4-inch ecosystem

Inverterbrate aquarium photos usually have to be cropped and cleaned. From an inch or two away, the depth of field leaves most of the photo a blur, and the tiny swimmers in the water obscure the view. In today's photo, I cropped only the top 1/3, which was only bubbly water, and erased only a couple of scratches on the outside of the glass, which were not part of the animals' environment.

About 4 inches of aquarium front.

The spots in the water are bubbles from the pump and the air stone (the big blobs and the hard-looking rods), fragments of algae looking for a place to settle down, copepods (mostly tiny streaks in random directions) and leftover shrimp pellet fragments (these will feed the smaller anemones and the barnacles).

Animals present: two hairy hermits, eight pink-tipped green anemones (which look yellow under artificial light), three Asian mud snails (Batillaria attramentaria), one channeled dogwinkle (Nucella canaliculata), one limpet, barnacles (two species), several unidentifiable tentacles or worms or edges of half-hidden critters; some of these may be tiny orange-striped green anemones. A vague brownish shadow in the background, upper left, is the edge of the plumose anemone. The oyster shell on the right harbours a large flatworm on its underside. In the blurry sand and broken shells in front, a couple of amphipods blend in completely until they move.

The Japanese nassa snails have hidden themselves underneath the sand again.

Plants: bright green algae that grows on every surface, including the glass, pink encrusting algae on the oyster shell and the hermit's adopted shells, and - look! _ on the hairs on the hermit legs, orange algae (on the oyster and barnacle shells). On the rock in centre front, a deep red encrusting algae, probably the winter stage of Turkish washcloth (Mastocarpus papillatus). In back, the enthusiastic Rose seaweed (Rhodymenia californica), something orange, probably bits of leftover kelp holdfast, glimpses of eelgrass and sea lettuce.

This is why I keep a stool pulled up so that I can sit with my nose to the glass.

Following his nose

The Japanese nassa snails that live in my aquarium spend most of their days plowing through the sand at the bottom; I see them only when I clean the tank and sift the sand. But at times, for reasons of their own, they stop digging and head for higher ground. (At the moment, there are four climbing the walls.) Spring fever? Maybe, because they find nothing to eat up there; they're not algae eaters.

Japanese nassa, Nassarius fraterculus, siphon extended, hurrying.

Nassa snails have sturdy sensory siphons. Sometimes they bury themselves in the sand, with only the siphons poking out, waiting for food. Travelling, they follow their nosessiphons, sniffing the water for interesting goodies. Or maybe, for potential mates.

Yesterday, one of the climbers was on top of the moon snail shell, surveying the territory from there.

The eyes are small and inefficient. The sensitive siphon makes up for the lack.

A few seconds after I took this photo, a hermit crab ran up from behind. As soon as she touched the snail's shell, it retracted the siphon, then the body, and clamped itself down on the moon snail.

"Who's that?" 10 seconds later; siphon half-way down. Hermit barely visible in back.

The mud snails, algae eaters, have an oval opening, with a slight notch at both ends. These Nassas, carnivorous scavengers, have to travel longer distances to find food, hence the need for a sensitive water taster. The shell mouth has a separate notch or canal at the front end, to support and protect the siphon, which is the first thing retracted in case of danger; a siphonless Nassa will starve to death quickly.

Parts of a carnivorous marine snail. (From U. of Iowa.)

Comparative shell openings. J. Nassa in the centre. L to R: 3 mud snails, Battillaria attramentaria; unidentified whelk; 3 periwinkles. The whelk and the Nassa have siphon canals and fat lips. And siphons, of course. 2009 photo.

Blocky eyes

The hermit crabs in my aquarium carry their eyes on stalks. The eye itself is round, with a pale stripe across the centre, and the circular lens in the stripe.

Hairy hermit, Pagurus hirsutiusculus.

Tonight, while I tried to photograph a snail eating algae, trying to get a glimpse of its radula, a small hermit photobombed the scene. Maybe it's the angle: the hermit is above me, staring straight down at the flashing light that had attracted her attention: the whole eye is dark, and looks rectangular. I'd never seen one like that before.

"My turn! Forget that boring, slowpoke snail!"

She stepped on the snail's head, and he (the snail) promptly retreated into the shell. End of photo op.

And tomorrow, rain

It's snowing again. A bit of variety after the eternal rain.

4:50 AM, from the shelter of my carport.

Bright eyed and thirsty

I'm calling him Sidney, after Terry Pratchett's Sidney Lopsides.

This young 6-legged harvestman showed up three mornings in a row in my kitchen sink, getting a drink. Transferred gently to a damp paper towel, he* clung to it for several hours, then went his way. The third day, yesterday, I convinced him to move to a water-loving cyclamen pot. He didn't come back today.

