Reeling

I've been watching the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, begging for help because her people are dying.

While friends and family dig through the rubble in Mexico.

And children escape war and devastation alone, orphaned.

And world "leaders" talk about nukes.

I have no heart today for celebrating the beauty of our earth.

New beach, with rocks

Randomly driving about, I found a new access point to the beach, a short road, almost like a driveway, halfway along a row of private houses, unmarked except for a tiny sign at the bottom, "Shore Access". A brief scramble over rocks and logs leads to a wide, flat, sandstoney, seaweedy, rocky point, echoing with bird calls, tweets, squawks, screams, and peeps.

The south end of the beach, Gulls ahead, peeps to the right, sparrows among the logs lining the shore. Behind me, ducks, the heron, crows, more peeps. No people, no abandoned plastics.

And the beach is home to an interesting variety of rocks. See:

Rounded rocks and sand patches. Some are highly polished, by centuries of waves.

Button rock, sandstone, not polished.

What Laurie used to call an "Organic rock". With a heart.

Flat, but highly eroded rock, populated by barnacles.

Another flat rock, with interesting swirls and trails.

Glacier erratic, standing all alone.

There were many small slabs scattered about, looking as if they'd been chipped out of the rock on purpose. This one's even squared off.

A couple more. They make nice roofs for critters, easy to flip, even if they're wide.

Tide coming in. A row of rocks between sandy patches, a few more erratics. And a few dark ducks, too far away to identify without binoculars.

Blue-green rock, with barnacles and snails.

In a sandy patch, a peep with a long bill wades a tidepool.

Critters coming up next.

Smoke gets in your tentacles

I had a kitchen fire today. My fault entirely; I had made huevos rancheros for breakfast: two eggs, over easy, layered on a fried corn tortilla, smothered in hot sauce. Served with fresh coffee. I carried my food over to the table and ate, forgetting to turn off the burner under the frying pan. When I looked up, there was a haze of smoke over my head.*

I ran to the stove to turn it off, and as I reached for the fry pan, it burst into flames. And then I did another stupid thing; I grabbed the nearest thing, the French press full of fresh water for the next cup of coffee, and threw it on the fire. Smoke and steam billowed out, black oil spattered everywhere. But the fire was out, and I turned off the burner.

The smoke was so thick, I was choking, my eyes were streaming. I opened all the doors and windows and went outside until I could tolerate being inside again. Then, for the rest of the morning, I scrubbed. The stove, the counter, the fridge, the cupboard doors, the wall, the windows, everything glass in the whole apartment, the shelves, the collectibles ... It seemed that everything I looked at had a grey smoke film.

When I was working on the glass, I wiped down the sides of the aquarium. Then I noticed that all the anemones inside had shut down; even the usually happy pink-tipped anemones were puckered green blobs. The smoke had filtered down into the water.

I removed about a quarter of the water, and replaced it. The anemones opened up again.**

Pink-tipped green anemone, on the beach. Out of water, but still wet, and happy about life. No smoke.

And that make me think of the situation over this summer, where much of BC was on fire, when smoke hung over our island for weeks, hiding even Quadra Island, three kilometres away.

What effect did this have on our coastal waters? On the myriad critters who live, breathe, and eat underwater? And worse, what effect did it have on the intertidal animals, exposed to smoke in the air, smoke in the water?

*Another stupidity: I'd turned off the smoke alarm the other day, when it started screaming over the home-made soup boiling (not burning) on the stove. I'd forgotten to turn it back on again.***

**And now, I'll go out and bring home a whole tank full of fresh seawater for my poor intertidal critters.

***Next time, I'll set a timer if I have to turn off the smoke alarm. Or maybe I'll just stop making soup.

Eggs in urns

The whelks are laying eggs.

A small collection of egg cases. Each one holds about 20 to 100 eggs. Of these, only a dozen or two will mature into baby snails.

These egg cases are new; as the eggs develop, they show up as slowly moving dots inside the translucent casings. One has already been broached by a predator, probably a crab looking for an omelet.

The same eggs, with their blurry mother, a whelk. (Species not identified.)

The clear dot at the top of each egg case is a "cork" of gelatinous material. Over the incubation period, this gelatin dissolves, finally leaving an open passage for the baby snails' escape to the big world out here. (See A Snail's Odyssey; Whelks and relatives, for more info.)

In the pink

I see them often on the beach at low tide: small, white, randomly branched, calcareous tubes. When I pick them up, cautiously, they start to break up. Put in a container to bring home, they make the trip in pieces.

I took a photo of this one as found, without touching it.

Coralline red algae. A seaweed, recently deceased.

These small algae are red or purplish pink, but turn white when they die. This one is still fresh, with only the tips of the branches showing white.

The algae deposit calcium carbonate in their cell walls, which helps to protect them from browsing by snails and other animals. To be flexible in the surging tides and waves, each little node is separated by non-calcareous "knees"; when the alga dies, these knees quickly deteriorate, and the nodes begin to scatter themselves across the beach.

