A gourmet treat for my little ones

I brought home a handful of seaweeds for the hermit crabs, planted the eelgrass in the sand at the bottom of the aquarium, and left these brown weeds floating near the surface. Within minutes, half a dozen small critters had climbed up to graze.

While I was checking them, I noticed the hydroids, standing like little fans all around the stalks and the float bladders.

These are tiny; the bladders measure about 3 mm. lengthwise.

I took a quick photo, one only because I had to leave. When I looked at it later, I decided to take my time and get a good shot. I went back to the tank, and found bare stalks. The hermits had eaten the hydroids, every single one.

Gotta be quick around here!

Red and green

I don't recognize this flower. Do you?

Bear Creek Park, last month

Jittery green and patient orange

We met this metallic green sweat bee on the path up from the beach today. It flew a few inches above the ground, never pausing, never sticking to any direction for long, zigging and zagging like a rabbit with a fox after it. But it was brilliant, and green, so very green; we had to get its photo!

Looks like an Agapostemon.

So we stumbled about, bent over double, cameras aiming at the spot where it had been half a second before, exclaiming, "There it is! No, it's gone! There! Missed again! . . ." It is a well-travelled path, especially on a warm Sunday afternoon. A whole raft of people are probably still laughing.

I took over 30 photos, Laurie a few more. And the photo above is the best we could do. Dratted speedster!

And I came home to my peaceful orange cross spider, resting quietly on her web between the orange begonia and the sausage vine. As usual. Ah!

Araneus diadematus, a small female. Nice kid; stays put.

Multicoloured hermit

Grainy hand hermit crabs are shy critters. Hidden away in algae-encrusted shells, moving slowly in the dim light under the eelgrass, they often pass unnoticed. They like it that way; the next passer-by may be a hungry fish, or a shell-cracking gull.

Their curiosity, though, sometimes leads them to ignore the danger; that big world out there is so interesting! So in my tank, they come to the glass wall to see what I'm doing. When the light is right, they are exposed in all their brilliant colours.

"Hi, out there!"

This hermit molted a few days ago, and hasn't grown a protective coating of fuzzy hydroids and algae yet. He emerged from the old skin with orange patches on his knees. I've never seen that before.

A few steps away from the glass, the water dulls his colours, except for the orange antennae and flags.

He's got a passenger: look at the top of his shell, towards the back. The two little tentacles belong to one of those musical tubeworms, safely ensconced in a tiny hole in the shell.

Of time travellers and horizons

Maybe it is because I grew up with my toes in the ocean, but I love the look of a distant horizon, with nothing but water for miles. I always take too many photos of water and sky. I love them, then I delete them: what's there to share? A blue screen, with a line across, where the colour changes. Slightly.

When I was a kid, I used to draw the scene outside my window. A line. That was the horizon. A wavy line above; the mountains. A few waves. A gull or two. And a boat over by the horizon. Always the same, with the only variation the positions of gulls and boat. I never got tired of it.

Unfortunately, most people are not so monomaniacal. So I shoot, look, delete.

I kept these photos, though, from our last walk on the beach. They at least have something else going on.

Pink boat float, and slightly pink floating Mount Baker.

That's from my camera, but it was wearing the macro lens, so all the others are from Laurie's point and shoot.

Boats off Point Roberts, and what looks like mini-glaciers calving, but is really sea foam.

Backpacker and dog walking on water, heading out to sea as the tide comes in.

I love photos of people out on the horizon, so far away they shimmer. With our wide, shallow bays, they seem to walk, all in a line, on the surface of the ocean, not sinking, not subject to the rules of our universe, as though they were tourists from the next universe over, or maybe time travellers from the 30th century. Everything about them is strange; their postures, their silence, their pursuits. Where are they going? Where did they come from?

See what I mean about "all in a line"?

Zooming in. Walkers and talkers and one ball thrower.

Pale blue fosterlings

The morning tides are extremely low this time of year, but we're slow getting started. Last Sunday, by the time we got to the beach, the water was halfway back, and coming in fast. We walked out to meet it, then had to hurry back, wading knee-deep, fighting the current that wanted to tip me in, camera and all.

When the water has a kilometre or more to flood or drain, it doesn't dawdle.

