Colt at sunset

I took this photo without flash, hand-held, in the semi-dark as the crowd filed out of Cavalia. Two colts had been left to roam alone freely on the stage after the show ended.

Except for resizing, the photo has been left as it came out of the camera.

Hidden harems

Each visit to the beach turns up a new mix of critters and plants to investigate. This Wednesday, we arrived at the White Rock beach just after high tide, a low high; there was plenty of barnacle-covered stony beach to keep us busy.

Stubby isopods like to hang out where the salinity is low. On this beach, that means around the openings of the culverts bringing runoff from the steep south slope of the town. Usually there are a few there, crawling around the tiny barnacles and mussels on the bottom side of the rocks.

This time, they were everywhere, in great numbers. Every stone I turned over had a busy colony.

Stubby isopods, aka Oregon pillbug, Gnorimosphaeroma oregonense. Look closely; the eyes are visible, mostly on the pale brown ones.

These isopods are very similar to the woodbugs (aka pillbugs, woodlice, roly-polies, etc.) that feed in our gardens. They grow to about 1/2 inch long at maturity, although most of the ones we saw were the smaller harem females. Like the land-based pillbugs, they roll up in a tight little ball if they are disturbed. Just brushing them off a stone will do it; they land rolling.

Pillbug "pill" on the barnacles, lower right.

It's spring; party time, time to find mates and start the next generation. For the stubby isopods, that means sex changes and harems. The baby isopod hatches as a female. She becomes a member of a harem "owned" by one male, produces one brood, then begins a series of molts which transforms her into a male, ready to find his own harem of immature, smaller females. If the harem's male is removed, or dies, the dominant female in the group becomes a male to take his place.

(Most other crustaceans that switch sexes have a reverse pattern; the immatures are male, and they become female at maturity.)

The spring population explosion will not last; crabs and hermit crabs love a snack of unrolled isopod. Like the tides, life on the beach ebbs and flows.

More info: UAS.Alaska, Protogynous Sex Change in the Intertidal Isopod Gnorimosphaeroma oregonense, WSU Beach Watchers.

Blue water, blue birds

I've got the blues ...

Taking photos at a birthday party in a living room with deep red walls and not enough light, I played around with my camera settings and white balance. The photos turned out ok, but I forgot to switch everything back. Oops!

On White Rock beach, the next day, all my photos came out blue, blue, very blue. And all my efforts to fix them only made them harsh and artificial.

Here are a couple of blue gulls, with as much colour correction as I could manage:

I loved the pale browns of the wing pattern. Oh, well.

Blue or not, this guy's happy! A whole big sole to himself!

New addition to check list for each day's prep:

1. Empty memory
2. Recharge battery
3. Replace clean lens cloth
4. Check settings!

Blue bird

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I promised you a "full story" on a walk down False Creek for yesterday morning, and then I got caught up reading the history of the area, and the time just slipped away. I'm sorry: the report will have to wait until tomorrow.

For now, here are a couple of kayakers under the Cambie Bridge in the early evening.

After that lead-in, I'll have to write about the history, too, won't I?

Frogs and tadpoles

... on a manhole cover.

Plaza paving, False Creek, Vancouver

It works as an optical illusion, too. Are all four corners of the photo 90 degrees, or not? Or is it the blog design that's gone crooked?

Full story on a walk down False Creek tomorrow.

Canada geese at sundown

In an artificial "creek" at False Creek, Vancouver

Pale Spring Beauty

In April of 2007, we found Pale Montia (aka Pale Spring Beauty) plants on the bare sand between the beach and the houses in Beach Grove. I've been watching for them every year since, with no luck. Until now, 4 years later.

Claytonia exigua, aka Montia exigua aka Montia spathulata

These are tiny succulents; the tallest this year were about 2 inches high. They're translucent, leaves, stems and all, and glow in the sunlight in colours from grey-green to a dusty pink with lime green tints, to a rose pink, to a deep violet, all looking good enough to eat.

Another greyish pink plant, with flowers.

The central "stalks" are basal leaves. The true stems are round, topped with two leaves cupping a clump of white flowers.

Rosy pink.

These look as if they would be a pretty addition to a salad. I wondered if they are edible, so I asked Google.

Yes! The plant is a member of the Portulaca (Purslane) family, of which many are edible and even delicious, and next, of the genus Montia, which includes Miner's lettuce, a good salad vegetable. Other names for Spring Beauty include "Indian lettuce" and sandcress. The leaves can be eaten raw or cooked.

