Six wings over Cougar Creek

The afternoon was hot, but rain threatened. We risked a quick walk around the lagoon in Cougar Creek Park. It's been a while; we were last there in January, when the lagoon was frozen over. And as always, we found much to interest us, new and old.

The old, but well worth seeing again:

Yes, we see you!

The great blue heron is a beautiful bird ...

... with horrible feet. Needs a manicure.

Caught with his mouth open. He was making an odd squeaking sound, like a rusty door hinge. I've never heard a heron do that before.

He didn't like it when I imitated him. "Impertinent human!" I think he said.

And four more spectacular wings, a tad smaller:

Updated: Eight-spotted skimmer. Thank you, Sara!

We tracked a red meadowhawk through the tall grasses, but it was far too fast for us. It was the first time I'd seen one in Cougar Creek.

New doings, new finds at CC, next.

Look me straight in the eye and say that!

The Asian mudflat snail is an invasive pest. A million or so of them make a beach crunchy; they wipe out native snails and discourage birds. It's easy to learn to grumble at them, easy to miss their beauty. To appreciate that, you have to get down, eye to eye with them, one at a time.

Mudflat snail, in a matching coat and shell, with barnacle scar cap.

Shimmering grey-green and black coat, an observant eye.

Of course, it helps if they're in a clean tank, out of all that mud.

Orange

At the New Westminster Quay:

18-spot ladybug

Lilies

Pansies

Deceptive succulent. The prickly stem is another plant.

Succulent, unidentified.

Spider sampler

We've been finding spiders these days, everywhere we go. Some are new to me; others are old friends. Here's an assortment:

One of the ubiquitous cross spiders, Araneus diadematus, outside our door, in his tattered web.

These spiders are often very pretty.

Nieta, my resident American house spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum. She's getting fat. I expect to see eggs any day now.

A tiny male, hanging out near Nieta's web in hopes of love. Or at least not being eaten before they mate.

Another of  the web builders. Probably Hibana sp.

A very small, fast spider, unidentified. Philodromus dispar. Thanks, BugGuide!

This one's smaller still; 3 mm nose to tail. Round from the top view, flat from the side. Very alert; good eyesight. Unidentified.

Another unidentified spider. Makes skimpy webs along walls, ceilings. This one was far above my head.

Zebra jumping spider, Salticus scenicus.

And a different jumper, on a blackberry leaf in White Rock. I couldn't identify this one. BugGuide has 9000 jumping spiders. I gave up half-way through.

A wolf spider, Arctosa perita, on the sand at Centennial Beach.

A big Tegenaria ran out of a planter box I was carrying. I didn't get a photo; I screamed and tossed the box onto the ground, and the spider escaped. I somehow can't get rid of that reflex, a leftover from ancient trauma. The story is here; Sleeping with tarantulas.

A sticky situation

Rhododendrons have sticky sap. Especially the flower heads, even more so the aging, dying flower heads. Every time I deadhead our row of rhodos, my hands end up so caked with the glue that I have to scrub and scrape with soap and hot water several times. Last time, I used gloves; I had to throw away two pairs.

Thursday afternoon, I pruned one big rhododendron. Cleaning up the mess later, I noticed that a fallen flower had a bumblebee still working on it. "That's dedication!" I thought, and went for the camera.

Busy bee, as I found him.

But he seemed to be oddly scrunched up.

He kept his head down to the sap, antennae dancing. I figured he would leave when he was good and ready, and set the flower aside, where I wouldn't crush it doing the cleanup. Three hours later, I remembered, and went to see if he was gone. No.

He was still in the same position. I brought him inside, and we inspected him. I thought he just may have been chilled, but ...

See the problem? His head is glued to the flower.

I set him and his flower on a clean sheet of paper and we waited for him to warm up and detach himself. He tried, pulling and twisting. He got his head and front legs free, but his hind legs were firmly fastened. I teased them away from the flower stalk with a paintbrush, but over and over, just as one leg came free(ish), he panicked and twisted to grab the stalk, where he stuck again.

