Seen by the side of the road

Fawn lilies! Pink fawn lilies!

With an ant.

Erythronium revolutum

The basal leaves have an interesting pattern.

There were only five plants, in a spot that is liable to be mowed and/or walked on. I will be going back later on to collect seeds to try and establish them in my yard.

Maternity ward

Shore crabs are busy little critters. They dig holes under rocks and shells, lifting huge (for them) rocks aside in the process. They re-arrange the landscaping in my aquarium. They pester the anemones and roll the hermits out of their way. Occasionally, they go jogging.

I had taken a big male back to the beach, exiled because he was bullying everyone else in the tank. And then the female, left alone, went mad. She ran around and around the aquarium, scraping at the walls as if she were trying to find an exit. She tried to climb the walls, standing on tiptoe and reaching, reaching for the top. She never gave up. Day after day, she ran.

I found a small male at the beach and brought him home. She attacked him on sight. I realized why a couple of days later when he came up to my light at the wall and I saw his purple polka-dotted pincers. He's a purple shore crab; she's a green.

I found a green male and brought him home. She settled down immediately and went back to weight-lifting oysters and barnacled rocks; normal crab behaviour.

And then one day last week, she came to the glass to show off her new brood. She was carrying a belly-full of eggs.

"Look what I've got!" Photo taken the 24th; it took a few days to catch her in a decent light.

Showing off.

This is why female crabs have wide abdominal plates. They need to provide housing for thousands of babies. The males' abdominal plates are narrow and pointed.

The structures at the sides, the feathery pleopods, serve as anchor points and safety gates.

She grooms these babies constantly, opening and shutting her abdomen to provide a scrubbing current, picking away at them with those giant chelipeds, clearing out debris. Motherhood is hard work!

They're getting quite big already.

The female's rounded abdominal flap can carry more than 10,000 eggs at once. (Biodiversity of the Central Coast)

Yesterday, the night of the 25th, she came to the glass wall again.

"Hi!"

And now the eggs have eyes!

Looking out at the world from the shelter of Mommy's tummy.

Zooming in ...

Tiny cuties!

This morning, Ma crab greeted me when I turned on the lights. She's slim again. The babies are gone, out swimming in the current.

I don't expect to have 10,000 crabs in the tank. Many will get lost in the filter, others will be eaten quickly. The anemones all looked quite perky this morning, after their crabby breakfast.

Maybe one or two will escape the voracious filter and the reaching anemones, hide under the sand, or on the backside of one of the seaweeds, and show up one of these days, a pinhead crab on her way to adulthood.

An oyster has no teeth

But the mouth has tooth look-alikes. Or maybe zipper analogs.

Oyster grin

The oyster has two rows of interlocking, short tentacles along the outer edges of the mantle. Like the tentacles of other intertidal critters, they can sense temperature changes, floating debris, and chemicals in the water. They also serve as rudimentary eyes, sensing changes in the light level.

When I poke at an oyster with my handy wooden chopstick, it slams the shells shut immediately. I don't actually have to touch it; as long as the chopstick is within a few millimetres, the oyster reacts. Whether it "sees" the chopstick's shadow, or "smells" the wood, I can't tell. It doesn't seem to mind crabs and hermits wandering all over it, unless a careless foot pokes right inside the mouth.

Pigment cells are concentrated along the free edge of the mantle and in the tentacles in a band varying in color from light brown to jet black. (NOAA)

This one has an attractive marbled pattern. Not all oysters, not even all same-species, same-environment oysters have matching patterns or colours.

Toothy lantern

What can you eat with only five teeth?

Sea urchin mouth, with its five teeth.

If you're a sea urchin, you can even chew into rock with them.

Small green sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, with its spiky shadow.

The teeth are the bottom (because the mouth faces down) part of the mouth structure called Aristotle's Lantern, supposedly because when Aristotle drew one, he thought it looked like a lamp. They are made, like the test and mollusc shells, of calcium carbonate, CaCO3. We see CaCO3 every morning as we make breakfast; egg shells are made of calcium carbonate. So is chalk. And the antacid we take after too big a meal.