Alive, the algae stay attached to the sea floor by holdfasts. Wikipedia has a photo of one, still alive, still attached to its rock.

Photo by David R. Ingham, California.

In this specimen, the nodes are shorter and fatter; it is probably a different species,even a different genus, but identification is almost impossible except during the reproductive stage, and then only with a microscope. (Kozloff, p. 158)

I picked up my find, gently. It survived. Because it was still pink.

Lace doily barnacle

On a section of beach that I hadn't visited before, covered with great sandstone slabs and round, polished rocks, I found many large, empty barnacle shells with lace doily edges, detached from their homes, tossed hither and thither by the tide.

It's not often that I get to examine the underside of a barnacle.

Lacy edge. Compare to the smoother, smaller barnacles on the surrounding rocks.

This is the large thatched acorn barnacle, Semibalanus cariosus. They grow up to a couple of inches across; most of the ones I found were about an inch or so across.

The small barnacles living on the rocks are the common acorns, Balanus glandula, which, at their largest, are less than an inch across; most are much smaller. These, when they die, slowly crumble away, leaving a lacy scar on the rock. The thatched acorn barnacle, instead, has a membranous base, not heavily calcified. When this rots, the shell is released, exposing the frilly rim.

Detail of the shell edge.

These toes are made for walking

I followed a great blue heron down the beach, trying to get close enough for a clear photo. I was walking on sand; he waded over drowned rocks, through tidepools, and over the dry rocks - big ones. While he was at it, he caught and ate several fish. And after an hour of patient stalking, I finally got close enough. For two whole minutes.

3:11:10. In rocky water. He's noticed me.

5 seconds later. He's faster on rocks than I am on sand.

35 seconds later. He's stopped to check for fish. And to show off his long rock-walking toes.

And then he flew away, complaining as he went, about nosy people cluttering up his stomping grounds.

In a sunny window.

Last June, I bought a couple of living stones.

Aka λίθος (lithos) and ὄψ (ops) "Stone face"; Lithops.

Succulents like the cacti, but from a different family, these tiny plants grow in hot, extremely dry climates. They are originally from southern Africa.

The leaves grow in pairs; when one pair grows out of the gap between the two, the old ones dry up and drop off. Slowly, though; this one has had the four leaves since June. Flower buds will also grow out of the gap, one per year. (If I'm taking proper care of them, and I'm lucky.)

Leaf surface.

Cacti protect themselves from grazing herbivores with sharp, often nasty spines. Lithops pretend to be stones, growing almost flat against the dry soil. The top of the leaf is like a window, allowing light to penetrate without exposing much of the plant to view.

Dissected Lithop. Photo by CT Johansson, on Wikipedia.

Longitudinal section of a Lithops plant, showing the epidermal window at the top, the translucent succulent tissue, the green photosynthetic tissue, and the decussate budding leaves growing between the mature leaves. (Wikipedia)

Instructions on the care of these plants is confusing. Some sites say to water only in summer; others say only in winter. Wikipedia tells me to water only after the old leaves dry up, but to stop before winter. So far, I've been watering once a week, but I'll quit now for the winter.

I'm hoping for flowers.

The flowers are often sweetly scented. (Wikipedia)

Pink, fading to brown

Hardhack is one of my favourite shrubs. It grows profusely along streambanks, in soggy soil, on dripping hillsides, forming dense thickets up to 2 metres tall, crowned in season, with showy pink flower spikes. When picked at the height of bloom, these flowers fade to a dusty rose, and last all winter in a dry vase. With pearly everlasting, they make a beautiful winter bouquet.

Spent blooms, left in place, dry to a warm brown, and last all winter on the plant. The leaves drop, leaving wiry stems and the brown heads.

This year has been too hot and dry for most of the hardhack thickets; I saw very few pink blooms, although they must have flowered, passing quickly from bloom to brown seed head.

I picked two flowering heads that I found within reach; they're well past their sell-by date, and dried to brown seeds overnight.

Hardhack is well named: the much-branched, wiry stems form dense tangles that are almost impossible to break through without proper tools. A wall of salal and hardhack, a common combination in our forests, is as effective a barrier as a brick wall with glass on top.

Packed with seeds.

I saw these seed pods beside the highway to the island's west coast.

Unidentified plant, bare-stemmed, about 1 metre tall.

The seed pods are about 1 inch long. The stems stood tall above the surrounding vegetation, salal and ferns, in open, logged-off land.

What are they? Do you know?

Update: They're Tiger lilies. Here's a photo of the seed pods, taken by a friend in 108 Mile House, and posted on E-Flora. She also has a photo of the individual seeds, shaken out of the pods, here.

Another red alga

This one washed up on the shore of Tyee Spit at high tide.

Single blade with ruffled edges. I'm holding it by a short stipe.

A few metallic waterfowl

They fly, and they float. And sometimes they make an awful racket. Must be waterfowl.

Harbour Air floatplane, taxiing into the dock at Tyee Spit.

Vancouver Island Air Otter, about to splash down, Tyee Spit. These little birds serve work sites and residents from Campbell River north to Bella Bella.

