.

 My bird guide, Audubon ... Western Region, says,

"Unlike most sandpipers, they are quite tame even during winter and are a delight to watch as they retreat and advance with the breaking waves." ... flocks of Sanderlings ... spread out in long lines along the water's edge and run in small groups of twos or threes."

That describes them perfectly. They allowed us to come within a couple of metres from where they were feeding, and even then, ran towards us. The waves were smallish, not quite enough to swamp the birds, so they didn't retreat, but let the water wash over them even as they probed for food.

The guide also mentions the stripe on their wings, seen in flight.

The book mentions a white stripe: I see the dark edge of it on a mostly white bird.

What Laurie saw: among all those happy, peeping, grey birds, there were three different ones, blending in, acting just like the others.

Just a bit longer and thinner, and a definite brown, with a brown collar. Dark brown legs and bill.

And the bill is longer than the sanderlings', and just slightly curved downward.

As far as I can tell, they're dunlins, separated from their usual hundreds-strong flock. (I could easily, easily, be wrong.*) We don't see dunlins this close, normally; one step too close (and that's 'way back where we have to squint to see them), and the whole shebang lifts itself up, does a rapid series of aerial acrobatics, and settles far off in the distance. These three have taken on the calmer habits of their new companions.

*I could be wrong on the sanderlings, too; peeps in general confuse me.

U-Pick Seafood Bar

We spent a beautiful, if chilly, afternoon at Boundary Bay, watching "peeps" as they foraged at the edge of the retreating tide. This one has caught something interesting; a small clam, perhaps?

I think they're sanderlings, in winter dress.

More tomorrow, once I've sorted the photos.

Room with a view

In the daytime, my crabs love to climb to where they can look out and watch the big world. A patch of seaweed, a big old clamshell, the water pump are all good places to sit. So are the snails that cruise the walls of the aquarium, searching for edibles:

This big trophon snail is perfect!

Hermit crabs like a window, too ...

Big Red.

especially when it doubles as a mirror:

"Hi, there, handsome!"

"What?! Are you laughing at me?"

Recent, departed, winter

The weather's all backwards. It's still raining, and hovering around 10° C; it looks like we're going to have a soggy green Christmas this year*. And yet, three weeks ago, everything was frozen solid!

From this late fall, here's remembering recent winter:

Eagle guarding the empty nest. Westham Island

Fraser River, from Westham Island bridge.

Mountain tops to the east, dusted with new snow.

Even at 2:00 PM, the sun is low (elevation 20°) enough to give hints of sunset.

Very Cold Heron

Ice and bare shrubs, Reifel Island

Odd ice formation around stranded log.

Warmth in berries, leaves, and fat red robin breast.

Mallards, coots, and Reifel's one white duck, in the only bit of liquid water available.

Afternoon sun gives light, not heat.

*And then again, it could very well snow tomorrow. Or get warmer. One of the two. Or neither.

A Skywatch post.