Left on the shore

The short trail through the woods at Buttle Lake starts and ends at spots along the shore of the lake. I walked down to the water's edge to look at some red plants that I'm still trying to identify. Near the water, I found the big cheliped of a crayfish.

Signal Crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus.

This is our native crayfish, the only one found on Vancouver Island. They're known as the Signal crayfish for the white to pale blue patch at the claw joint, here barely visible in this sun-bleached cheliped. The cheliped could have been left behind after a recent moult, just as crabs leave their old carapaces, legs and all, on the beach.

Where I found it, beside those pinkish sands. More on this later.

I saw this one 6 years ago, in a creek off the Oyster River.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

El sendero que seguí en el bosque en la orilla del Lago Buttle empieza y termina cerca del agua. Bajé al borde del agua para observar unas plantas rojas desconocidas (sigo sin identificarlas todavía), y allí encontré el quelípodo de un cangrejo de rio.

1. Cangrejo de rio "Señal", Pastifastacus leniusculus. Este es nuestro cangrejo de rio nativo, y el único que se encuentra aquí en la isla. Se conocen como el cangrejo "Señal" por la marca blanca o azul pálido en la articulación de la  pinza, aquí apenas visible en el quelípedo blanqueado por el  sol, que probablemente abandonado después de una muda, al igual que los cangrejos de mar dejan sus caparazones con todo y patas en la playa.
2. El sitio donde lo encontré, cerca de esas arenas color de rosa.
3. Vi este hace 6 años, en una rama del rio Oyster.

It's a jungle in there

"Rugged". That word comes up repeatedly in descriptions of Vancouver Island's terrain. And with reason.

Bear Creek wetland creek, off Oyster River. The circles in the water are from resident salmon.

Processing photos from Tuesday's trip to the salmon hatchery, I was impressed again by how impenetrable our bush is. The photo above is in an area that has been logged off repeatedly, cleared, cleared again; "managed". It is barely a dozen steps from the holding tanks for salmon fry (I was standing on the plank bridge beside the first tank), a stone's throw (thrown by me, with my old, gimpy shoulder) from the fence and the Oyster River Enhancement Society main office.

And yet: try walking through that! Scrambling, rather, sometimes using both hands as well as feet. Carefully, though; there's Devil's Club in those bushes, amply deserving of its name, and cunningly disguised as harmless thimbleberry bushes. And sudden pit traps, hidden under coats of moss or dead leaves. And trailing blackberry vines to grab your ankles and tip you over. And fallen trees barricading any clear spaces, clear only because the tree knocked over the Devil's Club on the way down.

The creek looks walkable, but watch out for waist-deep silt pools, looking as if they're only inches deep. And slippery, slidy slime. And more fallen branches, only half-anchored in the mud, ready to roll underfoot or to jump up and swat you. You'll need a good, sturdy stick; two feet aren't enough.

A few steps up the slope: cleared space beside the gate. Maple, cedar, evergreen fern, young alders, and blackberries. There are always blackberries. Give it a couple of years, and you'll need a machete to get to the sign.

It's the rain that does it. The rain, and the mild seasons, never too hot, never too cold. The rain and the mildness and the "intricate topography" (another synonym for "ruggedness"). And the isolation: a ten-minute drive from the populated coast takes us into bush untouched by anyone but the occasional loggers and fishermen. Who mostly stay on the trails, because it's too hard to cross that bush without land-clearing machinery.

It's bear country. The bears had been at the tanks the night before we arrived, leaving the leftovers from their breakfast for the ravens and the crawdads. They walk through this bush as if it were a highway. On all four feet, of course. And wearing thick, protective, furry armour against the Devil's Club.

Anonymous 'shroom

The mushrooms are up. This one was in the wetlands around the Oyster River.

Mushroom and mixed herbs.

Also present: salmonberry leaves, cleavers, moss (probably Oregon beaked moss, Kindbergia oregana), Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), young reeds or rushes, and something with clasping leaves, unidentified. It's raining most days now, and everything is green and growing fast.

As usual, I paged through my mushroom book, and, again as usual, ended up with a couple of tentatively possibles, but probably not. Mushrooms resist being named.

Under the autumn maples

And fall is upon us. Under the trees at Bear Creek Nature Park (on the Oyster River) it rained steadily. A warm, dry, orange rain; maple leaves weaving a cozy blanket for the earth beneath.

The woods were glorious, if the ravens were not:

One, or maybe two ravens. Easier to hear than to see.

Down below, we walked in semi-dusk; above on oddly twisted trunks, the leaves blazed in the sunlight.

