Unironed winter lace

Squiggles upon squiggles ...

The skeleton of a tree with the jitters.

A Skywatch post.

Hermie gets a makeover

When they eat, they scatter the crumbs. They don't clean their plate; they don't tidy away leftovers. That's SEP*. They abandon their houses, walking off with nary a backward glance. Occasionally, they strip off their old clothes and drop them on the ground. Then they climb to high places and sit there, all undressed.

No wonder they get into trouble!

Another of my hermit crabs molted this afternoon. I found his discarded body armour floating in the current, and looked for the ex-owner.

Sure enough; he's resting on the top of a clump of sea lettuce.

He's one of the hairy hermits. The hair isn't usually so apparent. Now, it's new and just stretching out. And he has no jacket on.

While he's walking around in the altogether, we get a chance to count legs. A hermit has 5 pairs of legs, including the pair that serves as pincers. Two more legs on each side are used for walking. The fourth pair, easily seen in this photo, is used to move in and out of the shell he borrows. The fifth pair is smaller, barely visible here. It is used to clean the gills and to remove wastes.

Visitor.

At the very tip of the abdomen, a pair of curvy uropods works as an anchor inside the shell.

As long as the hermit stays aloft, in my tank, he's fine. If there were any fish, he wouldn't be; he'd be a fine lunch. Here, once he goes down to search for a new shell, any crab that he meets will eat his soft abdomen. I kept an eye on him; when he climbed down, I chased out my one crab and put him in a bowl to keep him out of mischief. (I gave him a piece of fish as compensation.)

Hermie took his time choosing his new shell; so many styles and patterns!

He was slow; the crab had to stay in solitary for three hours. While I was watching, I noticed something else in the tank:

Six pearly eggs!

Spring is definitely on it's way, and the snails are ready for it. One of them laid these eggs. I don't know which; there are four species of snail in this tank; the invasive mud snails, a bunch of pretty little Nassas, several periwinkles, and some really tiny, pointy snails that I haven't been able to identify yet. These last are smaller than the eggs, so they're not the parents. Any one of the others could be.

Bonus; the teeniest of all the hermits, like a half grain of rice, even with the shell on.

And Hermie finally decided on that fat white whelk shell.

*Somebody Else's Problem. See Douglas Adams.

Failed rescue attempt

For a few days, I hosted a pair of small clams that I found abandoned high and dry on the beach, probably dropped by gulls, then left because they didn't break. The treatment had been too much for them, though; they didn't survive.

But they tried their best. Here's one, showing his teeth.

With a hermit almost small enough to enter that tunnel.

A clam has two siphons, which it extends up to the top of the sand to feed. (This clam did not burrow into the sand, a sign that it wasn't feeling all that well.) Water enters through the one towards the front, away from the hinge, (the incurrent siphon), food and oxygen are filtered out, and the waste water is pumped out through the rear siphon (excurrent).

Since the clam is a filter feeder, straining out microplankton and organic "dust" from the water, the hermit crab is in no danger; he's not going to be sucked in by the gentle current the clam generates.

Nor will he be bitten by those "teeth" around the opening of the siphon.

I couldn't find a name or a function for these tooth-like structures.

Name this thingie

It took me a while to figure out just what Laurie had taken a photo of. And he sees faces in it that I can't.

What do you see?

Snail with a chimney? Sheepdog house?

Over on Fertanish Chatter, Bill has been posting photos of tree bark, asking the same question. He's on #9 already; this one's easy, some of the others, not so.

Fog and winter sunlight

A collection of photos from two January afternoons on the White Rock and Semiahmoo beaches. (Same beach, opposite sides of the pier.)

Sunshine, fog, and the gulls flying ...

White breasts all in a row

More wing than gull

This little girl brought back memories. I was her, so many years ago. She moved along slowly, on hands and knees, examining each spot carefully. Once, she jumped up and ran to show her mother something she'd found. A minute later, she was back, searching through the stones again.

At one point she opened her arms as wide as possible, as if to embrace the whole marvellous beach. I know what she meant.

Kindred spirit.

Crow on a log. Some of the brush keeps its red colour all winter.

From the Semiahmoo beach, a hint of sunset, with birds flying into it.

The afternoon train, between the promenade and the actual beach.

Eagle, far overhead. Another golden juvenile?

Bald eagles, very annoyed. They were sitting on the rail by the railroad, and the train chased them off.

Late afternoon fog creeping in, slightly tinted by the setting sun.