At the upper edge, we inspected the line of eelgrass knots being slammed onto the stones. Laurie spotted something blue, and caught it before the water swept it away again. It was a shapeless blue blob of jelly stuck on a few eelgrass blades, almost smeared along them, so that my first thought was "sponge". I brought it home to get a better look at it.

Washed gently and resting in a bowl of clean water, it opened out.

Mamma and the kids. One has started to move out on his own.

I recognized what it was by the cluster of youngsters of various sizes attached to the column; a brooding anemone, Epiactis. She (the mother) was quite small; the eelgrass is about 1/2 inch wide. She was wrapped around it, spread rather flat.

The mother's mouth, stretched out now that she's more comfortable. The young ones cluster around the bottom of the column.

Another view of the immature anemones. A couple were tiny, and almost colourless.

The eggs of this anemone are fertilized in the digestive cavity, and the larvae either swim or are expelled out of the mouth, and settle on the column. They stay there, digesting the yolk the mother has provided, until they are grown enough to feed on their own, then slide off to find their own place.

They may settle on rocks or shells, but are commonly found on eelgrass, like this family. The trouble with eelgrass is that it is often ripped up by the waves and tossed on beaches, where the anemones die.

They are rarely exposed to the air, not being able to tolerate exposure to the air and sun. (Race Rocks)

It was too late for this mother; she'd already been rolled on a stony beach in the sunshine, transferred to a bag (good; dark and wet), then to a bowl. I moved her quickly to the tank, making sure she stayed in the water even in transit. Maybe she'd be ok.

She wasn't. She died this morning, but by that time, many of the young ones had abandoned her. At last count, a dozen have established themselves, mostly on the eelgrass. They're tiny, maybe too tiny, and conditions in my tank may not quite match those of their usual home, but I'm hoping at least a few will survive.

Baby anemone, with one of my smallest orange hermits.

The colour leached out of the mother the first day, and the young ones, when they moved away, were a pale cream colour, but the blue is returning.

Another youngster, with a baby bubble shell snail.

These anemones eat small crustaceans, like shrimp, and small fish. I think they may like the amphipods that swim around the tank, but since they are so young, I'll start hand feeding bits of frozen shrimp directly into their mouths until they are established.

Wish us luck!

Blue mamma

We found these rolling in with the tide:

Mother and babies

I'm falling asleep as I type, so the story, and more photos, will have to wait. Goodnight!

Shy critters in showy houses

My son's young maple is sprouting red balloons.

Maple leaf, mature galls.

Zooming in. No two are alike; each houses dozens of tiny mite larvae, Vasates quadripedes.

You can't beat Ma Nature. She's always coming up with new and unusual ways to accomplish her ends. Like the maple gall mites.

For starters, they're relatives of the spiders and the spider mites. So they "should" have 8 legs, right? No. Nor do they have 6, like the insects. A maple gall mite has 4 little legs near her head, to drag around the rest of her long, pale-carrotty body.

Like all mites, she's tiny; you need a strong hand lens to see her. There may be some, scattered near the top of the leaf below; little squiggly things in a group.

The females overwinter under bark scales and in cracks of their maple tree. When warm weather comes, they go looking for a leaf bud and start to feed on the underside. They wear themselves a hole in the leaf, which repairs itself by building an extension on the upper surface, a little room accessible through the hole. So the mite moves in, and lays her eggs, about 80 of them.

(She has mated, after a fashion, or at least managed to get the eggs fertilized, without coming in contact with the male.)

 Mites do not mate with each other; sacs that the male leaves lying around on the leaf surface fertilize the females as she walks around. No wining, dining or song in an Eriophyid’s lifestyle. - From "Garden Friends and Foes".

The larvae hatch and start feeding on the walls of their shelter. The pouch, or gall, turns from green to red. A few weeks later, the fat little larvae have become adults; it's time to head out to find a new leaf and begin the process again. Several generations down the line, the weather turns; the leaves turn yellow and dry; the galls become black and split open. The females abandon their crumbling houses and find places to hide before the winter comes.

And the males? Irresponsibly parading about, randomly dropping sperm packets, like yesterday's socks. Until the winter comes, and puts an end to the fun.

Another leaf, another housing complex.