Head and front legs free. Unhappy bee.

Finally, I convinced him to grab the paintbrush instead. As soon as the last leg pulled away, I whipped the flower out of reach.

He was still all sticky; he kept dragging one leg under the other to clean it. As glue pulled off one foot, it stuck to the other. He walked around slowly, dragging the two back legs; he couldn't lift them off the paper. I hosed him down (well, sprayed him and the paper lightly with cool water) a couple of times. After about half an hour, he was able to walk almost normally, but he was exhausted.

Very sad bee. There's still debris glued onto the back legs.

What do you do for a depressed bumblebee? Give him something sweet! I brought him a dampened sugar cube, and he perked right up.

Drilling for sugar. You can see the tongue at the tip of the maxillae (long, tubular jaws). The hind leg still sticks to the paper.

An hour later, he was able to fly about, and anxious to be free. I noticed that he'd torn up some of the damp paper and it was attached to his feet.  Wait a bit longer, little bee! Another bath, another combing ...

Bee in glass, with paper slippers.

Eventually, I bedded him down for the night with fresh, clean paper. In the morning, I set him outside to wake up in the sunshine. When I looked again, he was gone.

'nother question; the bees are busy on the rhododendrons from dawn to dusk. Why don't they stick to the flowers like this one did?

A time machine would have helped with this

We were sitting quietly in the evening after another strenuous day in the garden, half dozing, half watching a slide show of our recent photos. "We have a good life," I said. "So much beauty, so much to do, so many new things to learn ..." So many questions to find answers to, I could have added.

Here are a couple of those questions.

On White Rock beach last Tuesday, the tide was low and going out, there was no wind and the water was smooth, the wavelets retreating down the sand gently, barely stirring the sea lettuce as it went. We walked west, towards Kwomais Point, staying mostly on the drying sand.

Something else had been going the same way.

What made these?

Small footprints went straight along the beach, a purposeful walk, with no meandering and only a couple of stops to dig at something in the sand.  They went on and on, directly west, crossing several of the streams emptying onto the beach, a long walk out in the open for most woodland creatures.

Four toes with sharp claws, and a rounded heel.

About an inch and a half long.

This was not a dog; it traveled in a straight line, it kept a steady pace, and its gait was unusual; four steps in a group, one in front of the next, then a long space, then four more. And although sometimes human footprints went alongside (as mine would, too), they varied; barefoot, or shod with an assortment of sole prints. Mostly, the tracks went on alone.

After a time, I met tracks coming back towards me, then the end of the line; the animal did a U-turn, for no perceptible reason, and headed back in the same manner, four steps, jump, four, jump ...

Going and coming, with the U at the end. Barefoot human alongside here.

So what was it? I've spent the evening looking at animal tracks, comparing the shapes, the number of toes, the claws, and the gait. First, the most common around here; raccoon, skunk, fox, coyote. It's none of those. It's not a domestic cat; they sheathe their claws.

The animal whose tracks are most like this is a mink. They have five toes, but the fifth often does not show up on their tracks. And they bound, rather than walk, making a pattern of four steps and a pause. So do other mustelids, like otters (but they're bigger). So do skunks. (Remember Pepe le Pew; bounce, bounce, bounce!)

But. Minks are nocturnal. What would one be doing walking brazenly down a public beach in broad daylight? And they usually hunt in fresh water. (But here's a photo of mink tracks on a Vancouver Island beach.)

So I am left with the question unanswered. I am inclined to go with mink, but it's not quite a match. What do you think?

Question # 2:  We passed 7 dying Lion nudibranches, Melibe leonina.  I had never seen any so big before; most I've found have been under 2 inches long, even with the hood extended. These were all around 4 inches long.

The tentacles on the left are along the rim of the feeding hood. The paddle-like shapes are cerata; defense and decoy organs; they also help with respiration. 

Another one, with foot for a measuring stick. 4 inches.

