Lichen to rocks

I'm back on-line*. Now, where was I?

Oyster Bay: the Misc. file.

Slanting afternoon light on the grasses and logs of the shore/forest interface.

Cladonia lichen on a log end.

Sand dollar test on the sand bar.

Rocks on the breakwater, with gull poop and barnacles.

And on the edge of the park, a ditch full of foxgloves and daisies.

*The problem was simple: a server update, with no warning and new passwords. Complicated by a genius programming kitten, who can, with a few strokes, make changes that take me an hour to fix. She even turned my screen display upside-down, and re-worked a half-edited photo, both actions together, instantly. Bill Gates, watch your back!

Offline

My Internet connection is down since yesterday morning. I'll be back as soon as possible.

I'm posting from the public library, on my tablet, so no photos are available.

Very frustrating!

It's just there

Bread. Candy canes. Hats. Tacos and birds' nests. Beer and baskets.  Paper, sometimes; also some roofs. Rum and bamboo bicycles. Breakfast cereal. Sushi. Place mats. And so on, and so on. They're all made from grass.

Dune grass, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park

We're grass eaters. The bulk of our food is either grass, or relies on grass in the form of animal feed.

"Grasses now provide us with 3 times more food than do peas and beans, tubers, fruit, meat, milk and eggs put together." (Plants of Coastal BC)

And yet, we - I - mostly ignore the grasses. It's "just grass". A mistake.

Dune grass and unidentified grass, Oyster Bay.

The checklist for plants of Oyster Bay Shoreline Park includes 24 different species of grass, of over 200 species in coastal BC. That's a lot of missed beauty. I've started to pay attention, finally.

One of the Bromes. Cheatgrass, maybe.

The grasses are flowering plants, but the miniature flowers are hidden under an arrangement of bracts and awns. To understand what the guide tells us, we need a new vocabulary: the bract that covers the flower is called a "lemma": two more bracts, beneath the floret, are called "glumes". The whole contraption: glumes, lemma, flower, inner bract, and awn: makes up a spikelet. A bunch of spikelets makes an inflorescence.

Each type of grass has a different arrangement of these parts. It's complicated.

I think this is one of the vernal grasses.

I am going to try to photograph and identify as many of the grasses of the park as possible. Any help with identifications (and all corrections) will be vastly appreciated.

I couldn't identify this one. It's a small grass. (That's my finger at the bottom left.)

Good fire, pink fire

Fireweed.

Driving north, I passed entire fields of waving pink flags. They fill the scars left by loggers and line the ditches beside the highway. This patch brightens a wasted corner between Forest Service (logging) roads.

Epilobium angustifolium

The colour varies from pink to pinker, to magenta.

I wish this were the only fire seen in our forests this week. There is some good news about the burning fires, though. Some of the evacuees at Cache Creek have been allowed to return home. And they still have homes to return to. Maybe there's an end in sight.

But we still need rain.

Ceci n'est pas une poste

I'm too sleepy to post. I did too much, drove too far. I'm going to bed.

Ok; may as well add a photo.

This is not a post, either. It's an old log. With lichen.

Goodnight!

Mystery solved!

Last year, in July and later in mid-August, I examined a woolly plant growing down near the moss level in the Oyster Bay meadow. I couldn't identify it.

Pale bluish-green plants, up to about 5 inches tall, covered with white hair. Today's photo.

I wrote about it twice last year, hoping for help with id. I looked for flowers, and found, on the third search, a couple of dead flower lumps, standing tall above the leaves. Still no help with id, although there were several interesting suggestions.

This morning, I joined a group from the Comox Valley Naturalists Society for a walk through the meadow. The group included a botanist, and she recognized the plant at once. It's a woolly sunflower, and has large, bright, yellow flowers, standing up to two feet tall. But not this year, either, although Wikipedia says it blooms from May to August. Maybe it has been too hot and dry the last couple of summers.

Woolly sunflower, Eriophyllum lanatum.

The page at E-Flora BC has 21 photos, mostly of the showy yellow flowers. In the several leaf photos, the plants are barely hairy.

Both stems and leaves may be covered with a woolly gray hair, but some plants lack this hair. The hairs conserve water by reflecting heat and reducing air movement across the leaf's surface. (Wikipedia)

Could the extreme hairiness be a response to the hot weather?

Woolly leaves, with insect.

More on this walk, later. I haven't even looked at my photos, yet.

I am ever so grateful ...

... to the geniuses who started the "Worst Bird Photos" Facebook page. Finally ... finally! I've found people who truly appreciate my "blurds".

However, I'm going to inflict the latest batch on you. Just because.

I was returning, near sunset, from a circuit of the Oyster Bay Shoreline Park. The tide was coming in, surging and splashing out on the coast, but in the inner bay, just gently oozing, wetting the mud and blending in.* As I passed on the path to the meadow, I noticed the peeps; a line of them, just where the mud bubbled as the water soaked in, busily collecting their evening dessert.