With all this colonizing of new green leaves, and forcing the tree to build yet another cluster of mite nurseries, the maple is usually unharmed. Gardeners worry; I did when I saw this tree. But there is no need. The tree will be fine, and the mites will provide feed for ladybugs, which eat the aphids, which suck the sap from the tree. It's all good.

And the little red balloons are sort of pretty, reminiscent of a scattering of pomegranate seeds on a salad.

In a riotous garden

Every gardener has their own philosophy of growing things. There are the planners, with their matching trees and balanced areas: the get-it-done-and-forget-it types, looking for easy care plants: the pot movers, who are never content with an arrangement: the clippers and pruners; our last neighbour was one of those. Every weekend he spent the daylight hours undoing all the happy growth that his shrubbery had managed that week.

I am more haphazard. Things get put in -- "here, for now" -- wherever I find a space. I pick up plants I like, then figure out what to do with them later. I don't leave many empty spaces.

Laurie likes a specimen garden, with almost no duplication. It's all very tidy; he fusses over leaves blown in from the maple trees on the street.

My son has an older house with a big lot on the sunny slope of New Westminster, a prime garden spot. And he's at the lavish end of the enthusiast curve. He loves anything that grows, large plants, useful plants, curious plants, old familiar flowers, wild "weeds", exotics, things raised from seeds begged off other gardeners, herbs for the pot, plants that someone said could be eaten, even bigger plants. And he doesn't believe in restraining them; they have their life to live, and he lets them be. And they respond, reaching for the sky above, spreading roots and branches to cover every millimetre of space. Fruit trees, raspberries, day lilies, roses, corn and peas and broad beans, cilantro and epazote, lilacs and grapes (the vine covers most of his shed and is reaching for the nearest pear tree), maple, potatoes, and sunflowers, abelia and lavender, blue-blossom, ... the list goes on.

His compost heaps are over my head.

And the insects love it! He doesn't mind; they're as much a part of the exuberant life in that garden as the veggies are.

Yesterday's bee and the butterfly from the day before were on his abelia bush. And here are a few more.

I don't know what kind of beetle this is. It's a Flower Longhorn. Very angular about the shoulders, with a pointed rear end and marvellous antennae.

A syrphid fly, I think. Now it's the flowers I can't identify. They tower over my head.

Honeybee on the same flower heads.

Dazzling nasturtiums, with tiny white flies here and there. And spiders hiding in the leaves.

Red hollyhocks, far overhead. This one has a few tiny black beetles in the centre.

This vine covers the back half of the shed and is on its way over the driveway to the house. No bugs that I could see on this stalk, but the whole shebang was a-buzz with bees and a tribe of long-legged wasps.

More tomorrow, too.

Grappling hook feet

When you have to work upside down inside a wobbly pipe on a dancing shrub, you need good, sharp equipment. Something you can trust. Something that adjusts to the situation.

Like this:

One hook on either side.

Or on the flower next door.

Or even snagging three flowers.

Take a close look at that foot:

Four pronged to grab from any angle.

Raggedy Swallowtail

Some too-impetuous bird got himself a mouthful of feathers. Maybe more than one bird, actually. Not to worry, says the feather provider; that's what they're for. Camouflage by misdirection.

Western swallowtail butterfly, Papilo rutulus, missing most of the swallow tails, and a lot of wing. Doing fine, sipping nectar from a generous abelia.

His wing once had a border of yellow dots, a hint of blue, and a red patch at the bottom.

There's still some blue on the underside of the hindwing. No red, though.

Happy foraging, and slowpoke birds, little one!

Green and gold

Ducklings at Cougar Creek Park

And a proud mamma, too.

Patterns at low tide

Wading around the eel-grass beds in Boundary Bay, we watch our feet in case of big crabs. And the tide makes pretty patterns for us.

Clam-shell graveyard, ankle-deep. With unexpected art.

Line drawing from the photo above. (Inverted)

Crab molts, eelgrass, sand and wave fronts.

Deeper water, with eelgrass and a few shells

More shells. Gull dining room. With more artwork.

I see a few faces in that photo; a blond guy with a Pinnochio nose, a disgruntled alien, several cartoon characters. What do you see?

Bubbles over eelgrass.