What made these wash up on the beach and die?

At least this question was easily answered. Melibe lives for one year. In the spring, she* mates, lays her eggs on kelp and eelgrass, then dies. These would have finished their egg-laying, and are moving aside for the next generation.

*Most sea slugs, Melibe included, are hermaphrodites; each animal has both male and female organs. And they all lay eggs. "She" just works better for them.

There's a beautiful photo of Melibes mating, here, on the Sea Slug Forum. This was in February, but I've found records of egg-laying in this area from March to July (photos).

Sand and sky, with polka dots

The patterns and textures of White Rock beach at low tide:

Above the usual high tide line, fragments of driftwood slowly disintegrate.

When the wind lets up, the gentle wavelets are responsive to tiny local differences in the sand.

The five-pointed star of a dime-sized sand dollar.

Purple polka dots on the pincers of an angry crab. And drying sea lettuce.

Sharp points of a molted crab shell.

And the abdominal plate of another.

Seaweed draped over a rock, and floating in the shallow water.

Rocks, seaweed, and reflections. Looking west towards White Rock.

Rocks and empty sea. Looking east.

Critters and questions, next.

T-shaped clouds

I have never seen clouds like this before. Have you?

Headless angels?

Seen from White Rock beach, Tuesday PM.

Blogger's only human ...

It's not working. It refuses to load photos, whatever I do. I'll try again in the morning.

Goodnight!

(I'm wondering if it will even post this.)

Compost critters, Part II

The little moths I found in my compost pile (see yesterday's post) puzzled me. What were they doing there? What moth pupates in rotting leaves? None that I knew of.

I had captured one. It was tiny, about 1 cm. long, with feathery wings, golden and shiny. It looked vaguely familiar.

I took a couple of quick photos, and foolishly released the moth. Later, examining the photo, I remembered. It looked like the Shy Cosmets that I hatched a couple of years ago. But they live down on the marshes, not here.

Shy Cosmet moth, 2008. A careful photo, and a tidy moth, but it matches  in all the essentials.

Head shot, 2008.

A bit of background is in order here.  In March of 2008, Seabrooke Leckie, in Ontario, brought home a cattail head, following the example of Gerry Wykes in Detroit, who had found the larvae of the Shy Cosmet protected from the January weather inside one. (Bug in a Cat-tail Rug.) Seabrooke examined hers and found one larva. (Her post: Cotton candy for blackbirds.)

In April, I brought home my own cattail head. (Blanket on a stick.) I found dozens of caterpillars; they looked like Seabrooke's, even though the shy one is an eastern species. After I photographed them, I left them in closed containers and forgot about them until August. When I examined them then, I found the moths. And they were Shy Cosmets. (Pure Gold!)

Back to the present. The Shy Cosmet is a marsh dweller, feeding on cattail seeds, and being eaten, in turn, by red-wing blackbirds. The larvae winter inside a downy blanket of cattail fluff and emerge as adults in June or July. If my compost moths were Shy Cosmets, what were they doing up here on the hills, so far from home?

I needed a better photo. I went out and raked around the edges of the place where the compost pile had been. Under a mat of dead nettle, I found about a half bucket of unsorted compost, which I dumped on the tarp and examined for moths. There were two; one flew away as soon as I saw it, the other waited until my hand was a few inches away, then led me on a merry chase around the lawn, into the cedars and then the rhododendrons before I lost it. Uncooperative beast! I think I heard it giggling.

So I sorted the compost, as I had the rest, pulling out all the sticks and rhodo leaves.  When I pulled apart one clump, it contained a fist-full of creamy fluff. Fresh, undecomposed cattail fluff!

Cattail "down", 2008

Oh.

Now I remember; Laurie brought home a cattail a few months ago. I must have tossed it in the compost when it started to break up. And I didn't notice it was carrying dozens of healthy little caterpillars.  Mystery solved. And it seems that the moths have decided to stay in BC. Can't blame them; the weather's better here.