In which I indulge in a spot of retrospection.

Ten years ago, around this time, I was watching Y2K arrive around the globe, watching as all the dire predictions of "the end of the world as we know it" failed to come true. Midnight came to our hilltop. We're almost the last stop. Nothing went wrong here, either. The lights stayed on; the TV blared out "Auld Lang Syne" as if we weren't suddenly computer-less.

I figured Alaska and Hawaii would do just fine, and sent my grandkid off to bed, then went to fix my daughter's computer, still running Windows 3.1. It was ok, except that it had forgotten every setting she'd ever entered. Mine, at home, on Windows 98, was happily chugging away, on time and on my settings. The world would go on.

And now, ten years later, we slide into the new decade without fanfare. Unless you count a blue moon barely to be seen through the clouds (if that) and a partial eclipse not visible on this continent as excitement. Now all the doom and gloom seems to be apportioned out evenly, from one year end to the next. So does the joy, compensating.

"May you live in interesting times," goes the old curse. I don't know if it's really so bad; the times have always been interesting, as far as I can remember. I was a war baby, born during WWII; I was in high school when Sputnik went up and the west went into a tizzy. I saw the student unrest of the '60s from close-up, while I was in university, and the psychedelic '70s. The '80s? I remember noticing, with some amusement, that 1984 was no better nor worse than 1983. And so it goes. (That phrase always brings back Larry Niven's hell, in "Inferno". That section's suffering was sheer boredom, though.)

The first decade of this century has been interesting enough for me. In terms of politics, the environment, our future survival, it has been a roller coaster swooping from hope to despair and back often enough to keep me dizzy. Personally, I have a growing extended family and all their doings: weddings and births and trips, graduations, new businesses, new toys. I'll never get a chance to be bored, that's assured.

And I started blogging. April 1st, of 2006. Moved to Blogger. Then I bought a camera, and another. Laurie went digital. I updated my computer equipment, became mobile. Started the aquarium. And lately, bought my first digital microscope. (There will be more, and better ones, I'm sure.)

And found there is a world out there of people interested in the same weird stuff that fascinates me: spiders and worms and creepy crawlies of all types. Hermit crabs and amphipods. Chickadee antics and cute doggies on the beach. Rain and rocks.

Things like these:

Starlings through a rainy windshield. Mud Bay area.

Amphipod in my aquarium.

Maaaa! Near Nicomekl River outlet, Delta

Slug leaving well of pitcher plant.

Mallard, Sun Yat Sen gardens, Vancouver

Spider on my throw rug.

Yay, world!

So; interesting times. May they continue!

Happy New Year, everyone. See you in 2010!

Convalescence. Flatworms have it down pat.

Thanks to everyone who sent me "Get better" thoughts or comments; it worked. I'm feeling much better, and so is Laurie. We're hoping it was just a three-day bug.

I slept all morning, and worked on a video all afternoon and evening. Kept me too interested to feel sorry for myself. (Lemon juice, chicken soup, and camomile tea helped, too.)

I found a flatworm on the White Rock beach last week, and brought it home, damaged. What happened next is in the video:

And now I'm going to bed. Can't risk getting worse again.

Misery, not loving company.

I'm down with the obligatory winter cold, headachy and shivery and generally grumpy. So is Laurie. So, if you'll excuse me, I'll go mope in a corner until I can stop sneezing all over my screen.

Half-frozen moth. At least he's not sniffling.

His name is Louis

Or Lewis, maybe.

We passed this dog on the Semiahmoo side of the White Rock beach, obviously enjoying himself.

I thought he might have been injured, so I asked his companion about him. No, she said; the condition is genetic. He is 11 years old, and has been in the rig for most of that time. His hindquarters are completely paralyzed. He has had surgery, but it was ineffective.

He comes to the beach several times a week, and loves it.

Laurie said he is fortunate to be so loved. I think ...

... the affection is mutual. They're both fortunate. So are we for having made their acquaintance.

