Welcome mat

Last week, I posted photos of the spider that built her tunnel web on our compost bin. Evidently, it was still under construction, with just the shape of the walls sketched in, so that she was visible inside.

That was then ...

This is now.

She has reinforced the walls and built a doorway, with an inviting, carpeted foyer inside. And she's hiding in the back, out of sight of curious visitors. (I know she's there; I saw movement inside when I got too close.)

The little black scrap on the doorstep looks like the remains of a small moth. No garbage pickup here!

Nasturtium

This is the first year nasturtiums have succeeded in blooming in my deep shade garden.

I'm happy.

On a mission

On the wall beside my desk, a male running crab spider made a thorough search, running up, down, across and back, looking behind shelves and furniture. He didn't find what he was looking for; I could have told him that and saved him the trouble. He was the only spider on that wall. The nearest female was outside, by the back door.

Philodromus dispar, adult male. About 5 mm. long, eyes to spinnerets.

The female he was hunting for is slightly larger than he is, and dressed in mottled light brown. Only the mature males wear black decorated with those whitish stripes down the sides.

They are hunting spiders, always on the move, chasing down their prey rather than sitting in a web waiting for it. But when breeding time comes around, the male forgets to eat and wears himself thin racing, racing, racing; looking everywhere for a mate. Does he know what he wants? Probably not; he just feels the need to run and look and look again. But he'll know her when he finds her.

On his way up again, just in case he missed her. The "boxing glove" ends of his pedipalps are another sign of a mature male.

He's examined that wall and the curtain at the window, and has moved on. Only a few metres left to go before he discovers the female's hangout. I wish him luck.

The stones are alive

I love beach stones. Wading along the shoreline, I often pick up one to marvel at its colour or pattern, to wonder about its history. Sometimes one is too beautiful to throw back, and I drop it in my pocket. And later find it has turned a nondescript grey, all its life and lights left back there on the shore.

But stones underwater, or with the waves washing over them; what a dazzling variety of colour and texture and pattern!

"Dead" stones, out of the water. Mostly dull blue-gray.

"Live" stones, under a couple of inches of water.

Some of the patterns are a feature of the stones themselves, the end result of millennia of mixing and melting, crumbling and compressing. The water itself, even standing still, makes its own ephemeral designs; circles where a stone distorts the surface, stripes and swirls as wavelets sweep by, shadows from floating bubbles and weeds. All of these show up in the photo above.

Boring blue-grey? No! (It's worth clicking on this to see it full size to appreciate the detail on the two stones on the left.) 

Textured stones.

Water rippling over a mottled peach and grey stone.

More variety. Every colour of the rainbow, including violet.

Camouflage

Can you see the flatfish?

On a cement slab, under about 2 inches of water. The fish is a couple of inches long.

Blotches and spots help the fish blend into the background, as long as he's resting quietly. Swimming, not so much, but he swims quickly from one spot to the next parking spot.

He's more visible when he takes off over stones.

Tangerine ghosts

At first glance, it looks like an orange. A peeled tangerine, lying there on the beach, caught on an old crab carapace, washed by the retreating tide.

But on closer inspection, it belongs where it lies; it's a part of the departed crab, left behind for the gulls and the water-line isopods.

When the crab molted, he took away his soft parts: legs and eyes, his brain, memories and all, his antennae, all his mouthparts, and his gills. Besides the hard "shell", he abandoned his stomach lining, his esophagus and shreds of his intestine.

The gills are different; he takes them, but leaves the outer casing, as apparently intact as the calcified parts. Older remains left on the shore are whitish and translucent, but fresh, they're - well, fruit-coloured.

"Ghost gills" on the half-shell.

A second crab molt; looks like the gulls already took a nibble.

A third molted crab on the same stretch of shore line.

A molted crab, from above, looks intact. But check out the eyes!

Eyestalks, lens, black pupil spot. But they're empty windows: the watcher inside is long gone.

When opportunity knocks ...

We bought one of those tumbling compost bins. I put it together and set it up last Thursday. It's made of recycled plastic, in dull black, supposedly rodent proof. It's not insect proof, though; we're only 5 days into its first cycle, and I'm already noticing a few fruit flies and ants.

And a spider has moved in beside the bin door, handy to her source of fresh meat.

She's in a tunnel- or funnel-shaped web. From the side, it screens her well. From above, not so much.

Under the sheer curtain. The third right foot reaches overhead to keep in touch with the web.

And this is another one that I can't identify. I've sent her in to BugGuide.

Winged clouds

Sky over Point Roberts, this afternoon.

The two black specks, centre left, are a crow pestering an eagle.

A Skywatch post.

Ni

A black and brown moth was sleeping on the air intake of the roof of our front door. I spent a busy half hour standing on an unsteady chair, reaching as high as I could and taking photos, to the great entertainment of a stream of inquisitive passers-by. And with all that, I forgot to measure the beastie, so when I was preparing a photo to send to BugGuide, I had to go out in the middle of the night to measure the space where it had been. Luckily, no-one was around at that hour; a bit of street theatre is ok, but a return engagement is too much.