And now that I know that, I don't think I'll be sampling the next one I see. They're too tiny, too rare, and too beautiful to eat.

In a sad ravine

We had stopped for coffee at a Tim Horton's we rarely visit. Behind the parking lot, separating it from a run-down trailer park and an apartment block, there is a narrow ravine. Yesterday, a sprinkling of new green leaves and catkins attracted my attention, and I looked over the fence.

It's a dark, dingy bit of terrain, cut off at each end by busy roads and high fences, polluted by runoff from a construction site upstream, untended, unvisited, except by people dumping garbage from both sides; coffee cups and old lumber, plastic and styrofoam, scraps of paper, and, of course, an upside-down shopping cart. At the bottom, a trickle of water meanders through oily mud.

Ma Nature is fighting back. Out of the muck have sprung hundreds of skunk cabbages; the floor of the ravine glows!

Clean, bright yellow and green!

Here and there, the first salmonberry flowers invite pollinating insects.

There's more! The ravine lives!

A woodpecker tree crumbling into the salmonberry bushes.

Some of the holes in that tree go deep into the centre.  Something other than woodpeckers has been at work. The largest hole would make a good den:

Is there a face inside that bottom hole?

Hanging high above, a pair of shoes is gathering moss.

We would have liked to scramble down to the bottom, but it was starting to rain. We went on into the Tim Horton's, found the line-up impossibly long, and went home without coffee.

Three's a crowd

Gulls and a delicious dead crab:

"Hi, buddy! What've you got?"

"Crab dinner. Your turn!"

"Hey, this is good! Thanks!"

"Hi, guys! What've you got?"
"Hey!" "That's ours!"

Teamwork

And the young one left, post-haste. He knows when he's not wanted.

A perpetual astonishment*

In a patch of weedy grass beside the path to the beach at Boundary Bay, we chased a butterfly, and found these:

Dead nettles and grape hyacinth

The butterfly. Cabbage white, male. The females have two spots in the centre of each wing.

And a pair of amorous ladybugs. These are the Seven-spotted Ladybug (but one is a guy), Coccinella septempunctata.

A good start to the buggy season!

*Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment.  ~Ellis Peters

Beach amusements

I've been sorting through the last of our recent beach photos. This collection, from Crescent Beach, may not be necessarily colour balanced or even in focus, but I found them interesting. Maybe you will, too.

Light:

Looking southwest, directly into the light, turns the gravel purple. 

Horizons:

I can't figure this out. Why is it that a distant horizon sometimes looks as if it were bending up at both ends ...

and sometimes it bends down, instead?

And then, sometimes it slides off to one side. (Laurie wanted all the sky and all the sand. Greedy.)

Underfoot:

Valleys in the sand. Modernistic figures, in a line-up, maybe.

A crinkly rock.

Flying things:

The ruler of the skies chases away an unwelcome airplane.

Kite above, kitesurfer below, speeding along in a stiff breeze. Heron standing still.

Your petticoats are showing!

 Rust:

Bolts on heavy driftwood planks. Because I like the texture.

Something old, something new.

We can't resist a good antiques fair. Even if the venue is colder inside than it is outside in the rain, and crowded, besides, so that we are constantly bumping into or being bumped by other enthusiasts; even if the closest parking is blocks away, our feet are sore, and our bags heavy. It's worth it all to see the beautiful things people have created, so long ago, and the ingenious, practical, or just wacky ideas they came up with.

Laurie has been collecting Japanese porcelain for years, and more recently, Chinese jade. I look at everything, enjoying the glimpses into an older, sometimes comforting, sometimes strange and foreign world. I learn something new at every fair.

Yesterday, Saturday, we bought several good jade carvings; mythical beasts, a dancing shaman/cricket, a sensitive father/son portrait. And in the Baker's Dozen Antiques stand, I found this ghostly mask:

Fine wire mesh mask with painted features, copper trim, and cloth ties to hold it in place.

Red, well-shaped lips, and a wavy mustache. The nose is a mere crease in the mesh.

The mesh is so fine that the mask allows the back of the child's chair and the face of the painting behind that to show through. Only the eyes and mouth mark the character it portrays.