Head of a pin, with eyes

White Rock in the sunshine! Shorebirds and dogs not getting along, sand and waves in a tug-of-war, the smell of drying seaweed and the shriek of gulls! And beasties, too!

Laurie left his new Lee Valley hiking stick in Tim Horton's on Saturday, so we ended up back in White Rock, and on the beach of course, Sunday afternoon, too. Again, we came home smiling, laden with photos and "stuff"; rocks and shells and additions to the aquarium.

Among them was this tiny isopod, the Oregon pillbug, I think.

These are fairly common; I've captured a few before. This one is just a baby, barely 1 mm across, rolled up like this. They grow to about 1 centimetre, just under half an inch long.  Here it is, full-length:

I'm pretty pleased with my little cheap microscope; I would never have gotten these with my camera. And with the microscope, I could even make a video:

I can see that it's going to take more than a couple of days to cover this outing; besides the birds and the rest of the "big" things, I've got a handful of critters, including another video to make. Life's too short!

Better than the malls on Boxing Day

(... or any day, really. But Boxing Day is when we're supposed to go the mall, isn't it? To save any money we have left over, by spending it, right?)

December 26th turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, summery, freezing day. We found the tide going out at White Rock. Wonderful!

Greater Yellowlegs

It's going to take a couple of days to sort the other 300 or so photos.  Lots of goodies coming up!

Herald

This apparition was in the sky as we headed out for our Christmas Eve dinner. Is it an angel? Or a bird?

Here's a closer look:

Or just a sunlit cloud? You decide.

For me, I'll call it a harbinger of good times to come.

A Skywatch post.

A very merr ...

"Have a good one," the cashier at Safeway told me, playing it safe.

"Merry Christmas," said the bakeshop cake.

Whatever you call it, whenever and however you celebrate, here's hoping it's the merriest, joyfullest ever.

On a grey day in Steveston ...

An historic cannery,

Gulf of Georgia Cannery, 1894 - 1979

Roof decor

Its Ice House,

Then and now

And a warm welcome:

Window painting, Steveston Bakery.

Santa Claus is coming to town

Caught him on the highway:

Ho, ho, ho!

Christmas presents are all made, almost all wrapped. One day to relax, and then, ... party!

Too big for his britches.

So that was Solstice. Sunset, 4:16 PM. Tomorrow, it's 4:17. By this time next week, it will be 4:21. Yay!

Out in the garden, the fall greenery has died back; only the London Pride, the epimedium and the bergenia still have all their leaves. Oh, and the creeping Jenny; nothing slows that stuff down. Otherwise, the soil is bare, leaving open ground for the birds to scratch for seeds, and for the squirrels to bury whatever it is that they are finding. (At least, they aren't eating my crocus bulbs this year. Yet.)

The aquarium, dependent for greenery on what I bring back from the beach, and therefore still tied to the season, even inside, is quieter than usual. The hermits putter around, nibbling at rotting kelp, occasionally fighting over a particularly delicious chunk.

One of them, "Hermit Rex", is getting fat:

He had been wearing a shell I gave him back in October, until last month. It looked too small, and I gave him another, which he tried on and is wearing now. The smaller blue-clawed hermit took his old shell; it was a bit big for him, and he struggled with it occasionally, finding it awkward in tight corners. At least, when Rex attacks him,  he can hide completely deep inside; there's that.

Rex is an aggressive feeder. When another hermit or a crab has food, he will run over, throw himself on top, and grab the whole lump for himself. It's having an effect; he's now bursting out of the new shell.

I dug through my collection and found a bigger one for him the other day. Within an hour or so, it was in use, but by little "Boy Blue".

Nice new shell, several sizes too big.

So yesterday, I dropped in two much larger shells, far too big for Boy Blue, probably just right for Rex.

Good big shells.

Rex noticed; a bit later, when I looked, he was examining the largest, rolling it over and over, poking his claws deep inside.

