Two-eyed spider

Who knew? Spiders have two eyes, not six or eight!

Well, one spider, anyhow.

I have proof!

Two-eyed cellar spider, with supper.

Zooming in:

Two googly eyes.

Well, maybe that's not exactly proof: maybe it's just evidence. But here's more:

See? Clearly two eyes! And two fat fangs. Click to zoom in.

Well, maybe. Maybe it's a trick of the light. Or the angle; she was hanging far over my head, after all.

But, here she is again; two eyes, see!

Ok, ok, if you insist: another 4 eyes are on the top of her head, the black dot in the center (looks like a nose) is another two, and I've got the dinner fly's viewpoint.

All the fly sees, I think, are the fangs. Fat, venomous fangs.

Ten-lined June beetle

Hard done by: first, I sprayed her with the hose, watering the garden, then I rolled her branch around and flashed lights in her face. But she was patient through it all, barely waving an antenna at me once in a while.

Ten-lined June beetle, all wet. Polyphilla decemlineata.

I know she's female, because her antennae are stubby and round. The male's are huge, layered, and shaped like a woman's high-heeled sandal, or opened up, like a stack of spoons.

Male antenna. From 2011.

In the morning, she was gone. She was not waiting until I watered her corner again.

Grasses, take two.

More of the grasses of Oyster Bay:
 

Tall grass with a drooping head, with long awns. Unidentified.

Another large grass. One of the Bromes? Or a foxtail, maybe?

Unidentified.

Shorter, fatter inflorescences.

I need a grass expert! The more I paw through my guide, the more confused I get!

At least I know these. Not grasses, but sedge. Carex macrocephala, Large-headed sedge. Also known (by me) as "Watch your ankles sedge".

Super-grape

The salal is ripening.

Salal, Gaultheria shallon, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park, dunes.

The berries, when they are fully ripe, will be a deep purple. A few have just about reached that stage; I ate a handful. They were juicy and sweet, but still hadn't developed the full super-grape flavour.

These make wonderful jelly, but most wild foragers ignore them, finding them too much bother. The berries, when ripe, are mushy; they cling tightly to their branches, so that releasing even one leaves you with stained purple fingers. The skin of the berry is slightly prickly, and is often all that's left after the juicy innards spread all over your hand. And the stems are covered with a glue-like sap.

My mom made jelly, anyhow. She harvested the berries, sticky branches and all; no messy fingers, no painstaking separating stems from fruit. In next to no time, she would have a big bucket full, enough to stuff her canning pot at home. She boiled the whole shebang until it disintegrated, then strained the juice overnight.

(She had a white [formerly, anyhow] pillowcase that she hung with one corner down from a pole across the backs of two kitchen chairs. The salal mess went into the pillowcase, and dripped into a clean bowl underneath. One of those cone apple-sauce strainers, lined with cloth, would do the same job, I think.)

Then, all there was to do was to measure the clear juice, add sugar, and boil to the jelly stage. No need to add pectin; the stems have enough.

Super-grape jelly! On toast! Nothing better.

Unpredictable

Prickly. If I had to chose one word to describe the dry zone between the shore and the tree-and-grass line, prickly would have to be the one. It's a place where I walk carefully, watching where I step, occasionally stopping to knock spines out of my sandals, brush ants off my legs. It's where everything is hard-edged, sharp-pointed, splintery. Here, driftwood logs, tossed up long ago beyond the reach of all but the highest tides, slowly crumble into dust and slivers; small plants grow, dry out, twist, break, and die, leaving random sticks and straws helter-skelter.

It's a zone of fantastic shapes.

Log end, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park

Pixie-cup lichens along a crack in a log.

Typical mix: splinters, dead sticks, lichen, yarrow, peppergrass. And an old spike, part of an ancient, crumbling dock or float.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. Even the leaf edges and tips are sharp. And the head is vicious!

More lichens.

And more. I have trouble making sense of this one. My eyes cross.

I just don't know... Book, as I found and left it, with an ant as only reader. Quote from the page: "... a place within the great scheme of things ..." "... unpredictable ..."

Pet peeve

Every time I walk along a trail near a main road, I come across one or more of these, and go on my way ranting.

Dog poop in a conscientiously selected, carefully tied plastic bag, left beside the trail.

Text of usual rant:

"Look, I see that you're trying to be a responsible pet owner, but think! Use your head for a change!

Your dog's doings will biodegrade, and quickly. One good rain, and they're gone. A hot day, and they'll crumble into dust. But the plastic bag will be there when your remote descendants pop down from Mars to show the kids the old ancestral home. That stuff is forever!

If you don't want to carry the doggy-do out, (and I understand that), carry a pooper-scooper. Or use a handy stick. Be a good neighbour, and remove your dog's contribution from the trail; don't bag it up, but push it away under a handy log, or in the middle of a weed patch. Bury it in the sand, if you will (but not where kids play, but I don't have to tell you that, do I?)

