Polka-dotted prize

Poking around the yard, avoiding getting started on some real work out there, I discovered a group of tiny white millipedes on the bottom of a dead leaf:

Blaniulus gluttulatus, the spotted snake millipede?

This one is about 5.5 mm. long, or 1/4 inch, and looks as if it were made of glass, with red polka-dot decorations and milky head and tail.

The long "sticks" are pine needles.

Close-up of the spots.

I found them, or their close cousins, on BugGuide: juvenile spotted snake millipedes, an introduced species from Europe. BugGuide has photos from across America, from Massachusetts in the east, to Washington State, just south of here. The adult grows up to about an inch and a half, and may be up to five years old.

These millipedes are mainly subterranean (How do they stay so sparkling clean?); I only found them because I was turning over leaves that were half-buried in the topsoil and duff. They can become a pest in gardens, because of their diet of live plant matter. They like potatoes, carrots, and other root crops, including bulbs (my daffodils?).

The red spots along the sides are defensive glands:

Millipedes also use a variety of chemical defenses. Many have special repugnatorial glands that produce ill-smelling and/or caustic fluids that ooze through openings along the side. These fluids, which are mixtures of hydrocyanic acid, iodine and various quinones, can stain and irritate skin. Insects confined with a millipede may be killed by these substances. (From Millipedes of Colorado)

I like that word, "repugnatorial"!

Some of the millipedes on the leaf were about half the size of the one above.

Such a cutie!

On these, the spots were yellow.

But if those are eyes, then it will be another Balanius, maybe a native. B. guttulatus is blind; it has no eyes.

And my procrastinating habits have been reinforced, once again!

All tied up in knots.

I've been having a few computer problems, and they're getting worse. Now, the thing shuts down on me every little while, without warning. I'll be getting help in the morning, but for now, I'll have to call it quits.

And Laurie went out for a walk while I fought with the beast on my desk, and came home with another enemy to be tackled:

The Japanese knotweed by the fence has sprouted again. More stuff to do tomorrow; chop the thing down. Again. (Sigh)

For now, I've done enough. I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

Liquid sunshine

I went to a baby shower in Vancouver's West End. It was showering outside, too...

Afternoon rain over Burrard Inlet.

Rainclouds. Stanley Park across the water, West Vancouver in the distance.

Whatever the weather, she's on the beach ...

Mystery green thing. What is it?

This is the time of year to look for lichens and tree fungi; when it's not too cold to stand still, admiring, and the leaves still haven't hidden them from view.

These are a few from that "spooky wood"*.

Staghorn lichen? Two different species? The one on the left is slender and spiky. And a flattened leaf lichen. On bark of a creek-side shrub.

More staghorn.

A leaf lichen on a twig. It looks like Parmelia (sulcata?).

And I don't know what to think of this next one. Is it a lichen or a shelf fungus? Or a lichen colonizing a shelf? (Click on the photo to see it full-size. What do you think?)

Mystery green thing.

And a common shelf fungus:

Iffy photo of the whole shelf. Too much white on top for the long-suffering camera.

Underside of a similar one on the same log.

Googling along, looking for holly-leaf lichen colonizing bracket fungi, a question caught my eye; "Why do lichens ..." And I had clicked away from it before I realized that it was the perfect question. Why do lichen take on so many disguises? Why do they eat rock? Why do they live on so many different suraces? Why do they change shape and colour from one week to the next?

1. To drive us amateurs crazy? or ...
2. To drive the professionals crazy, too? or ...
3. Because they can?

*The wood is not all that spooky in real life. It's a mini-bird sanctuary; the snags have been left purposefully. Eagles perch here, flickers, woodpeckers, assorted songbirds, and even a horned owl nest in the cavities in the broken and dying trees. Unfortunately, from the shade of the understory, the birds are black shapes against the sky. When they're visible at all, that is.

The lichens, at least, are at eye level.

Where monsters dwell

When I was a kid, a stock setting for children's stories was the spooky wood; a place where strange, convoluted  trees reached out to grab the fleeing child, where roots tangled the unwary foot, where monstrous shapes lurked in the dusk.

We found that wood, today. And ventured inside.

It looked innocent enough at first ...

...but it quickly turned dark and threatening.

Dead, twisted branches reared high above our heads ...

... hiding tunnels and caves. Black windows looked down on us ...

... where unseen monsters lurked ...

Is that an eye in there?

A touch of deceptive familiarity, luring us deeper into the woods; a robin. Colourless, though, against the grey sky, and perched on bare, shapeless snags.

But what new threat is this? Godzilla? Godzilla with wings?

Some sort of prehistoric hairy mammoth, on the rampage! Hide!

I think that's the goddess Kali. Flee!

We barely escaped with our lives.


A Skywatch post.

The name says it all

Sunshine Hills, on the heights above Burns Bog, gets started on their spring blooms a couple of weeks before the rest of Delta.

Last week, they were running the April program up there:

Wallflowers

Magnolia center

Pasque flower. I love those feathery leaves!

These look like they're made of wax. They're not.

Pieris japonica

Pink heather. This blooms all winter up here.