I came back a bit later to see how it fit him. But he was still in the old shell. Instead, little Boy Blue was in the big one. It was so big, he couldn't move it; after a while, he crawled out and went back to the one he had been wearing.

Rex is still wandering around in the old suit.

Sometimes I wonder about the rationality of these guys.

Small fry.

I went fishing yesterday afternoon. The weather was no problem; I was sitting at my kitchen table, fishing for copepods in the detritus I washed out of the aquarium filter.

I caught two, and umpteen baby amphipods, all very active. I didn't find a mate to the one I found the other day, however; I'll try another location next time.

Here's the latest catch:

Looks like a shrimpy thing, again. But from above, the identifying feature stands out:

Only one eye, in the middle of the head. All copepods have just this one eye, some only in the larval stage.

This little guy* (0.8 mm, nose to tail, excluding antennae and tail streamers) was zipping about like a nuclear-powered bumper car; to pin him down so he could have his photo taken, I had to trap him in a drop of water and then "vacuum" up most of the liquid with the corner of a paper towel, until he could barely spin in a slow circle. Which he proceeded to do, without a pause.

While he swam around, I could see the yellowish center material pulsing; he flipped his tail up, then straightened it with a snap, seeming to want to use it for locomotion. (Didn't work; he was in that water-drop jail.)

I knew next to nothing about copepods, and my home library wasn't of much use; a couple of photos of Daphnia, and a mention of the one eye or an over-generalized discussion of habitats (anywhere there's water) was about it. The web was a bit more productive. Here's what I learned, with links to the sources:

• Copepods are small crustaceans, mostly under 1 cm. long) Their name, "Copepod", means "oar feet", because they "row" along, with pairs of legs acting in unison. One branch is called the "Cyclopoidea", referring to the single eye, and referencing the Greek and Roman mythological one-eyed giants, the Cyclops.
• Identification is difficult without the aid of a good microscope. (And the knowledge to go with it.)
• They are the most important source of protein in the ocean; along with the worms, they are the most abundant multi-cellular animals on earth. Everything eats them; from mussels and fish to birds and even whales. (In these days of a threatened marine environment, it's folly to ignore their needs.) My old textbook, Living Invertebrates (1987) makes an interesting point: the prey of carnivourous copepods, fish eggs and larvae, larval forms of other invertebrates, etc., at later stages turn around and feed on the copepods. Turn about's fair play.
• "Trillions of little copepod guts produce countless fecal pellets ..."; what a picture!
• Some are free-swimming, some bottom feeders (The Harpaticoida; mine are Harps, I think.); some have taken to a parasitic lifestyle. Food supplies may be diatoms, algae, bacteria, mosquito larvae (Good on them!), even small fishes. The parasites may suck blood or eat skin particles.
• Like other crustaceans, they shed their exoskeleton as they grow. They go through three general stages on their way to adulthood; first, the nauplius (plural nauplii). In this stage, they look like the one I found last week. Oldenburg University has a good photo; scroll down to the bottom. They moult in this stage a half-dozen or so times, then progress to the copepodid stage, which looks more like the adult. These moult five times, at each moult adding another segment to the tail**, (French; use Google translate.) with the appropriate appendages.
• In the adult stage, they mate. Like they say on Facebook, "It's complicated." Afterwards, the female carries two eggsacs around on either side of her tail. UVic, Australia, has a simple diagram. Here's an animation (Dutch). They hatch after a few days.

But I was searching for a match to last week's copepod:

I found a couple of similar photos; the nauplii, and an unidentified aquarium resident. Museum Victoria has a diagram, also unidentified. So I am still uncertain, but I think what I had is probably a junior copepod,  a nauplius.

For comparison, here is a mini-amphipod from the fishing expediton; it had two eyes, and kept the tail curved under; the various appendages at the tail end flutter constantly, keeping the water circulating around it.

This one was about 1.5 mm long, nose to tail. Unlike most of the other amphipods I saw, it was grey rather than green.