I'd never seen anything like this before, so I had to research it when I got home. It is an Oddfellows mask from the end of the 19th century.  They used these in their initiation ceremonies; every member except the newcomer wore a mask, although he was blindfolded, so the masks were not meant as disguises. Some descriptions of the ritual - dunking him in water, rolling him in the shrubbery, rattling chains at him - sound as if it were mostly horseplay, maybe a spoof of more serious rituals from other societies.

Here are a few photos of similar masks.

Close-up of the eyes. I moved the mask away from the painting. The "headband" is the edge of the chair seat.

I didn't buy this, although I was tempted. After a pep talk I had given Laurie on the way there, about not buying anything if we didn't have a place to display it, I felt silly about suggesting it, even. Now I sort of wish I had; I think I know where I would have hung it.

It had been cold and windy, with a bit of rain when we went back to the car to get our lunch. But when we left in the afternoon, the sun was bright and warm. The residential district we crossed on our way back to the bridge was lined with trees in full bloom, mostly cherry and star magnolias. I stopped so we could take a few photos.

Pink star magnolia.

Pink and white.

Laurie's favourite. Cherry, magnolia, and feathery branches blowing in the wind. What is that tree?

In the lawn underneath a magnolia, tiny blue flowers, Veronica, I think, nestled in the grass.

At home, I parked the car, yawned, stretched and groaned. Oh, my back! And then we said, almost in unison, "A very good day!"

Company for supper

I was on the road most of the day, yesterday*. It was good to come home and find company waiting for me:

White crowned sparrow, looking for supper. His mate was more timid, and waited in the shade of the hedge. 

Carpet beetle, just finished his supper on the cut edge of an African violet leaf.

And today, we're going to the antique fair. We're sure to find something interesting to show you.

*Friday, that is. Even though I haven't gone to bed yet, it is Saturday morning. I wish the days ended a few hours later, after I'm sleepy enough to go to bed, so I could avoid this confusion!

Discarded finery

Scattered all along the upper levels of Crescent Beach this week, we saw dozens of these crab carapaces:

Helmet crab shell, in shallow water. About 2 inches tip to tip. They may grow to 4 inches.

At first, I thought there had been a die-off, and then I looked more closely. Each one was just the clean upper carapace, unbroken, with no legs or "innards" attached. So it was a general molt, which signals mating time. The crabs come up to the intertidal zone, and the males choose their mate and hold onto her until she molts. Females are not able to mate until they have a new, still soft, carapace.  Within a day or so, the shell has hardened, and the opportunity gone for this year.

We don't usually find these crabs (Cancer cheiragonus) live in the intertidal zone, so this is all the evidence of crabby romance that we will see.

A small collection of sun-dried shells, inside a larger Dungeness crab shell.

I love the textures of these crab shells, especially the pale yellow inner wall of the helmet crab on top. The shell of the Dungeness is quite different, sort of like a stuccoed wall. Click on the photo to see these full size.

Midafternoon moon

The moon stoops low over Crescent Beach:

Taken just before 3 in the afternoon.

A Skywatch post.

Ping-pong paddle worm

Back in February, I brought home a big, empty thatched acorn barnacle shell. Empty, that is, except for a colony of tiny acorn barnacles and a handful of mussels. And this worm:

I looked for it and quickly found it on the web. However, the one it looked like was an Atlantic and European species, so over the last month, I've been sporadically going back and hunting around. It wasn't until yesterday that I found it mentioned in a book of invertebrates from California to Oregon, as an import from the Eastern seaboard. Good enough; I think it's a Phyllodoce mucosa.

There is an excellent photos here, and a video showing walking style of a different species of Phyllodoce.

Still here ...

I'm hung up loading a video to YouTube. It should be ready a bit later this morning.

Here's a hint, with a heart for Clytie:

And now YouTube is back on line. Gotta go!

Spring walks down the alley

In Crescent Beach (the town) we usually park near the railroad tracks, and walk down a shady alley to Crescent Beach (the beach). Yesterday, flowers and leaves, both wild and tame, and a quirky bird enlivened the path:

Dead nettle. Look at it full size to see the hairs that cover it, even including the flowers.

A profusion of star magnolia.

Variegated ivy on an algae-tinted post. This variety always looks as if it were wilting. Here, it is actually past its sell-by date, but still beautiful.

Beach pea sprouting through clean sand.

Indian plum, dancing in the wind.

Another view.

On the path at the top of the beach, someone had added a bird to a broken branch in a mess of straggly weeds and shrubs.

A finger-tip sized rubber duckling.

I still haven't finished that video. Maybe tomorrow.