White magnolia, small-petalled variety. This was on a huge tree, a mass of white blooms top to bottom.

Pretty fly on the white magnolia.

Sunshine Hills is early; my shady garden is late. But yesterday morning, the first flower bud of my Dutchman's breeches started to unfold. We'll get there, yet.

Of old forests and new life

A couple of weeks ago, browsing the shelves at Black Bond Books, looking for new bird or insect guides, I came across Wildlife & Trees in British Columbia. (Lone Pine, 2006) It looked interesting, and there was a section on birds that looked quite detailed. I bought it, shelved it at home, and forgot it; it's been a hectic two weeks.

I picked it up after supper tonight, and have been reading ever since. (7:00 to 1 AM.) It's that good.

The book was designed with forestry managers in mind, but it's loaded with goodies for birders, tree-watchers, and everybody that ever walks down forest trails. The authors tie together rotting trees, birds, bears, fungi, fire, bats, ants, rivers, beetles ...

They start with the trees;

 "What makes a tree a wildlife tree?"

They describe the 8 stages of decay, from a live, healthy tree, to the pile of rotted wood on the forest floor. Each stage has its function in the life of the forest and its residents. Soft wood for insects; food for the birds. Hollow trunks; nest and roosting sites. Bats hang in them, bears den in the larger ones. Protected winter shelters, bare branches for hawk lookouts, loose bark for brown creepers' nests. The tree has barely started its useful life when it dies.

Photos and descriptions show these stages clearly; I'll be looking at trees with clearer eyes from now on.

Woodpecker tree, Watershed Park. Stage 6, I think.

A couple of sections deal with conservation issues for forest managers. I barely skimmed these, although I will definitely go back later and read them.

Next is "Knowing the Trees"; an introduction, followed by a description of 25 of our local trees. (The map covers BC to California.) There's so much info here! My other tree books have species descriptions and maybe a photo or two. In W&T, besides, there's growth patterns, characteristic aging and decay, associations with other trees, and the birds and beasts that depend on them.

"The western red cedar can survive with a higher ratio of decayed wood to living wood than any other B.C. tree species, and ... hollow trunks are relatively common ..."

"Most of the old (Garry) oaks that provide cavities for wildlife today date back to pre-settlement times."

After this, comes "Knowing the Wildlife", and here's where the book really shines for me.  66 species accounts: Birds, Bats ( I had no idea there were so many different species of bats in BC.), Other Mammals. These divided into three categories: Primary Cavity Excavators (chickadees to woodpeckers), Secondary Cavity Users (ducks, owls, bats to bears), Open Nesters (herons, eagles, hawks).

"Some wildlife species depend completely on wildlife trees to complete their life cycles. ... The degree of dependence was a key factor when deciding which species to include in this guide ..."

"Framed" holes. This tree would be stage 2; it still has most of its branches.

The bird section includes nesting sites, roosting habits, wintering holes, distance from feeding grounds, favoured trees and locations in/on the tree, size of holes. And photos; some great shots of owls peeking out of their trees. (As well, in the introduction, there is a section describing how to find active nesting sites for various birds; when, where, how they are hidden.)

I am going to be using this info!

"Great horned owls will cache excess prey. In winter, they thaw frozen meals by incubating them like eggs."

 The book ends with Appendices, including a species list for each zone. Our area has 56 wildlife tree-dependent vertebrate species.

Almost perfectly rounded hole in long-dead tree.

"In a society that values youth, beauty and physical perfection above all else, Nature frequently reminds us that ... the old, ugly and deformed can be equally desirable and perhaps more valuable. Wildlife trees are a case in point."

Why we kneel in vacant lots.

Taking a shortcut across a vacant lot this afternoon, I noticed a tiny moss, barely the height of my shoe soles.

Funaria hygrometrica, Cord moss.

I have probably seen it before; it's common enough. But I had never noticed how the stems curl. I thought it was from the weight of the ripening spore capsules; the brown, dry ones are standing upright. I was jumping to conclusions, and got it wrong, as so often happens.

Half an inch high, if that. That big green leaf in back is a small cloverleaf.

This moss is also known as Water-Measuring Moss, because in dry weather, the mature stems curl and twist. "Dry weather", here in the spring, probably means any day it's not actively raining. These plants were on a smear of gravelly soil, hard-packed, and thoroughly dry.

Green capsules, fat and luscious, and brown capsules, wrinkled and open at the end, the spores already dispersed.

Companion flower, Common Draba or Whitlow grass. About as tall as my little finger.

If you look closely to the right of the flower; you can see the base of the moss, like small brown vases with one stem apiece.

Looking for info, I found a nice site with almost 200 photos of mosses arranged in alphabetical order. A quick, easily scanned reference, very handy.

Feisty, fast, ferocious. I'm glad it's tiny.

The miniature crab spider that lives on my desk was hungry. She had eaten the last of the Indian meal moths from the bird seed, and I hadn't fed her for almost a week. But bug season is beginning; even in my shady yard, a few small flies are showing up. I went out hunting for something the spider might like.