"Water is fine, thanks!"

It's not harvestman season outside; too wet, too cold, too windy. But the pots on my windowsill will be a good place to rest and recuperate.

I am probably too soft-hearted.

*I'm calling him "he", although he could be female. I'm just guessing. Male and female spiders are easily distinguished by the "boxing gloves" on the male's pedipalps, but although harvestmen are also arachnids, they don't follow this pattern. Male harvestmen (The name implies, masculinity, doesn't it?) tend to have longer legs, and a smaller than the female does. The males' colours are brighter, but when the colours are brown and black, there's not much difference.

Signs of spring

I try not to complain. BC winter weather is what it is; fickle, inconstant, but usually wet. Sunny and calm this morning, raining cats and dogs and the occasional fish just as I set out for a long drive on unfamiliar back roads, blowing and howling one moment, the whitecaps out in the channel spraying foam, and so peaceful that every building on the shore reflects cleanly off the water the next.

In a gap between weather extremes, I went to look at the garden. The dandelions and hawkweed are spreading out their new leaves, enthusiastically, as usual. I ripped handfuls out; their roots were already down a full handslength.

But the primulas are blooming, muddily. And my perennial parsley is back. And everywhere, the early blues are sprouting. Bluebells, hyacinths, crocuses, and maybe a tulip or two; at this stage, I can't tell which is which.

Bluebells, I think.

And my pink hydrangea is budding!

No complaints, then. The garden likes the weather, so I will, too.

More oldies - clamshell patterns

I lined up these clamshells on the White Rock beach to look at their designs.

All these were within a few metres of each other. 2009

The designs remind me of ancient Chinese brush paintings, such as this:

Painting by Wang Hui, 1662, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And this one's from 2012, also at White Rock.

Mountain peaks on the flats

More oldies dug out of the hard drive. Just because.

Worm poop mountain, Boundary Bay beach.

And barnacle peak, White Rock beach.

Old photo and weather report

I'm still poring over old photos, looking for overlooked goodies. In a photo of sponges and mussels, found on a rock at a very low tide on White Rock beach, I discovered other members of their community.

Sponges, mussels, large plumose anemones (Metridium senile), at least 4 species of seaweed, several tiny snails, and a pretty white whelk. And maybe, down in the shade, another anemone or two.

The wind is still howling and shrieking outside. My windows are rattling; sometimes the raindrops hit so hard they sound like pebbles. It's a very good time to be sitting inside sorting photos.

Chia goes outside to do her business; she doesn't like kitty litter. And she doesn't mind the rain, but tonight, she comes in meowing and swats at me, as if the wind were my fault.

The wind knocked down one of the bird feeders. I went out to refill it and tie it more securely; there were no birds to be seen. I came in, hung up my jacket, and looked out the window. There was a bird on the feeder already. And they were busy at it all afternoon, in spite of the wind. How they manage to steer in this wind, I can't imagine.

Infinitely complex

I was inspired by a scientist on Twitter a few days ago. Allison studies species interactions, and her experience has been in the intertidal zone. As she says, she has had"my face down in the seaweeds for 5 years" looking at communities composed of hundreds of species.

To illustrate her Twitter series, she has been searching through her old intertidal photos looking for examples of interactions between species. "What a good idea!" I thought, and dug out my oldest photos, looking for the extras, the critters that weren't the feature of the photo, but were living alongside them. What have I missed?

Worms, barnacles, mussels, miniature sea urchins, sponges, anemones, tiny fish, more worms, more worms, eggs. Seaweeds of all kinds and colours. Most of these are in the unfocused areas of the photos, but they're there.

Purple starfish. With barnacles, stubby isopods, sponge, a worm, and a half-dozen hairy hermit crabs, walking on the star, or nestled between two of its arms.

Another starfish, with at least 5 species of seaweeds. Blowing the photo up, I discovered many tiny snails, one large blue-shelled snail, a crab, a limpet and, of course, barnacles. No telling how many beasties are sheltering under the seaweeds.

I still have oodles of photos to examine. I wonder what else I'll find.

Dappled sun

Searching through my old photos, looking for intertidal communities, I found this, taken on the beach here in 2010. Not a community, just pretty, worth looking at again.

Sunflower star, Pycnopodia helianthoides, under rippling water.

Speckles

I was planning to take the camera and spend the day on the shore. Then it poured and blew and howled and stormed and poured some more. An old moon snail shell on the sand in the aquarium had to substitute.

"The weather's perfect in here!"