So how does a sea urchin bore a hole in rock with chalk?

A 2016 study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shows how it's done, although they don't mention sea urchins specifically.

Calcium carbonate is one of the most important materials on earth, crystallizing into chalk, shells, and rocks. Animals from mollusks to people use calcium carbonate to make biominerals such as pearls, seashells, exoskeletons, or the tiny organs in ears that maintain balance. These biominerals include proteins or other organic matter in the crystalline matrix to convert the weak calcium carbonate to hard, durable materials.

If a tooth does chip, it repairs itself, filling in the gap with a freshly built CaCO3 and protein structure. No need for dentists!

The sea urchin's main diet is a lot softer than rock, of course; it eats mostly algae. A swarm of urchins can demolish a kelp forest. Chewing rock is construction work, making safe holes to sleep in.

Red giant

"What is this?" A girl I'd been talking to on the beach came running, holding a large, red animal, already rolling itself up into a ball.

Giant Pacific chiton, aka gumboot chiton, Cryptochiton stelleri.

It rolls end to end; rolled up like this, it measured a bit over 6 inches. That's side to side, I think.

From the brief glimpse I got of it before it curled up, it's like the much smaller dead chitons I found on the beach last month. Those were almost white, with tiny pinkish protuberances; their fleshy coating had eroded away.

The gumboot chiton can grow up to 14 inches long. This one, I think was a little less than that. A fully mature one may weigh up to 2 kilos.

The fleshy outer coat is hard and rough to the touch, with a slight give on pressure, like strong leather. The flesh, in the brief glimpse I got before the chiton rolled itself up, was a brownish orange.

To touch a gumboot is to feel the fuzzy texture of about 20 species of red algae that live on the mantle and give the gumboot its brick-red color. (From Monterey Bay Aquarium)

At home, I examined my photos closely. The red mantle is covered with tiny flower- or anemone-shaped stalks; whether they are algae or the mantle itself, I couldn't tell.

Algae? The grey stuff is fine sand from the beach.

After I found those dead chitons, I returned a few days later, and found the smaller one where I had seen it before. I brought it home in a double plastic bag (it was stinky!), soaked it repeatedly in hydrogen peroxide for several days, cleaned the rotting flesh away, soaked the rest in alcohol, and then dried it.

The eight internal shells are now visible. Because of their shape, they're often called "butterfly shells".

7 shells (also called plates or valves) are clearly visible. The eighth is almost hidden under the edge on the left.

Top of this chiton. The white mantle is hard and smooth, but those red knobs are rough. They drop off quite easily; they are probably algae.

Total length of the dried chiton: 4 inches, curved in as it is.

Most chitons cling tightly to their rocks; these gumboots are easier to dislodge, and sometimes they can be washed up by the waves. This live one was on the sand, near rocks.

Sometimes in the spring, great numbers of chitons gather on rocky beaches, probably venturing in from deeper waters to spawn. (Monterey Bay Aquarium)

We replaced the chiton on the sand at the water's edge and left him to find his way home. He was still rolled up tightly when I headed back up the trail.

Muddy buddy

On a rocky, muddy beach north of the city, with the tide going out, I was flipping rocks, watching muddy crabs and snails, all in shades of brown mud, when I saw a flash of bright blue. I had to move several rocks to track it down; a hurrying hermit with a blue right hand.

Blue knees, orange and green banded antennae. Too big for his shell. And lots of hair.

He looked like a Hairy hermit, Pagurus hirsutiusculus, except for that brilliant blue pincer, and a distinct black square on his carapace. Hairies are usually olive green or brown, chelipeds (pincers) and all, with small blue or white spots on the knees. The carapace is often striped.

I wrapped him in wet sea lettuce and rockweed and brought him home to examine him more closely.