Skip the plastic altogether; why add to all the tons already lying around? Why tempt the birds with what looks so fresh, so delicious? Why?

Need a bag for your dog's leavings? Bring a paper bag. It won't biodegrade as fast as dog poop, but it will be gone by next year, anyhow. Your plastic bag won't.

But whatever you do, don't bag up the stuff and leave it behind to pollute the park!"

End of rant. Until the next neat bag of poop.

Patterns and textures, critter version

It's critter season, finally! My camera is full of beasties, taken in and around my house. Out in the grass, as I work killing hawkweed, grasshoppers and spiders hop and scramble away from my vicious weed tool. In the evenings, the kittens practice their high jumps, trying to catch huge crane flies; mostly, they miss.*

And Sunday afternoon, in Oyster Bay, I chased another of those invisible grey grasshoppers across the sand. With each hop, he disappeared, and I searched until he saw me coming and leapt away again. I gave up, eventually.

This 'hopper was more forgiving.

Brown grasshopper on a rock face, Oyster Bay. Each body part, even the eyes, has its own pattern, from mottled, to striped, to stained glass, to herringbone, to the fern-leaf design on his head.

The snail had died and left his empty shell, pitted and bleached. I liked the texture.

He's more creamy than pink, but the colour bounces off my hand.

* I'm as bad as the kittens; I just abandoned this to stand on a dresser because a spider caught a fly on the ceiling above my desk. At least I don't try to eat the spiders, just take their photos.

Purple martins!

A semi-lifer!

I'd seen purple martins before, at Oyster Bay; always in the far distance, swooping high above the water. Today, I saw them for the first time from close enough to see their eyes. And their hungry chicks!

One set of boxes, right beside the highway at Stories Beach. Very busy. I could hear the babies calling inside their nests.

At a second pair of nest boxes, two chicks sat with their heads out. The wire arch overhead probably protects them from diving eagles and crows.

The box immediately above the chicks. The male is iridescent purple, with brown wings. The female, half hidden to the left, is paler, brownish. She has a light belly with large, dark spots.

Two chicks below, brilliant male above. All the time I waited there, the adults veered off as they approached the lower box. I think I was too close for their comfort, huddled in front of my car at the side of the road.The chicks were not pleased.

Sign beside the nest site.

Paragraph 4, from the sign reads, "The installation of nest boxes in artificial "snags" creates nesting cavities for the ongoing recovery of native birds along this beach, such as the Purple Martin, a species at risk (blue-listed).

I had set up the camera with the lens I use for insects and tiny flowers; these nests were at the limit of its possibilities. And the pocket camera, which does zoom, was sitting at home on my desk. Such is life.

Olive slices, lemony stripes

Checking out the gumweed at Oyster Bay ...

That white gum is sticky! But we have visitors, too!

A green and yellow caterpillar. And look again; there's another, a young 'un, on a petal. And two aphids, one covered in pollen. Those brown and black lumps are caterpillar poop.

It seems to be grub season. I found a couple in my flower beds, and one trundling across the kitchen floor.

Now he's on the kitchen counter. And not happy about it. Those little black ovals look like slices of black olives.

I sent him outside to look for weeds. I've got plenty to spare.

Nose to the ground

At the clearing near Nimpkish Lake, the soil is shallow, mostly made up of dust from the cliffs above and gravel from road-building activity. This far north, the growing season is short and dry, the winters long, dark, and sopping wet. It's good country for evergreen trees; not so nurturing for smaller, short-lived plants. The tallest plants in the clearing were the grasses near the edge, mostly less than a foot tall.

Towards the centre, away from the shelter of cliffs and trees, most of the vegetation hugs the ground, staying out of the wind, close to any dampness available. I got down on my knees and elbows to look at the lichen and found much more.

Cladonia lichen*, moss sporophytes, Alpine azalea**, and a miniature flower with interesting leaves***.

If you look closely, you can (barely) see the moss; dark, yellowish-brown clusters. I think the green shrub is the Alpine azalea, Loisleleuria procumbens, which has leaves from 3 to 8 mm long (about 1/8 to just over 1/4 inch).  I can't identify the tiny plant on the far left; I didn't even see it while I was there, so didn't aim the camera at it.

Update #2: In the comments, Matt Goff, of Sitka Nature, identified the lichen (*) as a Stereocaulon. I found one of these growing in this area, on E-Flora; the Stereocaulon alpinum, Alpine foam. (I like the name.)

** Matt says he doesn't think the green shrub is Alpine azalea, but has no suggestions.

*** And the tiniest flower, up in the top left corner is an Euphrasia, aka eyebright. E-Flora has two on Vancouver Island; E. nemorosa, common eyebright; one of those records is of a find beside the road near Port Hardy, a bit north of where I found this one. And the Arctic eyebright, E. subarctica, was found also beside the road; at Keta Lake, a bit to the south.

