Harbourmaster?

Marine biologist?

Lantern bearer?

Or spider fancier?

On pilings at the Bella Coola wharf.

And nary a crab

At the end of the road, where the Bella Coola river meets the ocean, I went to explore the tide flats, to discover what lives there.

The river is that thin line to the right, the inlet is on the left.

No two intertidal zones are alike. This one, though it is river meeting ocean, like the beaches I know on the lower mainland, is unlike any other I have visited. For one thing, though I turned over stones and logs, parted underwater grasses, I saw no snails, no crabs, no worm piles. And no eelgrass.

The river is glacier run-off, silty and cold. And Bentinck Inlet is long, narrow, and deep; though the tide runs up to the base of the hills, the river also runs far out to sea. The salinity is low. The currents are strong. The grasses on the tide flats are land-based grasses, not eelgrass. The only seaweeds are those the tide ripped up and dragged in; they don't live there.

This whole area is covered by the tide. Plants growing here are moderately salt-tolerant.

Besides several varieties of tough grasses, I found silverweed, blue sailor, and yellow gumweed, all in the area that is covered by salty water twice daily.

The tide rushing in, laying the grasses flat.

Rockweed tossed on top of the flattened grasses. A few leaves of silverweed poke through the grass.

Deep in the channel, where the water is heavier and saltier, there are crabs and anemones, sea cucumbers and starfish, all out of reach without diving gear. The tide flats are home to plants, birds, and flies, come to feed on dead salmon. And if I'd been carrying a shovel, maybe I'd have found worms.

Fixer-upper

What would it be like to live here? Someone did, long ago.

A sturdy little cabin in the upper Bella Coola Valley, with window, wood stove, and curtains; log walls, good chinking. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it's still furnished, too. A plank table, a chair, maybe even a cot. Big woodshed, because the winters are cold.

Needs some patching on the roof.

The glare

On a ruined tree, torn apart as the hillside swept down to the river in the last Bella Coola flood, an eagle was surveying the river on the far side of the highway. He didn't appreciate my presence, nor the camera poking out the car window.

"Hmmpph! Intruders, always intruders!"

I eased the car forward a few feet, hoping for a closer shot, and he dropped off his perch and flew away, up the hill and over the trees beyond.

Green River

Once upon a time, long, long ago it seems, back in the 1970s, when I first drove into the Bella Coola valley, the pavement stopped a few miles out of Williams Lake. From there to the bottom of "The Hill", the road was dust and gravel; washboard, ruts, and dust traps deep enough to snap an axle, fish-tail-inducing powder, more dust; 400 kilometres of dust. Meeting a car coming the other way, we could see its dust cloud long before the car itself came over the next rise. We learned to hold our breath as we passed; even so, we were coughing mud for a day after we finally arrived.

The road has been paved, a few kilometres every year, so that now we drive comfortably on pavement up to the edge of Tweedsmuir Park, and then it's a mere 60 kilometres of dust before we reach the valley floor and pavement again.

Still, the memory persists, and the bridge at Green River promises some relief from dust, dust, dust. Coming and going, I always stop for a few minutes.

It's a gentle river, shallow and slow; the better to green up its surroundings.

Rock and reflections

View from the other side of the bridge.

In the shallow water, green speckled fish (trout?) hover over the silt.

Pine cone and needles

Two peaks

In the Klinaklini River basin, taken from the car window:

Rolls of hay, winter fodder for cattle.

Stony mountain peak. I'm told it's called "The Finger".

Humans are rare on the Chilcotin Plateau. Driving the highway at the busiest part of the day, I have counted, repeatedly, an average of 4 minutes between cars. At night, I can drive for hours rarely seeing a light. I find the sense of space exhilarating; it's me and the stars and the empty land. I can breathe.

Coming past the town of Kleena Kleene (named after the river) in daylight, I see green fields, a few haystacks, a scattering of houses. About 20 people live here year round. A minute later, the road curves, and I'm alone again.

Kleena Kleene is one of the driest locations in British Columbia because of the rain shadow effect of Coast Mountains located directly to the west. The temperature is cooler than the other similarly dry locations in the province. (From Wikipedia)

In spite of the dryness, the bottom of the valley is green, because the river snakes along gently, winding and looping around the hayfields. The few houses, up on the slopes, sit on dry, baked dust.

Abandoned nurseries

Along the fence around the campsites at Bull Canyon, a small stand of aspens has sprung up. Most are still under 8 feet tall. And most, this year, are sporting lumpy blackish growths along the stems.