From the back, on my hand. That pincer is so big, it drags along underneath him when he walks.

At home, in a tray of seawater, he was unhappy until I gave him back the seaweed. He hid underneath it and refused to budge, not giving me a chance to look at him cleaned up.

I let him rest a while, then dropped him in the tank. He looked around for a few minutes, then charged and fought with the largest male Hairy. Because he was a different species? I had to separate them to give him a chance to settle down.

Along came a large Grainy Hand hermit; they touched antennae, ("Hi, stranger!"), sat together for a while, peacefully. But he's definitely not a Grainy Hand, not with those striped antennae, although the Grainy Hands sometimes do have a bluish tinge to their pincers.

I came back to check on him after a couple of hours. He was still in the same place, but now he has a girlfriend, a smaller Hairy hermit. He's holding her by the edge of the shell, waiting for her to molt. She seems contented enough, resting, occasionally waving her antennae at him.

So he's a Hairy hermit. With a blue pincer. And the fight with the other Hairy was adult male rivalry.

But why is that pincer so blue?

Stacked critters at lunch

Hermit crab, snails, and oyster:

The hermit is eating his lunch, a shrimp and veggies pellet.

And beneath, the oyster opens wide, ready to catch any fine crumbs.

These pellets, a favourite with the hermits and crabs, contain: krill, fish, shrimp, soy (not a "normal" hermit diet, is it?), wheat, corn meal, squid meal, yeast, kelp, dried seaweed, more fish meal and oil, turmeric (for an appetizing colour or to make the grains taste like real food?), MSG, and assorted vitamins.

The anemones accept these readily, but soon spit out an orangey mush. They like plain dried shrimp better.

Some of the scavenging snails eat the leftovers. There are plenty; the hermits are messy eaters, and easily distracted by another hermit with an apparently bigger pellet; these must necessarily be chased down and captured immediately.

Down a logging road

I can't resist an unmapped road winding off into the bush.

Logging road. A sign near the highway warns of active logging Monday to Friday. Nobody there on Sunday afternoon; perfect for an explore.

A couple of kilometres in, I found logging slash, and a view of distant mountain tops.

I grew up around logging slash, hardly noticing it. In recent years, with the vast increase in machine logging, stripping much of our rain forest of its ancient cover, I've come to detest the thought of it. But here, the old familiarity returned, and I was able to see the beauty even in this ravaged forest, so busy now re-establishing itself.

Among the trees, I can always hear their quiet conversations. Here, on a Sunday afternoon, with the whispering evergreens far across the graveyard of their old friends, it was so silent that the buzzing of a fly echoed down the road. The air was spicy, smelling of cut wood and browning ferns. A few tiny white butterflies danced around the crumbling stumps. Huckleberry shrubs, still young, sprout from the crevices at the tops of nurse stumps, and around their feet, the first green shoots of next season's covering crops, fireweed and ferns, elderberry and blackberry, dot the ground.

I turned over fragrant slabs of wood and strips of bark, each one decorated with the tunnels and shredded fibers left by burrowing grubs.

A beetle's drawing of Don Quixote's nag, Rocinante?

Salal is evergreen and hardy, resisting even the tread of men and machines. With last year's dead ferns. The roots are still there, healthy and ready to sprout, now that the ice is gone.

Logging is still going on, farther into the mountains. Here, recovery begins.

Green lights

The elderberries are budding.

Red elderberry, Sambucus racemosa, ssp. pubens

The flowers will be white, but for now, while they're in bud, they're tinged with pink. And the fruits, tiny drupes, will be bright red.

Background; logging slash, enlivened with the green lights of new elderberry and huckleberry leaves.

Just dandy

It's (finally) spring, and the dandelions are out.

Dandy lion and bug. (Far right)

And in my lawn, the hawkweed is revving up.

Caught in the act

I happened to glance at the aquarium at just the right moment to see an anemone spawning.

Pink-tipped green anemone, releasing sperm!