The light was against me. The birds were some distance away. I could barely see them. But I had to take photos, anyhow.

Do you see them? Sandpipers, I think.

I'd managed to get a bit closer, and part of the flock relocated, moving up to the new edge, as the tide slid in.

Circles of ripply light. Some of the birds seem to have spotted breasts. Juveniles, maybe.

Further out in the bay, the purple martins were chasing insects, mosquitoes, I hoped, but more likely moths and dragonflies.

Foraging Purple Martins hunt insects higher in the air than other swallows, but in the afternoon and evening they may feed low and close to nest sites. (Cornell)

They flap their wings rapidly for a bit, then coast smoothly for a good distance. At this time of afternoon, they were mostly searching around the nest boxes; it's the first time I've seen them there.

Nest boxes. I tried, but never caught a martin in flight. They're fast!

Just wondering: the nest boxes are labelled: 13-81, 01-86, 13-148, and so on. What would the numbers refer to? There are about 15 boxes in all.

Or do purple martins remember their address: "I live in 13-81, Oyster Bay"?

* More about these tide patterns later.

Biodiverse

From shoe-top height, the July meadow at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park is a place of wonder. I had been examining miniature mosses, too small for the camera I was carrying, and then turned to look at the landscape from that vantage point. Mind-boggling variety!

Present and identifiable: wild strawberry, yarrow, red sorrel, assorted grasses, moss, Queen Anne's lace, white clover, black cottonwood, red alder and various evergreen trees, patches of lichen, silver burweed, Nootka roses (between the trees and the meadow). Not identified (so far) that woolly, bluish plant in the foreground, tiny seed pods just above the moss, small yellow flowers, past their prime, and that round gall on a tall blade of grass.

Behind me, not shown, the gumweed is just coming into flower, masses of hare's foot clover are fading to the palest pink, and some almost blue, stiff grasses fill in the gaps nearer the trees.

I've taken more photos of the woolly blue plant, and will post them soon. Maybe someone out there can identify it.

McIvor Lake

On a hot, hot weekend, what better place to be?

Hot sand, cool water.

Irrationally, I somehow feel guilty, just to be here, while the rest of BC burns.

McIvor Lake is really just the tail end of Campbell Lake.

At every turn of the road

Study in greens:

In sunshine and shadow, with mosses. Iron River Road, north of Campbell River.

Fire in BC, 2017

BC is burning again.

Some part of the province burns every year; the forests renewing themselves, killing off the beetles that mine the bark, bursting the cones that hold the next generation of seeds, clearing and fertilizing the soil. Without the fire, BC wouldn't be so green.

But.

This year, with more than 220 fires going at the moment, covering, so far, 230 square kilometres, a large number of those fires are interface fires.

Firefighters distinguish between "interface fire" and ordinary forest fire. The interface fire is one where the forest comes close enough to populated areas for the fire to spread from one to the other. These fires are attacked with every means available. They are the ones that generate newspaper stories and evacuations. "Pure" forest fires, on the other hand, are controlled with little fanfare, or sometimes left to burn themselves out. (From my post, back in the 2010 fire season)

Forest fires have become city fires. Williams Lake, Kelowna (pop. 127,500), Princeton, Ashcroft, Kamloops (90,000), Alexis Creek, Cache Creek, 100 Mile House (pop. 2000), 150 Mile House, ... so far, over 7000 people** have been evacuated*. Many have lost their homes. Williams Lake residents (25,000 people) are being told to stay put, as there is no safe route out of the city.

BC has declared a state of emergency, the first since 2003, as thousands of firefighters race to keep up.

My photo from 2010, near Alexis Creek. It's on fire again this week.

And the weather continues hot and dry, becoming hotter. We still have two months of summer to go. Even here, on the island, in our green rainforest, it's dry.

In deep forest, dust hangs over the road. At least it's not smoke. Near McIvor Lake.

In comparison, in the fires of August, 2010, with 400 active fires, only 3 had caused evacuations.

Our area has suffered major fires, with the city of Campbell River threatened by fire on the outskirts, and 470 square kilometres burning, but that was long ago, in 1938.

The Canadian Red Cross is accepting donations to provide financial assistance, family reunification services, as well as cots and bedding for those forced out of their homes.

*Some of the evacuees are friends and family; they are all safe at the moment. A few friends are trapped in Williams Lake. Another friend reported watching from her deck as trees "candled" just across the lake. But she and her family are safe, so far.

Candling or Torching: a single tree or a small clump of trees is said to “candle” or “torch” when its foliage ignites and flares up, usually from bottom to top. (Wildfire Rank, BC Gov.)

Rain. We need rain!

** Update, Monday: 14,000 people now.

Candy stripers

On the shore of McIvor Lake, small, pink flowers bloom, unnoticed by the sun-lovers swimming a few metres away.

Spreading dogbane. (What a name for such a delicate flower!) Apocynum androsaemifolium.