The moth was well worth the effort. I'd never seen one like this before.

Cabbage looper moth, Trichoplusia ni.

It has quite an elaborate hairdo, with two tall tufts (they look to me like bat ears) at the back of the head, and then a smaller tuft of feathers a bit further back. Combined with the complicated pattern of the wings, it must make the moth almost invisible as it sleeps through the daylight hours, as long as it chooses the right spot; this air intake was not advisable.

At first, when I saw the name on BugGuide, Trichoplusia ni, I thought it was a typo; what sort of name is ni? Wikipedia explains:

The name derives from the forewing marking, which resembles the lowercase Greek letter ni.

And the lowercase Greek letter ni looks like a v. The mark has also been described as an open-ended 8; it depends on which moth you're looking at; each one is slightly different.

The caterpillar of this moth is a garden and farm pest. It makes big holes in the leaves of cabbages and other brassicas, of course, but will also take :

... leaves of a wide variety of plants, including beets, cabbage, carnation, cotton, kale, lettuce, nasturtium, parsley, peas, potato, soybeans, spinach, tomato. (Texas A&M)

It's a pale green caterpillar that walks in a series of loops, like an inchworm. We'll be watching for them on Laurie's lupins and my nasturtiums.

Another mystery solved - I think

Last December, looking at the limpets on the walls of my aquarium, I noticed a long, worm-like thing wrapped around its neck. I couldn't identify it; nor could my helpful commenters.

Original photo, from "No end to mysteries".

And then, a month later, I posted a second "worm", which turned out, instead to be a limpet's gill.

Limpet gill, from "The mystery deepens", and "One down, one to go"

Since then, I've been watching limpets closely. I've seen the gills many times, but there's still that long neck-scarf "worm" to identify.

I think I've found it!

That's no worm!

I think it's limpet poop!

Do you agree?

Laconic

Because I can't do wordless.

Deer Lake, Burnaby, on a sunny Sunday afternoon

And white water lilies.

Successful rescue

I've been watching a pretty brown spider just outside my door. The other day, she had a new meal, a green grub of some sort.

As found, all tied up.

When I was taking its photo, it moved, struggling feebly against the web.

Sorry, spidey; this one's mine. I pulled the critter out of the web with an eagle feather I keep on hand. It took some doing; that's a very sticky web!

I thought my efforts may have hurt the grub, but after a rest, it stretched out and walked away.

Interesting stubby feet in the centre. And big, staring eyes.

Nibbling at the foamy I had it on. "Nah! Not edible!" And off he went.

I couldn't identify this, and sent it in to BugGuide. It's a sawfly larva, in the Tenthredinidae family. Jeff Brown, the BugGuide contributor who identified it, wrote,

"You can often differentiate Sawflies from Caterpillars by the prominent eye spots and the number of prolegs."

The legs are the first three pairs of walking legs; these will be retained in the adult sawfly. The prolegs are the stubby pegs that are visible in the coiled photo. This grub has 7 or 8 pairs. Butterfly caterpillars have variable numbers, up to 6 pairs. The adults, of course, have no legs, pro or not, on the abdomen; the 6 adult legs are attached to the thorax.

A proleg is a small, fleshy, stub structure found on the ventral surface of the abdomen of most larval forms of insects of the order Lepidoptera, though they can also be found on other larval insects such as sawflies and a few types of flies. ...
... Although the point has been debated, prolegs are not widely regarded as true legs, derived from the primitive uniramous limbs. Certainly in their morphology they are not jointed, and so lack the five segments (coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, tarsus) of thoracic insect legs. Prolegs do have limited musculature, but much of their movement is hydraulically powered. (Wikipedia)

I released my grub outside, a good distance from the spider's corner. The spider sulked overnight, then rebuilt her web from scratch.

Everything's hard at work ...

... and we're just idling along, watching them go at it.

Thimbleberry leaf, collecting sunlight to feed the berries.

Honeybee harvesting pollen. Note the fat pollen bags on her legs.

A small vetch (tufted vetch, maybe?) in a tangle of assorted weeds, enticing pollinators.

Syrphid fly on blackberry leaves. With grass and buttercup going to seed.

Blackberry flower, with two flying critters. Can you find the second?

Zooming in to see the shapes of the stamens (the pollen-bearing stalks) and the styles and stigmas (the short tubes that receive the pollen).

Yellow and orange fruiting bodies of a cup lichen on a tree trunk.

We were the only lazy ones there. Unless taking photos can somehow be construed as work.

A smidgen of curiosity

Whenever I bring home seaweeds for my tankful of hermit crabs, I wash it and examine it closely before I plant it. I'm looking for the unexpected hitchhiker, the stray scale worm or baby starfish, the unidentified egg cases, the critters I've never seen before. There's always something.