I've checked several videos, all showing fogs of sperm floating out in a slow, continuous stream. This little guy spit out three (that I saw) quick bursts of cloudy material, with a few seconds interval between. I had time to run for the camera and catch the third. There was no fourth. (Hooray for autofocus!)

Anemones in aquaria usually reproduce by splitting in half, creating two separate animals that each go in their own way. This is generally the case in my tank; there are two pink-tipped greens half-way through a split today and another couple of new pairs starting to move apart.

Sexual reproduction is rarer, at least in tanks. The anemones, although they were "born" by cloning, still manage to become either male or female, not necessarily the gender of their parent individual. This one is male.

A study on Anthopleura elegantissima in north San Francisco Bay, California shows that gonads build in size through spring and summer, and spawning occurs in late summer/early autumn.  Gonad indices peak coincidentally with high surface seawater temperatures. ... Eggs are released in brown mucousy masses, while spermatozoa are released in milky-white masses. (From A Snail's Odyssey)

Note: the schedule may be different because my tank didn't suffer the more extreme winter that outside waters would.

There is some evidence that males begin spawning earlier than females, and perhaps this stimulates the females to spawn. (Same site, Research study 2)

I'll be monitoring the anemones more frequently in the next few days. I have no idea which are female; I hope some are.

There's not much chance of this producing more anemones here; the fertilized eggs swim in the current for a while, and will probably be caught in the filter. The critters are smart to use the splitting strategy in captivity.

And a few more rocks on the shore

They intrigue me. I wish I knew their history.

Stripes on a large rock. With tiny barnacles in the cracks.

Peeling rock.

Trying to imagine how this came about: a solid core was bathed in sediment, which hardened into a smooth coating, and now, after a pounding by waves bearing pebbles and alternately frozen and heated, the coat is peeling off. Just a guess, probably not quite correct.

The snails like to bask in the sunshine at low tide, like tourists on a tropical beach.

A small clump of sea lettuce washed up, adding a touch of softness and colour.

Seaweed on rocks that are usually underwater.

Thoughts on a rocky shore

I love a rocky beach.

Polished rocks, a sprinkling of barnacles

The current runs strong along the eastern shore of the Georgia Strait, and the tides pound in and drain out quickly. Many of the rocky areas are like this; water-polished rocks, with very little life visible. Turning over stones at low tide, I find more smooth stones. No crabs, no hermits, no worms. They must be there, but have retreated to deeper, safer hideouts.

Sometimes there are barnacles, in flatter areas thickly covering the stones, in other spots clustered on the sheltered sides and bottoms of the rocks. There are spots where none are to be seen, where the rocks shine as if they were waxed and buffed.

Down near the lowest tide line, seaweeds cover the rocks. It's dangerous walking; the weeds are slippery, and the rocks move underfoot. No matter how carefully I step, I'm always a twisted ankle away from a spill. But here, the crabs and other critters find a refuge. From the waves, from hungry gulls, and also from me, as I usually gingerly skirt the greenest areas, keeping an eye on the water's edge, ready to hurry towards land when the tide turns; I don't want to be caught in seaweed over stones as the water races in. Too risky.

A flatter spot, in the lower intertidal zone, with small erratics and tide pools. More barnacles here.

Coming towards a tide pool, I see ripples and splashes at the surface. By the time I get there (and sometimes I sneak up from the far side of the rock) there is nothing. The pool looks empty, just more clean stones with clear water. Even the tiny fish have hidden underneath the stones.

But there are always snails. Tiny, and tinier snails, dotting the rocks, basking in the warmth or resting in a tide pool. Most are pinhead size, some as "big" as a grain of rice. They hold on tight, or don't provide enough resistance to the waves to be washed away. Maybe their shape helps; smooth and rounded, with a sharp tip.

Under an inch of water in a tide pool, rice-grain snails and a few limpets choose the warmest rock.