What lived inside this? About 2 inches across.

I broke a few off. They were all hollow and dry, as thin and fragile as eggshells. There was no sign of their previous occupants.

This one seems to incorporate a dried leaf.

I looked up aspen galls, and found leaf galls;, small blobs that grow right at the base of the leaves and twig galls; small, smooth balls lined up along a twig, but nothing like these.

Most of the galls had several holes that looked more like chickadee predation than insect exit holes. I have watched chickadees with thimbleberry galls in the winter, pounding away at them until they crack open. Somehow they know there's good meat inside that hard casing; maybe the larva inside moves around, makes some sound that we can't hear, but the chickadee can.

Prickly smile

If I were to choose one adjective to describe the Chilcotin, I would have to go with "scratchy". Everything seems to be sharp-edged, jagged, unforgiving. Itchy, like one of those rough wool sweaters Mom made us wear in the winter.

Even the spiders are prickly.

Spider in her web, Bull Canyon

I tried to get her to move, so that I could get a clear photo of her shape, but all she did was pull her legs in closer, even fold them across her back. Maybe, in her environment, it is wiser to look like a piece of dust than a threatening, leggy spider.

But, otherwise, she's friendly enough; do you see the smiley face on her back?

Update: She's Araneus gemmoides, the Cat-faced spider,

They come in varying colors but are easily identified by the two horn shaped growths on their relatively large abdomen. (Wikipedia)

Bull Canyon, 2015

On my second trip across the Chilcotin, 'way back in the 1970s, I stopped for the night at the campsite in Bull Canyon. And on every trip since, except that once when the whole area was on fire, I have dropped in, if only, as on this trip, to take a few photos, pump some water, listen to the river and the wind in the aspens.

First, a bit of scenery:

Blue sky, silty green water. This is the Chilcotin River, which drains the Chilcotin Plateau, flowing from Itcha Lake, near Bella Coola, to the Fraser River, near Gang Ranch.

Mixed vegetation; soft deciduous trees and shrubs by the river, evergreens on higher ground, thinning to scattered barren slopes, rock cliffs. (Note vertical wall in background.)

The Chilcotin Plateau is old volcano country, much of it covered by the Chilcotin Group, a volcanic field of overlapping vents, and further west, the Anahim Volcanic Belt, which reaches out to sea beyond Bella Coola. For millions of years, lava spread over the surface; later, glaciers scoured the top layer, exposing the old granite to erosion; now winter ice, freezing and thawing, crumbles the old faces, leaving a skirting of scree at the base. (My old house in Bella Coola was at the bottom of one of these scree slopes.)

Driving the road, we are treated to an ever-changing view of tall mountains, odd-shaped peaks, sheer rock faces, "painted" hills, crumbling granite, cones of scree. There are lava flows and hot springs; obsidian is found in some areas. Trees cling where they find cracks in the rock; mountain goats hop up and down impossible rock faces.

Rock formation, Bull Canyon. At full size, some white spots may or may not be mountain goats.

Crumbling hill, from near the river bank.

Zooming in to show the strata. 

Not all is towering rock: in between, we find fruitful river basins, and eroded, gently-sloping grasslands. But if you scratch the surface here, you'll find the granite bones not so far underneath.

Lone tree

Coming up: Bull Canyon greens.

Needles and cotton puffs

On the sidehills of the Nicola Valley.

Ponderosa Pine, aka Blackjack pine, but only when it's young. The bark turns orange as it ages.

I'll probably be blogging less frequently for the next few weeks. I'm busy packing up, getting ready to move to Campbell River, where I've found a place a couple of blocks from the pier and the highway to all the amazing beaches. And all those critters! I'll have lots to show you then, so don't go away.

A Skywatch post.

Knee-high to a grasshopper

The Chilcotin, being mostly grassland, is grasshopper country. On my way back from Bella Coola, I stopped at Bull Canyon to look at the Chilcotin River, which here flows green* between steep cliffs. On top of the cliff, the grass was knee-deep, and as I walked - or waded - the grasshoppers leapt about me, almost as if I were running through water and they were the splashing droplets, flying up and sinking down again out of sight in the waving grass.

The grass was baked to a toasty brown; the grasshoppers were dressed in matching colours.

I found one resting on a stone and crawled up to him, inch by inch, taking photos between each cautious movement. I got a half-dozen close shots before he decided that was enough and joined his friends in the grass.

