Off the beaten track

I spent much of today on the road, hurrying along freeways and up city streets, racing the clock. On the way home, I was feeling very sleepy, and on the spur of the moment, took an unfamiliar exit off the highway, and then, to get out of the way of trucks, dodged down a dead-end street, going south towards the river.

A quick walk in the cold without my coat woke me up. And my little old camera was in my purse (and the battery was charged - oh, joy!). I wandered about snapping photos of everything and nothing until my fingers went numb, then got back in the car and came home.

I liked these 4 photos.

Above a ditch full of blackberry canes, these dead fireweed stalks reach for the sky.

At the dead end of the dead end, a rough trail led to this fence, and to one of the tugboats that ply the river, in for repairs. The trees are on the bank of the river.

Frozen roses, crispy and shrunken, but still pink.

I'm back on the road home, waiting for the light at my turnoff, and looking at the back side of  Burns Bog. I love this view in winter; in the summer the skeletons of the trees are hidden behind a green blanket.

On the road again tomorrow. I hope the weather holds.

Moss on a wall

In Burns Bog.

I'll be taking a short semi-break from blogging for a week or two while I deal with some medical issues. (Nothing to worry about.) I may post a few photos when I find time.

Dem dry stones

Cougar Creek drains from the clay soils near our house, seeps under a couple of malls, meanders over to Cougar Creek Park with its lagoons and beaver dams, and plunges into a steep canyon. At the bottom end, it tunnels under the road into Sunshine Hills, and out into the Burns Bog flats.

We started our rock flipping excursion from that road, heading upstream, at first, into the canyon.

Reflections of the trees at the top of the Canyon. This year, the creek is shallow and slow.

Dying alder leaves and shadows of horsetails on the stones along the river bank.

We turned over many stones, both on the banks, and in the dry areas of the creek bed. Under a few, we found pillbugs, and one earthworm. Nothing more; the ground was dry, the creek bed scoured clean, and barely damp.

Where the creek was slightly deeper, held back by sticks and leaves caught on a few rocks, I turned over a rock, saw something flashing in the current, and caught it. I spread it out on the next rock to examine it.

A gruesome find. A red dragonfly, minus most of the head and abdomen, probably eaten by fish. The wings are intact. Nothing there to interest a hungry trout.

We crossed the road into Burns Bog. This part of the bog was once extensively mined for peat, and is criss-crossed by walls and railway tracks. A large part of it was paved over, but the pavement is cracked and mossy, buckling as the ground has heaved under it. Alders and maples grow in the gaps.

Moss breaking pavement, making soil for larger plants.

Cracked pavement. I looked in the cracks; nothing was moving.

It's been a dry summer; even in the shade, the moss was dry and scratchy. The ground underneath was no damper. We turned over many rocks and chunks of broken concrete, finding mostly dry soil, baked hard.

Under one slab of concrete, a few reddish ants had dug tunnels. They have something damp and bluish in the upper centre here; some sort of dead critter.

The underside of a paving stone. Ant trails, hot and crispy. No ants in sight.

Pillbugs

And a small, sleeping slug. I have never seen one before with a spotted white face; I didn't know there were such critters.

And this I will never understand: Burns Bog is supposed to be an ecological preserve, even this once-mined area. Access is mostly on foot, and the trails are long. Why, then, do people haul garbage deep into the woods here? On foot, carrying heavy trash, when we have door-to-door pickup or easily available bins?

Every time, we find something. Bottles and buckets, bicycle parts, grocery store trolleys, old cabinet TVs, rotting mattresses, shoes . . . This time, it was electronics. Underneath the chunks of concrete.

TV? Or what?

And what is this? It's plastic, backed with cardboard.

This I do understand. There's a graffiti'd wall just beyond.

There are always leftovers

Whether it's food or photos we're talking about, there's always something put aside for "tomorrow". Which rarely comes.

These are some photos that got left behind this month, in no particular order.

Unidentified fly, parked on my glass door.

Small, unidentified crucifer, down at shoe-height. Beach Grove

Zoom

Another unidentified flower, on a tall shrub. Burnaby Foreshore Park

Towering cottonwoods in Burnaby Foreshore Park

Big, fat worm. Secret Garden, Beach Grove

Another bee with thimbleberry flowers, Elgin Heritage Park

"Ductile iron". Valve on abandoned pump, Burns Bog

"Tiger and Wolf". Old pavement, Burns Bog

Crabapple, possibly. Elgin Heritage Park

Bleeding hearts, Elgin Heritage Park. I like the little, lacy heart in the centre of the top bud.

Hearts sent to Clytie, at Random Hearts.

Wordless

Well, sort of . . .

Buttercup mimic

Along the shady banks of a stream at this time of year, we always see the large-leaved avens in flower with its feet in the mud.

Geum macrophyllum var. perincisum, Burns Bog

We found it at the base of the cliff in White Rock, where the trickle of water never fails, and in the ditch by the railroad at Crescent Beach. It reclaimed a mudslide behind my backyard when I lived near Mission. And it lines the path beside the creek in Burns Bog.

In many ways, it looks sort of buttercuppish. It likes the same conditions; wet ground, some shade. The avens flowers, 5 petalled and bright yellow, look like a skimpy buttercup; the leaves are similar to some buttercup leaves. But the buttercup bears its flowers on individual, leafless stems, where the avens flowers cluster at the tip of hairy, leafy stems. Most buttercups (definitely not all) grow close to the ground. In deep shade, though, they may be quite tall, but not as bushy as the avens.

Buttercup

And where they get half a chance, the buttercups go hog-wild, producing a brilliant yellow carpet.

Buttercups, Burnaby Foreshore Park

They're not relatives; the large-leaved avens belong to the Rose family. The buttercup is a Ranunculus.