Moss sporophytes, standing tall (ish) on brown stalks, encased in pointed wrappings. A few have shed the covering.

On the right, the lichen has dark brown spots, reproductive structures. And on the left, an intriguing spotted, hairy plant. If the azalea leaves are 1/4 inch long, the leaves of the spotted plant would be about 1/2 inch.

I couldn't identify this plant. I think it may be the same as the one I found near Heckman Pass (on the Bella Coola road) a couple of years ago.

Not quite so spotty, but otherwise similar. Somewhat larger.

I couldn't identify it then, either. Any ideas?

Update: It's one of the hawkweeds, either Mouse-ear hawkweed, Hieracium pilosella, or White-flowered hawkweed, Hieracium albiflorum. Here are the white-flowered ones just across the water in Powell River, on Powell River Books Blog.

Update # 3: It's been definitely identified as the White-flowered hawkweed.

Nimkish Lake area and Heckman Pass, more or less.

Roadside delights

The weather has turned, finally. Rain has brought some relief to our burning province. Not enough to put out the fires on the mainland, but at least a hint of normalcy.

Last week, while even here on the island, even on the beaches, the air felt like the breath of an angry dragon, I headed north, hoping for a bit of coolness. I found it, up in Port McNeil; the skies were grey, the wind soft, sprinkling gentle drops of rain over the trees. Ahhh!

Partway there, between Woss and the southern tip of Nimpkish Lake, where the sun still shone, I stopped at a clearing beside the highway. A sign called it a viewpoint, but there was nothing to see but trees and cliffs. Through a gap in the trees, I caught glimpses of a pool below, too small to be called a lake, and have a name.

But there were flowers dancing in the wind, and lichen, and mosses. Who needs a view?

Daisy and grasses

It must be the wind and the clean air this far from "civilization"; there's no dust on the flowers, even just beside the highway

Pink flowers, with 6 petals, opposite, long leaves, on stems about a foot tall.

I couldn't find these flowers in either of my guides. And they're confusing: look at these others:

Much smaller flowers, but with the same configuration. Except that they only have 5 petals. The little brown spiky thing is a moss sporophyte.

These second flowers were tiny; I couldn't count the petals until I looked at the photos. And except for the size and the number of petals, they're identical to the others. A different species, or a variety of the same species?

Update: The 5-petalled variety has been identified, on Twitter, as Common centaury, Centaurium erithraea.

Salal flowers. Always so delicate!

The native trailing blackberry, Rubus ursinus. The ripe berries will be black, but small and scarce. And delicious.

I'll leave the lichen and moss, and an even tinier flower, for tomorrow.

Lichen to rocks

I'm back on-line*. Now, where was I?

Oyster Bay: the Misc. file.

Slanting afternoon light on the grasses and logs of the shore/forest interface.

Cladonia lichen on a log end.

Sand dollar test on the sand bar.

Rocks on the breakwater, with gull poop and barnacles.

And on the edge of the park, a ditch full of foxgloves and daisies.

*The problem was simple: a server update, with no warning and new passwords. Complicated by a genius programming kitten, who can, with a few strokes, make changes that take me an hour to fix. She even turned my screen display upside-down, and re-worked a half-edited photo, both actions together, instantly. Bill Gates, watch your back!

Offline

My Internet connection is down since yesterday morning. I'll be back as soon as possible.

I'm posting from the public library, on my tablet, so no photos are available.

Very frustrating!

It's just there

Bread. Candy canes. Hats. Tacos and birds' nests. Beer and baskets.  Paper, sometimes; also some roofs. Rum and bamboo bicycles. Breakfast cereal. Sushi. Place mats. And so on, and so on. They're all made from grass.

Dune grass, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park

We're grass eaters. The bulk of our food is either grass, or relies on grass in the form of animal feed.

"Grasses now provide us with 3 times more food than do peas and beans, tubers, fruit, meat, milk and eggs put together." (Plants of Coastal BC)

And yet, we - I - mostly ignore the grasses. It's "just grass". A mistake.

Dune grass and unidentified grass, Oyster Bay.

The checklist for plants of Oyster Bay Shoreline Park includes 24 different species of grass, of over 200 species in coastal BC. That's a lot of missed beauty. I've started to pay attention, finally.

One of the Bromes. Cheatgrass, maybe.

The grasses are flowering plants, but the miniature flowers are hidden under an arrangement of bracts and awns. To understand what the guide tells us, we need a new vocabulary: the bract that covers the flower is called a "lemma": two more bracts, beneath the floret, are called "glumes". The whole contraption: glumes, lemma, flower, inner bract, and awn: makes up a spikelet. A bunch of spikelets makes an inflorescence.

Each type of grass has a different arrangement of these parts. It's complicated.

I think this is one of the vernal grasses.

I am going to try to photograph and identify as many of the grasses of the park as possible. Any help with identifications (and all corrections) will be vastly appreciated.

I couldn't identify this one. It's a small grass. (That's my finger at the bottom left.)