His wings seem frayed; too much leaping through stiff grass stalks?

*BC Parks says that the water is glacier blue, but I've never seen it but once when it wasn't green. And that once was when the whole area was on fire and they were dumping red fire retardant from helicopters. The water was red that day.

(This whole area is a volcanic plateau. More about that, later.)

Winding down, IRFD 2015

This year's International Rock Flipping Day was quiet. While there was a good response before the actual day, few people reported in with findings, and Googling only turned up one other entry. Maybe people had the same problem finding good rocks as I had.

But we did find a few real gems!

First, did you know that we humans aren't the only ones flipping rocks? Anna, of The BlennyWatcher Blog, let goatfish do all the work for her, and just sat back and took video footage. Go see.

On the IRFD Facebook page, the first post showed a slug and a pupal case. (I think that's a moth inside.)

And Slow: Children at Nature Play went out with two kids and found a Dunn's salamander, and other critters. "So much fun!", she says.

The salamander. From the IRFD Facebook page.

In the comments on the Celebrate Science IRFD post, Dana Rau posted a Rock Flipping Day poem.

I lift your heavy door 

to find

busy you

on your way from

one side of your space

to the other. 

The surprising sunlight

curls you into

a spiral

to protect all those legs

and underparts. 

Between fight and flight

you choose

freeze

and hope

someone remembers

to shut the door

so you can get on

with your interrupted

business.

And that's about it. I found the beetle, and the ants and spider. And later on, down at the shore, I turned over a stone and crabs scuttled quickly out of sight. Except for one brave little guy; he was ready to take me on, defending his territory.

"Back off!"

"And I don't care how big you are, either!"

I think, unless there is a public outcry, this will be the last year I host the IRFD. If anyone is interested in taking it up, I'll be glad to participate, of course.

Grumble and wonder; IRFD 2015

Urbanization is hard on rolling stones. Or flippable rocks. I set out full of optimism to turn over a few familiar rocks in my neighbourhood. But they're gone, or locked away: the builders and developers and pavers have moved in. The vacant lot across the street, which last year was a square block of rocks and weeds, and a killdeer nest, and another block of incipient forest full of twitterings and rustlings, has been bulldozed and fenced. The alleyway behind the church, once the passageway to gently mouldering farm buildings, now leads to more fences and developers' signs. Our street has been widened and sidewalked; the ditch where I used to watch for skunks is no more. Even Cougar Creek Park has been "cleaned up" and hemmed in with housing estates. Our road in has been re-routed and lined with "No Parking" signs.

On the far side of a schoolyard, past the newly-grassed lawns and playing fields, past the neatly-trimmed treed area, back against the fence where nobody goes, I finally found a half-dozen forgotten rocks. And a few small beasties still sheltered there.

The beetle was under the third rock I turned. A small spider raced over my hand as I flipped the fourth, and disappeared under the grass. And then I hit paydirt under a small rock, almost too small to be worth flipping, I thought.

Very small, very pale, orange and tan ants. This is on the underside of the stone itself. The ant at the top right seems to be toting a shred of a pupal cocoon.

Here, they're wrestling a cocooned pupa into a crack in the stone.

A cluster of cocoons on the ground underneath the stone. No ants are with this bunch, but there's a pretty green springtail at the top.

I wonder about ants. When they're stressed, they race around frantically, pulling and dragging their babies, (eggs, larvae, and/or pupas) trying to get them under cover. But it's almost as if they were moving randomly; an ant will drag a cocoon one way, forget about it, and go off in the opposite direction, talk to another ant, and race away to pull at different cocoon, going the wrong way half the time. And yet somehow, the cocoons manage to get hidden away; A Random Walk with a twist in it somewhere.

I replaced the stone before the ants finished dragging away their cocoons, so they wouldn't have all the work of hauling them back out again.

The next rock, a bigger one, hid one racing beetle, and one big spider who sat there, trying to be invisible.

I don't think I've seen this pattern before.

I got too close, and she was gone in a flash; I didn't even see her run.

A handful of beetle

I've been out flipping rocks, and came home with a stack of photos to process. Here's the first of the lot.

All out of breath.

Could that beetle ever run! I chased him and chased him and chased him through piled dead leaves and old sticks, caught him and lost him and caught him again. Then when I finally had him, he must have figured he was safe in my hand, and just sat there while I aimed the camera at him, one-handed.

The rest of the photos and story will be along presently.

Tomorrow is the day we flip rocks.