Promise of goodness to come

The salmon berries are finally flowering; I saw the first barely a week ago, still half open, then these a couple of days ago. It seems a bit late this year for them. I checked back to previous years; last year, they were just starting at the end of March. In 2011, I found some in a shady ravine the 21st of April. In 2008, it was the first week of April.

These were in Burns Bog, good terrain for salmonberry; wet and shady.

Flower and green berry, against the yellow-green of the sunny treetops.

The berries are still hard and green. Ripe, some will be salmon coloured, most deep red.

Skunk cabbage snail

We found several of these little snails on a skunk cabbage in Burns Bog. I haven't seen any like them before.

This one was on a blade of grass. It's about 1 cm. long.

Isn't it a cutie?

I haven't been able to identify this snail; I hardly know where to start.

Help!

UPDATE:

I wrote Robert Forsyth of mollus.ca, and he identified it as one of the ambersnails. He writes,

This is one of a group of snail that pretty much look all alike. They are the Ambersnails, family Succineidae, and are characterized by a very thin yellowish (usually; hence the name) shell having few (about 3) turns or whorls. The opening is large and while the animal can fully retract, there isn’t a lot of protection afforded by the shell. The main differences between the several genera are anatomical, especially the reproductive system. Genera (and so species) are nearly impossible to identify with shells alone. Our species — the number is uncertain — are further complicated by most being nearly unknown anatomically. Genetics may be the answer to sort out this difficult group. In our area, most succineid snails are inhabitants of somewhat characteristically wet areas, like marshes and edges of waterways, although there are dryland ambersnails (there’s one that lives in the xeric hills around Kamloops for example, in areas with prickly pear cactus even). I should also add that some freshwater snails come very close to looking like ambersnails, further complicating identification at times.

Thanks again, Robert!

A creek full of light

In Burns Bog, this time of year, the trees are not fully leafed out, and the leaves are still that cheerful springtime yellow-green. Although our path goes through deep shade, we walk under a glowing canopy. Down in the shadowed creek, a trickle of dark water traps and reflects the glory overhead.

Lone mallard in a patch of sky

Davies Creek, running along the outer edge of the bog, between ferny banks.

Stripes and trunks

Green zigzags

Patches

Vibrant greens

Candles in the bog

On the spur of the moment, on finding the parking lot at the mall crowded with cars lined up waiting for spots, we changed our minds and went down to Burns Bog instead. We weren't prepared, and the only camera we had was the tiny, pocket-sized Sony. And it was so long since I'd used it that I forgot to check its settings, so the flash was set to "Always". In the blazing sun, this doesn't work so well.

No matter; it was an interesting afternoon; I'll have more to say about it later on. For now, this:

We came across an unusual pine tree in an area that had been mostly paved over long, long ago.

Treetop, festooned with "candles".

This may be a variation of the shore pine, Pinus contorta. The needles come in pairs (look closely at the base of the cone below), and are about 3 inches long, slightly curved or twisted. Lodgepole pine needles also come in pairs, but the tree is usually taller and straighter, and not so likely to be found here on the coast.

The trunk and branches are crooked, the bark scaly, brown or grey depending on the light. So far, so good.

Where it seems not to match up, is in the large cones. The erect cones at the tips of the branches are the short-lived male cones. They are about as long as the needles, 3 inches tall or more. Each one, at the tip, wears a clump of shorter needles.

As we moved about the tree, we could see a cloud of pollen being released. I shook a cone on purpose; yellow pollen sprayed everywhere. The cone was sticky and mildly scented.

Male cone, with topknot. Sorry about the glare.

Each pollen grain shields a sperm cell. The grains float on the wind to reach a female cone and fertilize the ovules, deep between the scales. The male cone then disintegrates, while the female matures and becomes woody. Each scale will have a pair of seeds at the base, which, if this is a shore pine, will be released once it matures. (The cones of the Lodgepole pine stay closed for years until a forest fire splits them open.)

Cropped from top photo. Some branches have clusters of "candles". At the base, on two of these branches, are a couple or three fat female cones.

Tangled, rubbery branches, brown, scaly bark.

My guide says, about the shore pine,

"On some peat-bogs*, shore pine forms stunted forests where 100-year-old trees my be less than 5 cm. in diameter."

*Such as Burns Bog, where we found this one.

Yes(s)ir!

Seen in an abandoned business site in Burns Bog:


Fraser and Yaya. Immortalized. (Sort of.)
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Seek ye Love, ye fairy-sprites?

Most of the vegetation in Burns Bog is small-leaved; evergreens with needles, mosses, Labrador tea, bog blueberries, and so on. But one plant breaks the rule; the skunk cabbage. The acid soil and deep shade of the bog is very much to their liking, and where the surface of the soil is wet, they settle in and fill the space with two-foot leaves.


A small patch.


Skunk cabbage flowering. We smell them before we see them; like skunks, but not so acrid. The bugs find them by the smell, too.


Here's a beetle.* An attractive little guy, wearing a brown jacket with black collar and patches.


Party time! A ripe, juicy flower spike, with plenty of food for all. The flowers themselves are tiny, either male or female, greenish-yellow, and without petals; that big yellow thing is a wrapper, or spathe. When the flowers are mature, the inviting (to insects) aroma is strongest. The flower spike in the background is not ready yet, and no bugs visit it.


And once the beetles have eaten and drunk their fill, what next? You guessed it! In this section alone, I count at least six mating couples.

Love among the skunk cabbages.

(Apologies to Lewis Carroll.)
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*It's a Rove Beetle, Staphylinidae: Omaliinae, according to Boris Buche at BugGuide. The smaller ones on the spike are a different species, not ID'd yet.
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