And, also unnoticed until I blew up the photos, another stripy resident hides, waiting for lunch. Can you see it?

Two legs and a toe visible.

This plant likes sunny, dry, sandy spots. Although here it is on the shore of a lake, the whole area is dry, the ground loose sand.

The flowers have a sweet scent, but the whole plant is poisonous.

(More McIvor Lake photos tomorrow.)

"... and the little one said, ..."

It's getting crowded around here. Not only do I have to share my bed with three rambunctious kittens*, and sometimes their mother, I found this big blond spider hogging my pillow, too.

"Move over!"

I haven't seen one like this here before. I'm wondering if she's a recently molted one of the usual residents:

On the wall over my bed. Not invited in.

The resident sowbug deleter. Not welcome in bed, either.

I'll send her photo in to BugGuide for an ID. (Update: sac spider, yellow sac or similar. And very pregnant.)

*One kitten has gone to her new home; three to go soon. Then maybe I can get some sleep.

Pink nursery

In a niche painted in "French Rose", a cellar spider is raising her brood.

Long-bodied cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides.

In normal light, she's a light, coffee with cream colour; here everything is infused with pink.

Zooming in on the eggs.

These eggs are almost ready to hatch. The white lines in each one are the long, folded spiderlings' legs.

I looked for her a couple of days later, and she was gone, though a few babies were still hanging around. The mother would be off hunting; she gets hungry, carrying all those eggs by her mouthparts for a week or more.

Elusive anemone

For about 7 years, an old abalone shell, purchased in a garage sale years before, has been a fixture in my saltwater aquarium. At first, it was a place for hermit crabs to stand tall and watch the world go by. Later, crabs found the inner surface to be a good hiding place. Now, the plumose anemone calls it home.

Over the years, it has lost its pearly sheen; it is gradually dissolving, and one side has a great hole, crumbling at the edges. The outer part of the shell is riddled with pores, each one housing a tiny, two-tentacled worm. Limpets browse among them, hermits pick their way across, on their way to the eelgrass bed and climbing ground.

One of the worms, a Siponid. The tentacles are, at most, 5 mm. long.

A couple of years ago, I noticed several miniature anemone-like critters, extremely small, almost invisible unless the light was just right, on the shell. They have a circle of a few tentacles, a dozen to twenty-something, with alternating clear and white patches. The column is never clearly visible.

I've watched them, always under bright light, with a lens; with the naked eye they're barely there. Tonight, with all the lights on and a bright flashlight, I spent 15 minutes examining their favourite spots before I found one.

They seem to move about; I see four or five in one spot, and watch them for a few days, and then can't find them. Later, they show up in another area, but always on the abalone shell. I've never seen one anywhere else. I've looked.

And I've tried, over and over, to get a photo; they're even more elusive under a flash. But the other day, with the abalone shell a mere inch from the glass, a couple showed up clearly.

Mini-anemones, with two-tentacled worm in background. Approximate size, maybe 1 cm. across, tentacle tip to tip. They never get any bigger than this. Contrast increased slightly.

I can't find these in my Encyclopedia, nor in any website; they're too small to be noticed, maybe. They should be easy to identify (more or less) by the size, the limited number of tentacles, and the white spots, so I've browsed hundreds of photos, but without seeing any.

(I found a similar one, here, towards the bottom of the page, also unidentified.)

Dancer

With a lichen skirt.

Apple tree, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park.

Where the living is green

In the intertidal zone, worms and snails live happily in sand. Crabs and fish live under rocks; limpets live on top. Crabs and  isopods like a seaweed blanket. But under a layer cake of sand, rocks, weed, it's party time; everybody mingles.

Lower intertidal zone, Simms Creek area. 

Calcareous tubeworms, spiral tubeworms, orange-legged hermit, bryozoans, limpet, assorted seaweeds, two pecies of snails, encrusting sponge.

More bryozoans, snail, hermit.

Encrusting sponge, with snails.

Grainy-hand hermit, Pagurus granosimanus.

Green mottled star, spiral tubeworms, bryozoans and sea urchin

Leather star and bryozoan. With hermit, snails, tubeworms.

Hermit (hiding), limpet, sea urchin, two kinds of snails.

Clingfish.

Sand with legs.

The sand seemed to be moving. I collected a bit on my fingertip; it was still moving. The camera saw what my eyes were missing.

A baby crab.

By the shape, longer than he is wide, and pointed at the head, I think he may be one of the kelp crabs.

Deep blue sea

This morning, the ocean was calm and a strong, primary blue; I watched it as I drove along an upper level street. This afternoon, from the same vantage point, the sea was pale, silvery grey, and corrugated; by sunset (after 9:00) it had picked up lilac tints.

Every time I see it, it's wearing a different face.

In a ruffled mood. A rich, deep blue, with green tints. Off Oyster Bay.

Half an hour later, still choppy. With bird, tug, and barge.

Splash!

Same location, same time, four days earlier, with drifting kelp.