Just a quick reminder: sometime today or tomorrow, a bunch of us will be out there turning over rocks to see what lives underneath. I hope you will join us!

It's late, and I've been birthday-partying until my eyes can hardly stay open, so I'll just re-paste the instructions, in case you missed them.

Instructions: 

If you're joining in for the first time, here's a quick rundown of the procedure.

• On or about September 13th, find your rock or rocks and flip it/them over. 

• Record what you find. "Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry." 

• Replace the rock as you found it; it's someone's home. 

• Post on your blog, or load your photos to the Flickr group. (Even if you don't have a blog, you can join.) 

• Send me a link. Or you can add a comment to any IRFD post. 

• I will collect the links, e-mail participants the list, and post it for any and all to copy to your own blogs. (If you're on Twitter, Tweet it, too; the hashtag is #rockflip.) 

• There is a handy badge available for your blog, here. (Or copy it from this post.) 

More details, history and suggestions are in this post.

And now, goodnight! I'll be looking for your reports, blog posts, photos, etc, come Sunday morning.

#rockflip

Too much eye makeup

A small flock of grouse crossed the highway in front of me near Tatla Lake, taking their time. I rolled down the window and grabbed the nearest camera, the little pocket Sony. And then I blamed the camera for the birds' strange eyes. They looked like they didn't belong in those small heads.

The camera was fine.

Ruffed grouse.

The white surrounding feathers make the eyes look almost human. And somewhat offended.

Male ruffed grouse, displaying. Photo by Seabarinum. Creative Commons license

These grouse are usually heard, not seen. The drumming males sound like someone trying to start a reluctant motor, somewhere behind the next hill. I have heard them, and thought they were pine branches rubbing against each other. (Listen to a few recordings here.)

Displaying males make a deep, airy drumming sound by beating their wings while standing on a log. (Cornell, all about birds)

These are ground-dwelling, chicken-like birds. Summer flocks are usually a hen and her chicks; if this is one such group, the "chicks" are just about full-grown.

Leading the way.

Spotty berries

Water makes all the difference. Along the river banks, and the drippy cliffs on the evergreen-clad north slopes, the soil is hidden under a soft, thick cushion of mosses and ferns. Even in warm weather, it stays wet. And where the shade is deep, we can find these curious plants.

Maianthemum dilatatum, aka two-leaved Solomon's seal. With one blood-red aphid.

These are natives here, growing in temperate rainforests, where they can spread to cover the entire forest floor. But each plant limits itself to three leaves at the most. When they are not flowering, they have only one leaf. With two or three, they send up a short stalk with a raceme of tiny white flowers. The berries start out greenish, with pink spots that spread and darken until the whole berry is red.

They are supposed to be edible, but I've never heard of anyone using them as food.

Mushrooms and mosses

At Clayton Creek

On a rock

In the duff at the base of a tree.

Once in a lifetime

It's salmon spawning season in the Bella Coola valley.  Every river and creek is full of them, splashing and twisting, struggling against the current in water that often seems too shallow for swimming, leaping up rocky steps, catching their breath in small eddies.

I went to Clayton Creek to watch them.

The male develops a hump in spawning season.

I think these are pinks, because of the spotted tail.

Clayton Creek runs into North Bentinck Arm (seawater) just below the Bella Coola river mouth. From here, the salmon swim up a shallow, fast stream for a few hundred feet, before things become difficult.

Where the river meets the sea. Easy swimming.

At the first bend of Clayton Creek. Jumping practice.

And only a few feet beyond, roaring Clayton Falls and whirlpool. The salmon climb it.

Somewhere above the falls, the female salmon digs herself a shallow nest (a redd) and lays her eggs. Her mate fertilizes them, and then, exhausted and battered, he drifts back down the creek. The mother will hang around a few days, to make sure her eggs are safe, but then, she too dies and floats downstream. Some spawned-out salmon are caught up top by bears and eagles; some make it to the bottom, but they all die. Their work is done.

One didn't make it up the falls. She was caught and slaughtered, her roe scattered on rocks at the base of the falls.

A male. dead on the sea grasses of the tide flats. At spawning time, they turn red, and develop a hooked jaw.

The females are more subdued. This one has a slight hint of pink, and a bit of a curve in the upper jaw.

And out on the breakwater, sea lions sleep, their tummies full of fish.

One came over to look at me.

In the spring, the young salmon will swim back down the creek, into the wide ocean. And when their turn comes, they will return to the same creek, and climb the same falls that their parents did before them.