"Speckles" is a green shore crab, grown up in the tank, a bit lonely, since she's the only crab left. I had to take her companions back to the beach when they got too big and started to fight with the hermits. Speckles, here, prefers to hide in dark corners. I think the hermits trained her when she was much smaller.

Gold in the sky

Catkins in the sunshine.

And even some blue sky!

(Found in the leftovers file. From December.)

First sign of spring?

Last fall, a couple of caterpillars pupated in a jar in my kitchen. I put a lid on it and hid it in a quiet corner. Yesterday morning, the jar contained a brand new butterfly.

Cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae. Female, because she has several spots on her forewing. Males have only one.

She's getting ready to leave.

I had to climb up into the kitchen sink to get these photos. A minute later, she'd moved on. I haven't been able to find her since, so she'll have to stay inside.

Dedicated birders

Plain Jane and Chia, birdwatching on a foggy afternoon:

"Sparrows, juncos, chickadees, and ... is that an eagle?"

"She's getting too excited."

"Just remember: they're MY birds."

It was Jane's last afternoon; she's gone back to her usual home, to watch her own set of birds.

(Jane is an indoor cat; she wouldn't even go outside when she had access. And Chia won't visit the front yard where the bird feeders are in the daytime, because a big black Lab hangs out in the yard next door. So the birds feed safely.)

Hermit crab fashion statement

Hermit crabs are picky about the shells they wear. The size matters. So does the shape of the opening, and the thickness of the shell. They usually will not take a shell from the wrong species, no matter how pretty it is, even if it's almost the same shape and size as the one they eventually choose. Almost isn't close enough.

They examine their next shells carefully, inside and out, rolling them over, lifting them, poking legs and pincers deep inside, then trying them on, sometimes several times before they finally decide. You could think of them as girls trying on a new pair of jeans in front of a mirror, turning this way and that; "Does this make me look fat?"

But they don't mind broken shells. Again, like girls in frayed and torn blue jeans.

Hairy hermit, with her backside showing through the hole in her jeans.

Hermit crabs fit themselves into a spiral-shaped shell. And the spiral has to turn to the right, which also reduces the number of suitable shells; some snails turn to the right, some to the left. A left-turning spiral just doesn't fit.

In this photo, the curve of the back end of the abdomen is visible, as well as a bit of one of the back legs.

In berry, or not?

Hermit crab. Not carrying eggs, I don't think. But maybe.

Hairy hermit, Pagurus hirsutiusculus. With anemone.

The only usual way to tell a female hermit crab from a male is to catch her out of the shell, not moving (which almost never happens) and look for two tiny dots on the underside of her belly. I've managed it once.

The other two signs are:

1. A mature male captures a female. (They seem to have no problem distinguishing which is which.) He grabs her by the edge of her shell and carts her around, sometimes for days, until she is ready to mate. This was happening a few weeks ago.

2. The female is carrying eggs. These will be attached to the side of her thorax, (the red area on the side of the one above.) As they grow, they fill in the gap and get in her way; she pushes them outwards and fans them, jiggles herself around in the shell, trying to get comfortable. At this stage, there's no doubt about her gender.

So: is that red area the beginning of the growth of eggs? Or not? Wait and see.

Chiton lips

"Woody", the green and blue chiton in my aquarium, spends most of his time plastered to a shell, a slow-moving, flattish, 2-inch-long mound blending into the background. If he has a "face", it's hidden. But for a moment, the other day, I caught him lifting the edge of his girdle, tasting the water.

Underside of the girdle, and the mouth, open. Also present: an amphipod, a mud snail, and a pink-tipped green anemone.

Woody does not have a head, as we understand the term. He has no eyes, tentacles, or brain here, just the mouth. (His shell does include light-sensitive spots, but around his mouth, there is no need, since it is usually clamped tight against the substrate.)

Like many other molluscs, chitons feed with a thin strap bearing rows of teeth known as the radula. The anterior rows are used up and discarded or swallowed and replaced by new rows moving forward like a conveyor belt. ... The chiton radula is noteworthy because one pair of cusps in each row is hardened with magnetite, which provides these teeth with a coating harder than stainless steel. They are the only molluscs that have magnetite-coated teeth. In fact, they are the only organisms known to manufacture such vast quantities of magnetite. (http://biology.fullerton.edu/deernisse/pubs/Eernisse_07_chitons_Tidepools.pdf)

Before I start to take photos through the glass, I scrub the inside walls; overnight, they develop a coating of green algae. A soft cloth removes most of it, but underneath that, there's always a more tenacious growth of yellowish-brown algae; for that, I use a green kitchen scouring pad, scrubbing and wiping with the cloth alternately. With a fingernail, I pry off harder lumps.