After the seaweed is washed and planted, I set aside the water, usually overnight, to settle out. In the morning, I may find a half-dozen sharp-pointed snails climbing the walls of the bowl; tiny specks only identifiable as snails by their actions. Or a tubeworm or two may have set up housekeeping in the detritus. Maybe there's even a miniature clam; it takes a sharp eye and a lens to see these as they twist themselves down under cover of the muck.

One morning a few weeks ago, a speck almost too small to be seen was scrambling across a gap between sand grains. The motion looked more like a hermit's gait than the smooth glide of a snail or the sideward slide of a clam; faster, and more erratic. But it was too small to identify, even with the lens; I had to get out the microscope.

It was a hermit. Without his shell. I couldn't add him to the tank like that; he'd be swallowed by a barnacle or an anemone in an instant.

I kept him in a plastic cup while I prepared a batch of shells for him to choose from. All the tiny ones I had were far too big, but I'd seen before how the babies deal with that; they use the broken tips. I crumbled a bunch of shells and spread them in the cup.

A few hours later, the baby hermit was dressed; still too small to see clearly without a lens, but safely protected from barnacles, at least. He went into the tank with the big guys. And disappeared.

I was watching another very small hermit yesterday, when an smidgen of something orange came up to the glass and stared at me. My baby hermit, growing up!

Smile for the camera!

He stayed there for a while, long enough for me to take some photos, then run to get a pin for a size comparison.

With an ordinary dressmaker's pin, on this side of the glass.

He watched me for a while, then turned and wandered off. Later, wanting to show him to Laurie, I looked and looked, with a lens, without, with the water removed (low tide day, critters!); I couldn't find him anywhere. Never mind; I know he's there, somewhere.

What amazes me most about these critters is their intelligence and personality, even when they're no bigger than a grain of sand. It must take some ability to sort shells, choose the right one for your size and strength, make sure it's clean and empty; talents that even this pinhead critter uses. They're picky about their shells, too; they they test them for calcium content, shape, rollability, and something else; coolness? They like to wear the styles their peers are wearing. But they're mentally flexible enough to try something new when there are none of their favourites around.

But more than that is their curiosity about the world around them; this habit they develop of staring at me or the camera through the glass; their enthusiasm when they find something new to climb, a new vantage point, or just something to explore because it's there.

And all this goes on in a brain the size of the sharp point of that pin!

A bit past their prime

The lupins in Elgin Heritage Park last week were "a bit past their prime," I said. That wasn't quite fair to them; it all depends what we consider their purpose to be. Sure, some of the flowers were dead, others were losing their shape and colour, but the plants were still hard at work towards their goal, producing seed.

Hairy, immature seed pods and the remains of flowers.

The pods will be dry, brown, and rattly before they're done. They'll split open then, scattering dried "peas" to start the next generation.

And there's more going on:

There's still pollen for the bees . . .

and sap for fat, grey aphids.

There are still oodles of new stalks, with hundreds of flowers each, dying at the bottom, still budding at the tip.

Second-growth tip, just getting started.

Past its prime? Not even there yet!

Not quite wordless

Dead leaves, Elgin Heritage Park:

Cottonwood, I think.

Late night, early morning. Off to bed.

Just grass. And spit.

The grasses are probably the most important of the plant families to us humans. I'm ashamed that I know so little about them. I collected heads one afternoon, from one small field; there were more than a dozen different grasses, but I could never identify them.

I occasionally take photos of an interesting head, and then try to find it in my books or on the web. I never do; they're more confusing than caterpillars! My guidebook, Plants of Coastal BC, says there are over 200 species in our area, mostly indigenous.

At Elgin Heritage Park last week, we found a few that I'd never noticed before.

The terrain: flat river delta, soggy wet, even in mid-summer. The grass would be over our heads, but we're standing on the bridge. Behind us, on the opposite side of the bridge, the grass is mixed with taller cattails.

Along the pathway, grasses compete with the blackberries and other shrubs, springing out of the thickets to dangle their seed heads in our faces.

This was really red, almost purple in the sunlight. A tall plant.

Another one, even more purple against the buttercups.

I think these are the same kind. They are growing on the riverbank, with no competition.

Laurie found this, a fuller, fatter head. It seems, from the photo, since I didn't see the plant, to be a rush. But which one?*

*Laurie says it's probably Cocksfoot grass, Dactylis glomerata.

Note to self: "Sedges have edges, rushes are round." The stems, that is.

Farther from the shore, where the ground rises and dries out, other, shorter grasses grow around the lupins. And this week, they were in the midst of a population explosion:

Spit bug** heaven!

**Nymphs of the Froghopper family, aka Spittle bugs, snake spit, frog spit. Laurie knows them as "cuckoo spit". The one that we see in this area is the Meadow Spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius. I have found them on my roses and the hydrangeas at home.