*In the absence of egg-sacs, I decided he could be male.
**Razouls C., de Bovée F., Kouwenberg J. et Desreumaux N., 2005-2009. - Diversity and Geographic Distribution of Marine Planktonic Copepods. Available at http://copepodes.obs-banyuls.fr/en
[Accessed December 21, 2009]

Holding my breath. One more day.

December 20th. The last day of fall. The shortest day of the year. It's about time. I'm ready for a bit more light around here.

Crow, watching the mid-afternoon onset of sunset.

I found my copepod! I'll write about that tomorrow.

Centennial Park sampler

I've been researching yesterday's mini-critters; I've narrowed it down to copepods, but there's a long way to go yet.

Meanwhile, here are a few more of the Centennial Beach photos:

Marsh beyond the dunes. We look for swallows here in the summer.

Willow branch and ice. Duck pond.

Overhead embroidery.

Lichen on the bark of an old cottonwood.

Winter, courtesy of Tim Horton's. Oh, Oh, Oh, courtesy of the city of Tsawwassen.

Veggie shopping. On the beach.

I wanted some sea lettuce. Or, in its absence, a bit of rotting kelp. Not for me, of course, but the crabs and hermits in my aquarium love the stuff. And the barnacles were wanting some fresh sea water, swarming with plankton. So when it stopped raining, we headed down to Boundary Bay again, plastic bags and bottle in hand.

Centennial Beach was almost empty; the sensible people were staying inside, in the warmth.  The pond was iced over.

"Thin Ice," a sign warned. I tested it, following Hugh's example, throwing rocks onto it. It didn't even chip. Not so thin.

There was no ice on the bay; the water was too bouncy to freeze.

A colourless day, grey and chill. The tide was high, just starting down. A few seagulls bobbed up and down offshore. The only sound was the incessant "Swish, swish, swish" of the waves.

We walked along the edge, poking in the eelgrass for goodies. Laurie found a small clam, and a ring of limpet shell, just the rim. I found an empty snail shell. Nothing else; the waves were tying everything loose up in tight knots of eelgrass. There was no sea lettuce, not surprising in mid-winter, of course. I did pick up a few pieces of kelp with holdfasts; the crabs swarm over those, poking into all the crevices for choice edibles.

Water for the barnacles, good stuff, full of stirred-up nutrition; I uncapped my bottle and dipped it in a spot where the shore slopes down steeply. An extra-large wave caught me unprepared, soaked my jacket sleeve and threatened my ankles. I gave up, with barely a cup of water. We were half-frozen anyhow.

A hint of colour and form on the way back across the dunes.

Sculpture. Needs a name.

At home, I decorated the aquarium with kelp and eelgrass, poured the cup of water over the barnacles. My offerings were enthusiastically received with waving cirri and snatching pincers. I rinsed out the plastic bag, and checked the bit of detritus for amphipods or miniature snails. A micro-dot of a critter was dancing along the bottom of the bowl. Even with the hand lens, it was still a speck; I got out the microscope.

Critter. 0.75 mm nose to tail. That's 750 micrometres (µm), or 1/30 inch.

I don't know what it is. Some sort of larva, maybe? Or an animal too small for my books to notice? Does anybody know?

I also found this little shrimpy thing.

I would say it's an amphipod, since they are plentiful in this water, except that the tail doesn't curve under. Help!

All in all, a productive afternoon, even though there was no sea lettuce.

Wordless

Well, almost.

Sunshine after rain. Lunchroom patio, Ikea, Richmond. 

.

Let it rain!

It's rained all day, and most of the slush has melted. We sensibly stayed off the roads and sat at home making Christmas stuff; cards (Laurie), "keeper" boxes (me).

I've discovered that only the boring purchases come in their own boxes. Antique sale, craft fair, and Culture Crawl gifts come wrapped in old newspaper or recycled packing material. So sometimes I get ambitious and make boxes. This time, I'm covering them in vintage hand-made paper that Laurie has been saving for years. Fun, but slow, delicate work; some of that paper falls apart in my fingers as soon as it touches glue.