And even then, once I give up, the glass is still covered with these tiny pink dots, visible against the yellow flesh of the chiton. Pacific rose seaweed, trying to establish itself on every surface in the aquarium. When it grows on a shell, I can't rip or scrape it all off; it's tremendously tenacious. I tear off and discard double handfuls every time I clean the tank, but the glued-on "roots" are always left behind, ready to leap into action.

So fragile-looking, so delicate! And so strong!

Feathery cirri, spotted palps

A few weeks ago, I noticed that several of the hermit crabs in my tank had paired up, with bigger males hauling around their chosen girlfriends. So this week, I've been examining all the larger females, looking to see if they are carrying eggs. It seems to be too early to be sure; there are a couple of maybes.

Meanwhile, I took photos of several of the other tank residents. Here are two of the large thatched acorn barnacles, trolling for plankton.

The thatched acorn barnacle has black cirri.

This one houses several worms in its shell.

These tiny three-sectioned tubeworms show up in the sand, and in many of the assorted shells in the tank, including in those occupied by hermit crabs. In the sand, up against the glass wall, I can see the tiny worm; otherwise, all that I see are these two long palps. I don't know if the spots - I've never noticed them on other worms - are bits of material the worm is rejecting, or actual palp markings. I'll be watching for them in future.

Pink and blue

The snow has gone; the rain came back.

Cyclamen and a rainy window. 2:00 PM, and dark outside already.

I've been posting infrequently over the Christmas and kitten-sitting season; I'm back on track now, I think. Plain Jane goes home tomorrow.

Plain Jane

I have been kitten-sitting over the holiday season. One of Chia's babies, but not a baby any longer, has been making life interesting. Her new humans have named her "Jane", maybe in hopes of toning her personality down. Vain hopes.

Jane, the tigress, ready to pounce.

Score so far: Christmas decorations, 0, Jane umpteen; breakable collectibles, 0, Jane 4; small computer thingies, lost and found after several hours with a flashlight, 6; throw rugs, who's counting? recyclables, ditto. And she's claimed the most comfortable chair for her naps, exiling her mother to the second most comfortable, and leaving me with a stiff dining room chair or the stool at my desk. Thanks, Plain Jane!

But I'll be sorry to see her go. Sometimes I doubt my own sanity.

Blue teeth

This I haven't seen before: on the rim of a shell of a mud snail in my aquarium, there are tiny, bright blue dots.

Batillaria attramentaria, about 1/2 inch long.

A description on the WallaWalla.edu site mentions that the lip of the shell has teeth inside it. Would these be the teeth?

Turtle under a blanket

Turtles live for years and years. Even clay ones. This one has inhabited my gardens for over 20 years, providing cover for slugs and sowbugs, and support for baby plants. (For the slugs to eat, as often as not.)

The snow is warm, he says; it keeps the wind off.

The dry stalks are last fall's nasturtiums. And the green leaves in back are next spring's hollyhock, hoping for a warm winter.

Toyota brainstorm

My car sometimes runs on autopilot. I thought I was going inland to look for deep snow, but the car stopped at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park, where the snow didn't even top my shoes.

The car has good ideas, some days.

Afternoon light on trees, deciduous and evergreen. Looking inland, over the protected wild field.

Sit and rest awhile. The seat is cushioned.

Lichens (3 species) on cottonwood

I walked through the field and small patch of bush, then on to the south end of the shore.

All very peaceful. Quadra Island on the left, Mitlenatch on the right (the small, pale line just south of the barge), and the frozen mainland straight ahead.

Carex macrocephala, reduced to soft, yellow blades. But the treacherous seed cases still lie in wait on the ground, as sharp and stiff as ever. Two are visible here, near the upper left third lines.

On the shore, mounds of fresh bull kelp have been tossed up to freeze. The cold splits the thick-walled floats; I saw dozens like this. Usually, they dry intact. 

Grasses in the dunes just inland of the log jam.

And north to the far end of the bay, to look at the lagoon and its birds.

On the far spit, a flock of Canada geese sleep in the sunshine. Ducks, mostly mallards, wigeons, and mallard hybrids paddle slowly back and forth, though always just a bit faster than I could walk, trying to get closer.

I saw couple of loons, a few harlequin ducks, and diving ducks, these last always caught just as they disappeared underwater. Along the water's edge peeps small and large foraged. A few sparrows joined them in the drier areas; not a usual place for them, but their field and woods are under snow.

Black turnstone and frozen salt-tolerant plants.

Turnstones in flight show a dramatic pattern in black and white.

They almost look like butterflies here.

And back to the car, shortly before sunset. (At 4:29 PM.)

Last light on a snake-rail fence.

Good thinking, car! I enjoyed the walk!