We got too close to a heron, and he flew away indignantly, leaving behind a token of his displeasure.

This I'd never seen before: heron poop, underwater, not washed away yet.

Hearts in bubbles

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Ham·i·noea noun \ˌhaməˈnēə\
Definition of HAMINOEA
: a common genus of bubble shells (family Akeridae) of the Pacific coast of No. America with a shell so thin that the pulsation of the heart of the translucent yellowish brown animal within is commonly visible through it.

I've got three new bubble shells in the aquarium, and they're big enough (over an inch long) for me to see this. And they hang out near the water surface, so I've got video, too!

Cool, eh?

Sleepyhead moth

Yesterday morning this little moth was sleeping on my kitchen wall.

Unidentified moth, 2 cm. wingtip to wingtip.

She slept all day, so I figured she was a night flier. But the kitchen is dark now, it's past midnight, and she's still sleeping.

It's catching; I've been yawning all evening. So, goodnight, all!

The amazing snake-necked heron

Laurie says this is the best photo of a heron he's ever taken.

Maybe not; but it's the one that made him laugh hardest.

Great Blue heron, Boundary Bay

Zooming in:

The long "snake" neck is his shadow on the inner wing.

You never imagine what strange critters you'll meet on the beach!

Unwelcome visitor

I found this big mosquito resting on my plastic cutting board, drying behind the kitchen sink.

Male Culex pipiens, the Northern House mosquito.

Close-up of the head, antennae, and palps. The female doesn't carry all this gear.

The males don't bite. The females do. And BugGuide warns,

This is the most important vector of West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encaphalitis in the Northern United States and Southern Canada.

Yikes! I'm wearing Off to bed from now on until summer's over.

Of ladybugs and linden trees

The linden tree seems to be a little late this year. Or perhaps it's the aphids that are running behind schedule. It wasn't until this week that the tree started to wake up. And yesterday, I found the first ladybugs. Not the first to arrive, since some have pupated already, and at least one larva is in his last instar. Maybe they started in the top of the tree, where the sun shines almost all day.

On the leaves that I could reach, I found aphids producing honey, ants eating the honey, ladybug larvae eating the aphids, assorted wasps, including those bright orange ones, looking for a place to lay eggs, a very pretty fly all spiffed up in red eyes and blue back, who left when I touched his branch. And the adult ladybugs, supervising everything.

Aphids, full-grown, early instar, and an abandoned molted skin.

These are the  Eucallipterus tiliae, the Linden or Lime-tree Aphid. Their population will increase as the summer goes on, until every leaf has its little mob. The mature ones (see the photo above) feed on the thick veins of the leaf, where the sap flows freely. The youngsters, with much smaller feeding stylets, are restricted to the tender areas between veins.

They produce more honey than the ants can eat, so it "rains" onto the grass below the tree. The first year I noticed them, the grass was black with mould, growing on the honey. Since then, I've made sure to wash off the grass well every day or so; last year, there was no mould. None this year, so far, but we're in early days yet.

Adult, Harmonia axyridis, a 19-spotter with a mostly white pronotum. I love those shiny eyes!

Another adult, with smaller spots.

One of the ladybugs had a mostly black pronotum, although it was the same species; it had the "W" clearly marked on the front. I wanted his photo, but he was not in the mood. He ran, and I chased him, from one leaf to another, to the main branch, me getting stickier by the minute, he getting angrier, I think, because he finally dropped onto my arm. "Yay!", I thought, "Now I've got him where I can see him."

And then the little bug bit me, and flew away, muttering imprecations as he went.

The pupas don't run, and they don't bite.

The frills are the old larval skin, shed as he pupated, and glued to the leaf at his tail end. Silky threads hold him down. I'm wondering how he manages to anchor those threads, encased as he is. I'll have to watch another one pupate to see.

And I have no idea what this next thing is. It's too small, and the wrong shape, to be an abandoned ladybug pupa. There is no larval skin, and the ladybug splits her pupa down the back, leaving a black thing standing upright.

It looks as if there is a hole in the front end, where the adult insect emerged. Whether that was the original inhabitant, or a wasp that had parasitized it, I can't tell.

What is this?

Next: a weird fly in my kitchen.