I lived just up the hill a ways from this beach the year I was 11, back when the dinosaurs were still roaming about. I loved it then, I love it now; but more so on foggy days like this, with the gulls calling.

Just because

Laurie liked this photo. It's a tiny limpet on the glass wall of the aquarium, pushing up against the surface tension of the water.

The limpet is about 1 mm, lengthwise. The mouth end is down, and it's chomping away at algae on the glass. One of the antennae is visible.

Arrows pointing backwards and wavy letters

In January, when the water is too cold for wading, and the wet stones and sand are cold enough to cause a bone-deep ache in rock-flipping and sand-digging fingers, we behave more sedately than usual, walking upright on the sand, hands in gloves and pockets, eyes peeled for what we can see without stopping and getting chilled.

Sand, water and sky. Patterns in blue and grey. Laurie usually looks up to the sky and the distant snowy peaks. I'm more likely to watch what's in front of my feet.

Duck footprints. Probably mallards. Three toes, and distinct webbing.  Ducks toe in, which makes them waddle.

A duck has four toes; three facing forward, webbed, and a fourth, called a hallux. It faces backwards, is small and higher up on the leg. Sometimes it leaves a mark on the footprint. More often, it doesn't.

Gull tracks. The tip of the hallux left a mark in this wet sand. The footprint is about twice the size of the duck prints above, and the webbing isn't as marked. Like ducks, they toe in.

Heron tracks in soft sand. I don't know what makes those dotted-line furrows.

Heron track with my big boot for measurement. About 6.5 inches. (The heron's foot, not mine.) These are big birds.

Heron track on hard-packed sand. He drags that rear toenail. There is no webbing; the heron is not a swimmer.

Something different; check this out!

Just sand, sculpted by the tide.

But: this was flat, flat beach. Very flat; I want to emphasize this. But look at the photo from a bit of a distance; to me, it looks hilly. From a few steps back, the hills grow into small mountain ranges. And sometimes, when it catches my eye suddenly, I see what looks like letters among the lines. I can't read them; they morph into different shapes with the slightest head movement. (If I'm looking for them, I don't see them.)

What do you see?

Roadside shenanigans

The trumpeter swans are back again, and as usual in our part of the delta, prefer the muddiest of fields with a peaceful backdrop of machinery, piles of gravel and construction materials. I walked halfway around their field to a bus stop which local commuters have enhanced with a couple of sturdy office chairs. By standing on a chair and half dangling off the bus stop sign (Good thing no bus stopped for me!), I managed to get a background more to my taste.

Swans and Mount Baker, far away.

The swans don't care about scenery; they see enough of it in their migrations. What they're interested in are the roots left behind after the fall harvest, and the fresh, new sprouts of weeds still hidden in the muck.

Ankle deep in damp mud. On the left, a mallard rests in the shade under a swan's belly.

January roses

Is it really winter if the roses are still blooming?

These are holding their own alongside a bus stop by the White Rock beach lawn. They're bearing flowers, rose hips, and buds, all at the same time: seasons be damned!

Golden eagle

A few shots of the golden eagle in the tree:

The head is smaller, compared to his size, than the Bald eagle's.

Crows watching eagles, as usual.

From directly underneath his branch, the juvenile's white patch at the base of the tail is clearly visible.

This eagle perched quite low in the tree; almost within reach, if we'd had a fishing pole or similar stick. The Bald eagles we usually see prefer the tops of the tallest trees.

Golden lifer

We stepped from the street out onto the beach just north of the US border, and immediately, Laurie said, "What's that?"

"That" was a huge, dark lump in a tree south of us, black and shapeless against the light, too big for a bald eagle. We walked down to see, and it waited for us until we got the light at our backs, then flew off to stand on a post in the bay.

A golden eagle! The first I've seen in the wild! (As far as I know.)

With Mount Baker in the background.

A juvenile, by the white patches under the tail and on the wings.

A woman walking on the shore told us they nest on the cliffs above the bay, in Point Roberts.

On the way to this piling, the eagle swooped down, towards a heron fishing in the tidepools. The heron saw him coming, and rose to meet him, beak agape, squawking angrily. The eagle changed his mind and swerved up, to sit and sulk on the post.

We both missed the shot.

Two more photos tomorrow, once I've resized them.

When worms have windows ...

“A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar* set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.”
Bill Vaughn

I guess I haven't grown up yet; I'd still rather have the worm. Especially if it's blue-green and iridescent, and has pink paddle feet!

I posted this photo the other day. Mid-section and paddle feet (parapodia) of a long polychaete worm.