(A GrrlScientist  post providing motivation, which I needed to get me started in the morning; The Psychology behind Wrapping Paper.)

No photos, because at least one of the recipients reads the blog.  So here's a junco, taken from my desk during a coffee break:

Looking for stray seeds on top of the hedge. There were a couple, caught in the soggy snow.

And now, off to bed. I've got another busy day tomorrow. Lee Valley Tools, Ikea, maybe a quick look into an antique store. I've got a little list ...

Ephemera

Snow! We have snow! And it's raining on top of all that pretty snow.

Well, it's BC. What can we expect?

Snow. Night exposure, no flash.

My little stone angel on the patio table.

And now, most of that snow is gone. But all is not lost! We do have slush!

Decidedly amateurish mushroom ID

Last week, I brought home a big mushroom from the Watershed Park, and laid it out to take a spore print. I forgot to read the instructions in my field guide; it's been a long time.

What the book says:

"... cut off the mushroom's stalk close to the base. Place the cap, with the gills or pores facing down, on a piece of white paper. ... Sometimes the spores fall more readily if you place a drop of water on the cap before you cover it. Some mushrooms produce spore prints in a few hours; others take much longer, sometimes overnight."

What I did: the stalk was almost non-existent, and off to the side, so I didn't trim it. I put the cap, gills down, half-and half on a couple of pieces of paper, one white, one deep burgundy (because I didn't have black around at the moment). The two colours are to allow for white spores, which wouldn't show up on the white paper. I touched a wet fingertip to the top of the cap.

And I forgot to cover it.

I'll go back to the beginning. Half-way down the slope of the park, we passed this log:

For several metres down its length, these large grey mushrooms were sprouting. The large one on the left was a bit over four inches long.

They were grey, with a hint of brown, smooth and leathery. Colours are difficult to judge in the shade of these trees, but the drying ferns look about right, and this is the way I remember the mushrooms. I used the flash.

Testing their softness, I accidentally broke a large one off, so it came home with me. It was gilled, with an inrolled rim ...

Freshly harvested, on a log.

... and had a pleasant, "woodsy" scent. The stem, what there was of it, was whitish and wooly.

Microscope photo (40x) of the curly gills near the edge. They are straight for the rest of their length.

Compare to the mushroom on my table, a day later:

Now it is a rich brown, with hints of maroon. The lighting may have something to do with it, but again, I used the flash and corrected for white balance. This is the way it looked to my eyes.

And there is a blowout of spores on the dark paper, nothing visible on the white. But when I lifted the mushroom, there was nothing underneath. I replaced it carefully, and waited another day and a half. When nothing was happening, I gave up and examined the print.

On the burgundy, the sprayed dust looked bluish-gray. On the white, under a bright light, I could distinguish the merest hint of cream, also sprayed off to the side. Under the microscope, at 200x, all I could see was this same faint dust.

I changed the colour balance on this photo, and jacked up the saturation, to highlight the pattern. It seems that the mushroom casts its spores off to the side, instead of just dropping them. Could this be helpful in spreading the colony to the next log? Would it have dropped spores directly beneath the cap if I had remembered to cover it?

Questions, questions.

At least, having done all this, I should be able to identify the mushrooms, right? I think so. As far as I can tell, it is the Late fall oyster, Panellus serotina (-us), common in Europe and here in North America; I found a report from our Sunshine Coast. "Serotinus" means "late"; they fruit after the first frosts.

"The odd variation in cap colors is quite distinctive. This mushroom almost always fruits only after the first frosts of the season. Although considered edible, it is quite tough and must be cooked a long time over low heat." 

(Another, more technical description. "... sometimes bitter ... nausea ...") I don't think I'll plan on sampling the next ones I find.

My fumbling around notwithstanding, I'm pleased. I'll be taking more spore prints in the future. With a cover on top.