Everywhere else, where I find tiny snails, a good half of the shells house miniature hermit crabs. Not here. I think I saw one leg poking out of a shell; otherwise, every snail shell is full of snail. Hermits can easily be bowled over by a wave and swept away.

The tiniest snails are a worry for me. In some spots, every decent-sized stone is covered with them, like sprinkles on a donut. I can't put my foot down without stepping on some. I try to brush them aside, but risk tripping myself up as the stone shifts. I am glad my shoes have deep ridging; at least some of my footprint is safe for tiny critters.

Sand is safer, for the snails, and for me.

As close as I'm permitted to get

Sea, rocks, sky. And distant wigeons.

Too far away to see, except as a fluttering arrow. But the pattern of whites* on wings and rumps identifies them as American wigeons. 

A gull watches me. One step closer, she says, and I'm outta here.

* There's an interesting article and available guides that help with waterfowl id, even at a distance, using the patterns of white markings. I followed the link from the CornellLab bird id website. "Where's the White?"   I will be ordering one, or maybe two.

Waste not ...

It's not only the hermit crabs who use leftover empty shells:

Orange-striped green anemones, Diadumene lineata, in empty barnacle shells.

These tiny anemones are quite mobile, and flit from wall to rock to shell to seaweed, always seeming to search for variety. Or maybe safety; these ones are staying put. No-one steps on them, no-one tries to push them aside.

Room with a view.

Valley of the gulls

It looks like a bare mountaintop:

With a long glacier, its river, and a dusting of snow on the slopes.

Except that it's not. It's a glacial erratic on the beach. The lower valley is at my eye height.

The "glacier" and "snow" are gull poop, the "forest" is seaweed. The light-coloured "rocks" are small acorn barnacles.

I want to go hiking there.

Feather

And red algae.

On rock, liberally fertilized with gull guano.

(I wish the gulls would let me get this close.)

Barnacle spirit

You never know what to expect in a tank full of critters. I was watching barnacles catching dinner, when one, or rather its ghost, came out into the open.

Thatched acorn barnacle. In life, the cirri are black.

It swayed in the current for a few minutes, then the rest of the body bubbled out.

The long, thick appendage is the barnacle's penis. When the barnacle is searching for a mate, it extends to 8 times the body length. An obvious solution to the problem of being glued in place.

Soon, the entire body floated free. Before a hermit or crab caught it, I fished it out and photographed it on a wet black background.

The long cirri (feathery tentacles) are the legs the barnacle fishes with. I'm not sure of the function of those shorter feathers. Near the base of the penis, the ridging is visible. Muscle tissue, maybe?

Another view, showing the entire body. The head end is on the left; in life, it stays cemented to the floor of the barnacle casing.

Unplanned stop

I am so glad the days are getting longer. Coming home at 7 PM, the setting sun on the mainland mountaintops and an empty beach dragged my car into a parking lot, and my feet down to water's edge.

Stories beach, and the mainland mountains.

Warm light on a snowy peak.

The incoming tide brought fresh seaweeds with it, mainly rockweed and eelgrass, fresh, green, and with roots. I brought home a full bag for my tank, and the hermit crabs are now clambering through an eelgrass forest loaded with good eats: hydroids, diatom fuzz, ("Yum!" they say, between mouthfuls) and tiny, waving red algae.

You can't see me

... I'm hiding ...

... You'll never find me behind this seaweed.

Toothy skirts and a hat for spring

The advantage of glass walls is that sometimes you get to see a limpet on the move.

Lifting her skirts to run.

It seems odd that the limpet manages to negotiate curves and 90 degree angles, with a shell that we usually see clamped tight to a flattish surface. But they are capable of lifting the shell enough to get a grip on the new wall and from there, its a simple matter to slide on up, carrying the shell like an umbrella.

This one's decorated nicely with stripes of green algae and fanning barnacles. Some of her relatives wear hats:

Limpet (3/8 inch across) with her flamboyant spring bonnet.

(The long tube in the top photo is limpet poop.)