The worms in my tank are fattening up and stretching out. Some stay mostly underground, like the tiny red lines (ribbon worms, maybe) that appear between the sand grains. Some occasionally venture forth to collect a snack. One lived for a while in a tangle of sea lettuce and eelgrass, and foraged for food in the open water, but always with his tail firmly attached to his home base.

I never pass the tank, these days, but what I stop to check out the sand layer. I'm getting to recognize specific worms, even if I still can't identify the species.

Here's one of the adventurous ones:

A very poor photo; I had to crop out most of the confusing background. This worm, about 3 inches long, crawls up the glass and scouts around along the floor, looking for goodies. He likes the hermit crab pellets, once they're soggy.

This is the same species as the one that lived in the seaweed, but it prefers to retreat under the sand. What we see here is the underside. The dotted red line down the middle would be one of the two main blood vessels; the other goes along the topside of the gut, from head to tail. The head is on the right here, tentacled and with a mouth that opens as wide as the body of the worm.

Cross-section of worm body. The central tube is the intestine. From Wikipedia.

Topside of head. From Lander University.

Underside of the head, showing the tentacles and two fat palps. 

About those feet: all polychaete worms have them, one pair per segment: some are more feathery or bristly than others, some fatter, some longer. They serve a multitude of functions. Moving about, of course, both in the sand, where they "walk" on the tips of the parapodia, and swimming. (Video of swimming worms.) They are sometimes used for burrowing, as well. In many species, mostly tubeworms, the parapodia also serve for respiration.

Reading about the burrowing worms, I got the impression that they make a permanent burrow and stay in it. Not so. I am careful not to disturb a burrow, but they move about. A section of wormhole will appear next to the glass, giving me a window into the owner's private life, stay put a day or so, then move on. The next time it shows up, it will be several inches away, or around the side of the tank.

Most of the time, of course, the worms are in the center and have no windows. But they don't seem to mind the light when they do build next to the glass, except when I shine a light suddenly in their eyes; then they quickly scrunch themselves down into the dark.

The tunnel is kept open and roomy by side-to-side waving motion (peristalsis), the sand grains held in place with a scaffolding of secreted mucus.

Fat worm mid-section in his burrow. With the photo at full size, flecks of light, probably sand, show up, caught in the coating the worm left on the glass.

This worm I have only seen a couple of times:

I think it's the same as one I photographed long ago, when it was tiny. (Here; bottom photo.) Now she's fat and solid. And shy. Again, the sand grains caught in the slime show up as light specks; they seem to be lined up on threads, like on a spider's web.

All these would be feeding on detritus, like the left-over hermit food, and/or smaller organisms in the sand; other worms, burrowing amphipods, like the Americorophium salmonis I found. They don't seem to bother even the smallest of the hermits, nor the anemone. (Good thing for them, or I'd be straining them out of the sand!) They help to keep the tank clean, like my other scavengers, and aerate the sand, besides.

*That was a long time ago; these days, we need an extra zero.

Iridescence and pink paddles

Details first . . .

Just a lowly worm

Story tomorrow.

Early birds

We were surprised, when we parked at Centennial Beach a few days ago, to find the cottonwood trees around the duck pond full of redwing blackbirds, all in full cry. We've seen them at Reifel Island in mid-winter, where they are well fed, but they don't usually appear in the Boundary Bay area until late March. The males show up first, then, in April, the females can be seen nesting in the reeds.

But now, not only are they early, but there are females with them.

We got only a few photos, all against the light, before we moved on; we were too cold to stand around. And we couldn't even see the ones in the cottonwoods, where most of the song was coming from.

Female in a small willow tree.

At least two adult males, one young male (on the right), and a female.

I hope the warm weather (for mid-winter, that is) holds, if they're going to start nesting soon.

Bouncy peeps

On these chilly winter days, how do sandpipers deal with the cold?

We were shivering, in our jackets and scarves, double gloves, warm boots, and the hoods over our tuques.

The sanderling* has no warm socks.

Following the flocks of sandpipers along the shore, I noticed something different about the way they moved. Watch:


*An adult sanderling weighs between 1.4 and 3.5 ounces. The legs are about as thick as a pencil lead. Not much bulk for holding the heat!

Faces in a crowd

Gull faces, that is.

Mr. Know-it-all and his unappreciated companion.

"Hey! Get out of here!"

"Four's a crowd."

"I am such a martyr, but I suffer in silence."

"... and he gave me this black eye, to boot!"

They're not all grumpy:

"No peeking!"

"How does that dance step go, again?"

Still working on that video. They always take more time than I thought.