Getting ready to take off. They have to line up with the wind, the waves, the fast tidal currents. Each flight starts from a different spot. Quadra Island in the background

Across the island, on the west coast, at Gold River. Nootka Air has been serving settlements up and down the coast since 1981.

I've noticed that our local estuary sleepers, the gulls and ducks, accept these little flyers as one of their peer group; they don't even bother lifting their heads when one goes by.

Easy on the eyes

As the clouds drop down, the view becomes minimalist.

Gulls and geese on a sandbar at the mouth of the Campbell River. Looking north from Tyee Spit.

And now, it's raining. A regular, day-long, steady, September rain. About time! When it stops, I'll go mushroom hunting.

Flee!

Canada geese, passing Quadra Island.

Hurry, hurry!

Sometimes I wonder what the geese are thinking. They're sitting calmly on a sandbar, half asleep. Nothing is happening. Nothing changes, there's no sign of eagles or airplanes. There's no wind, no blazing sun. Peace, peace, nothing but peace.

And suddenly, the whole flock will rise up into the air, as if in a panic, and speed away, honking wildly as they go. Why?

Road to nowhere

On the map, the highway north to the tip of Vancouver Island is a single, wavy line, with a few side roads, at Woss (pop. 200), Sayward (311), Brown's Bay. Zoom in further, and pale lines appear: logging roads, mostly, or roads to camp or picnic sites. These are private roads, gravel or mud; they do not turn blue when you try to move Google's little observer to them. Many have warning signs: watch for logging trucks, which always have the right of way, even if there's no passing lane; head for the ditch, or the bush.

On the ground, however, roads into the bush multiply. Some are little more than a two-rutted path, with weeds growing in the ruts. Some have been carved out and gravelled. Most have no indication of where they lead, or who made them. On Google, they're dark or light lines among the hills, becoming invisible where the trees close in.

I follow one or two on each trip north. Some peter out after a couple of turns, ending up abruptly at undisturbed bush. Some go on and on and on, winding up hill and down; when the road becomes too rough for my little car, even at a crawl, I find a wider spot, and turn back. Once, I found a tiny lake, with a house on the far side; the road would have reached it, but I needed a 4x4 truck.

Some seem completely meaningless. A nicely gravelled entrance, a road leading down a hill for 50 yards or so, then a few swipes with earth-moving equipment, and nothing more. Why? Someone prospecting for building sites, this far from nowhere? Hopeful handloggers? I can't imagine.

At one of these, I stopped and hiked to the end of the cleared "road", too rugged for my car. There was a hill, a creek, some plastic trash (why is this always present, even out here?), a few mounds of debris, as if a backhoe had been scraping out a construction site until the order came through; "You're in the wrong spot, go home, contract cancelled." Or something to that effect.

Ma Nature's contracts are never cancelled. She was hard at work, re-populating the site.

Lichen on a log. There's always lichen.

Assorted lichen (the "big" pillars are Cladonia), and moss.

Haircap moss and lichen.

Eastern eyebright, Euphrasia nemorosa. I found these near Nimpkish Lake in July but wasn't sure of the species. This, I identified by the size of the flowers, counting the grass stalks as more than 1 mm across. E. nemorosa's flowers are from 5-10 mm long.

Bird's foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus.

And there are always slugs. Banana slug, watching my camera.

Orangey.

With the cooler nights and the rainy days, deciduous leaves are starting to change colour. The bracken ferns are first in line.

These ferns like open, disturbed sites. This is a logged-off area, populated now by huckleberries, salal, trailing blackberries, mosses, and the ferns. A few trees are moving in.

Detail of fern branches.

Salmonberry is next. They're among the first leaves to show up in spring, and the first to disappear in the fall.

Ahhhh! Grey again!

The Vancouver Island paint box relies on blue, green, and grey. Mostly grey. But over this dry, smoking summer, that has changed. Lawns are yellow and crispy; the air has been brown, the sunshine orange. Distant mountains, instead of blue and purple, were a smudgy mud colour.

When the rains finally started last week, I went out to the woods to rest my eyes on the new greys.

From Race Point, Looking across to Quadra Island

Mist over a valley. Near Brown's Bay Road, Hwy 19.

Muted rainforest greens

"The woods were lovely, dark and deep ..." (Robert Frost)

It was pleasant there, wandering in the slow rain, under the evergreens. The air was cool and damp; it smelled of moss. The only sounds were the quiet tree conversations; creaking and whispering; and the gentle pattering of falling fir needles. Far overhead, eagles circled, crossing and re-crossing the patches of visible grey sky.

Farther north, the rain had been and gone, but the mist remained.

Deciduous trees, blasted by unaccustomed heat, basking now in a blue-grey mist.

Not everything is grey. Blackberries, still green, are red.

The blackberries this year are ripening slowly. I've tried a few ripe ones; they're acid and hard. They need water, lots of water, and sunshine; this summer has been missing both.

Raindrops on apples

Favourite things ...

Roadside apple tree, Race Point.