Under a dead maple leaf, I found a pillbug, far too big. But I gathered a handful of leaves and brought them inside to search for spider goodies. I found a couple of springtails; that would do.

Something ran out from under a leaf. Tiny, like a springtail, but it didn't hop. Whenever I tried to pick it up with my skinny paintbrush, it raced backwards, as fast as it had been running forward.

Under a magnifying glass, it waved big, angular pincers at me, like a crab would. I captured it, finally, in a drop of water, then photographed it with the camera and the microscope.

Pseudoscorpion, 1.9 mm long, nose to rear, not counting pincers.

My first thought was "beetle"; some beetles have quite impressive pincers. But it has a waist, and the abdomen is segmented. There are no wings or wing covers. And it has eight legs, which makes it an arachnid, a relative of the spiders.

There are four pages of photos of non-spider arachnids in my insect and spider book. It took only a minute to find a similar family; Chernetidae. And another minute to find Chernetids on BugGuide and retrieve photos of pseudoscorpions. As to which pseudoscorpion, I will have to ask the BugGuide guides. The photo that most closely matches mine was taken in New York, far away. There are at least 26 species, in 7 families, here in Canada, and 3,400 species worldwide. (BugGuide)

Anytime he saw my shadow, he raised those big pincers high in the air, threatening me. Scary!

The pseudoscorpions are predators, like their kin, spiders, mites and ticks, and the "true" scorpions. The pincers have two parts; a large hand-claw combination, and a movable claw. This claw is venomous. (Not that I would worry; it's too small to penetrate my skin. Most are under 8 mm. or 1/3 inch long, )

They live in many habitats, including leaf litter, where I found mine, preying on small flies, mites, ants, even butterflies and worms, if they're small enough. They also eat carpet beetle larvae, which makes them heroes in my eyes; the larvae got one of my favourite sweaters last winter.

The mouthparts include four sharp points, rather like another large pair of pincers. I can't find any mention of these being poisonous.

Head of pseudoscorpion, showing the mouth. I am not sure whether I'm seeing eyes or not.

A few interesting facts from Wikipedia:

The abdomen is short and rounded at the rear, rather than extending into a segmented tail and stinger like true scorpions. 

They may have two, four or no eyes. 

During digestion, pseudoscorpions pour a mildly corrosive fluid over the prey, then ingest the liquefied remains.

Pseudoscorpions spin silk from a gland in their jaws to make disk-shaped cocoons for mating, molting, or waiting out cold weather. 

Chelifer cancroides is the species most commonly found in homes, where they are often observed in rooms with dusty books. There the tiny animals (2.5 to 4.5 mm) can find their food like booklice and house dust mites. They enter homes by "riding along" with larger insects (known as phoresy), or are brought in with firewood.

They also ride under beetles elytra, preying on the mites that plague the beetles. Wikipedia has a photo of one riding a small fly.

Steve Taylor (Illinois Natural History Survey) has some great photos of pseudoscorpions of the US.

Variety pack

If it's flat, you can find it in Boundary Bay Regional Park. Wetlands, salt marsh, dry dunes, dyke, stony shore, squelchy mud flats, sandy beach, abandoned farmlands, ancient apple trees, waterways, mowed picnic area; it's all there.

Most of the inshore area is off-limits for humans, but a new raised bridge allows us to cross a corner of the waterfowl habitat, at eye-level with the tops of the cattails and rushes.

Last year's cattails

Dense thickets of dead reeds, with their feet in the water. Duck heaven.

The bridge connects us to the Raptor Trail, which wanders down a narrow strip of sand between the wetlands and abandoned fields.

I had to include this photo of a headless dog. (Who should have been on the leash.) He developed a head a minute later.

More wetlands, then the edge of Tsawwassen. Hawk heaven.

Where there is water, the cattails and rushes dominate. Small drier areas allow blackberries to provide safe nesting and chirping areas for sparrows and other small birds. Walking near any one of these, we could hear the constant chatter inside, but only once did I see a resident. Ditches and canals drain the inland areas, where the apple trees still drop wormy apples in the fall. Herons and kingfishers hunt for frogs and small fish; ducks patrol the pools.

Draining out to the mud flats.

Queen Anne's lace. Holding the spot for this year's crop.

Live trees, dead snags. Mount Baker in the distance.

The zigzag fence marks the boundary between wildlife-only areas and our trail. It's cattail country here; the snags in back are mostly dead, with the water well above the roots, and shelf fungus colonizing the trunks. Here we saw, this trip, assorted crows and a flicker, unfortunately a mere tiny silhouette against the bright sky.

Distant flicker.

Pair of crows scolding a hawk that dared pass overhead.

Where the sand takes over, the land is hard and grey, with a smattering of inch-deep greenery here and there.  They're mostly mosses and lichens, with an occasional cluster of miniature flowers:

Bright green moss, and a few blades of grass.

Another moss.

And a common draba, Draba verna, already gone to seed. About two inches tall.

Later in the year, shiny blue wasps will decorate the sand, buzzing around hundreds of yellow gumweed flowers; March is the month for delicate beauties.