In spots, the sun filtered through to the ground. Here, a few dead branches, woodpecker-drilled bark, moss, lichen, trailing blackberry, and the maple leaves.

Maple tree out in the open.

And underneath that maple leaf blanket, a miniature flower:

Unidentified. White, bell-like flowers with pale lilac veins.

Oyster River crayfish

I spent a morning at the Bear Creek Nature Park with friends, visiting the fish hatchery on the Oyster River. The river here meanders, sprawls through a wetland, branches out into hatchery channels and side streams. It's mostly shallow and dark, even as the overhead greenery turns yellow and rains down. In a muddy pool, we found a crayfish.

Signal crayfish (also crawfish, crawdad), Pacifastacus leniusculus. Under about 6 inches of water, competing with the reflections from trees overhead.

There is only one native crayfish species in BC – the Signal Crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus). This species can be identified by its uniform brownish coloration, white or light coloration of the claw joint, and the smooth surface of its carapace and claws compared to that of nonnative species. (Fishnbc)

They have a white to pale blue-green patch near the claw hinge [me: here it's blue-green], like the white flags that signalmen used for directing trains—hence the name. (Wikipedia)

This critter appeared to be about 3 inches long. (It's hard to be sure underwater because of the refraction.) We caught one in the Campbell River a few years ago; it was a bit bigger. They usually grow to about 3 1/2 inches, but can reach as much as 8 inches, given, I imagine, a healthy diet of leftovers and a long life. (Wikipedia) They can live as long as 20 years. Which I find amazing.

Pioneer

On sandstone exposed when the river goes dry, underwater come the fall rains, a bluebell plant homesteads in a sheltered corner, digging its taproot deep into the stone.

Common harebells, in the Oyster River bed.

Oyster River sandstone beds.

Decisions, decisions!

My grandkids were visiting, and we were coming home from exploring Woodhus Creek, when we met a deer family, two adults and a fawn, beside the road. The kids got out of the car and walked over, and to my surprise, the deer looked at them and went on browsing.

I stayed in the car, taking photos through the windshield.

The larger adult, looking well fed, chewing a mouthful of greens.

The fawn, and, I think, the mother. She's skinny, as if she's been nursing her baby.

Mother and fawn

The girls were sensible enough to keep quiet, move gently, and not approach too closely. The fat adult moved back into the bush, came up against a chain-link fence (visible in the top photo), and returned to go on with his meal. But the mother was nervous, and after a few minutes, she crossed the road, where the bush went on, without barriers, all the way down to the river.

She waited. The fawn tiptoed timidly out onto the road, and almost all the way across, before he started to wonder if this was the right thing. Here he was, halfway between one adult and the other, and not sure where to go. Neither of the adults moved to call him.
We humans all held our breath.

Which way? Which way?

(Aren't those the cutest little toes?)

Thinking it over

Eventually, the fawn went back to his starting point. The mother dithered, debating her next move. Back across the road to her fawn? Or stay there, on the path to safety, calling her baby to come on? She couldn't make up her mind, and we were not helping, just being there.

We loaded the kids back into the car and drove on.

Luckily, no other car came down the road, hurrying around the blind corner ahead, while the youngster stood, doubting, on the centre line.

We were here.

Horrid!

The area I've been exploring for the past couple of weeks follows the valley of the Oyster River. On the map, it looks simple; empty forest or grassland with a winding blue streak through it. But zooming in, and zooming in further, it gets bluer. Water is everywhere; there's the Little Oyster River, a bunch of creeks and mini-creeks, sloughs, bogs, miniature lakes, pools, and at least one beaver pond. Any little dip in the terrain is full of water.

And where the ground is always wet, I keep seeing stands of Devil's Club, its wide leaves serving as stern "Keep Off" signs. Oplopanax horridus, they call it; it's well named, both in English and scientific notation.

The leaves get up to 15 inches across.

And the plant can be 15 feet tall, or more. This one was a new plant at the edge of a recent clearing, and only about 8 feet high.

The whole plant is covered with vicious spines.

Really vicious. Up to an inch long, very sharp. They break off easily to an incautious touch, sting and fester.

Even the leaves are spined, top and bottom.

"A piece of Devil's club hung over a doorway is said to ward off evil." (Wikipedia)

But you'd need thick gloves and strong boots to harvest that piece safely. I think I'll stick to vanilla leaf.

Valley of invisible birds

I was looking for birds, without much luck. I could hear them, even driving if the windows were open. A woman on the road had pointed out a couple of good birding sites; there were tanagers and goldfinches, she said. I saw nothing but flashes of yellow, rustling leaves.

A swatch of once-cleared land for the power lines looked like a good bet. I parked and hiked down the hill.

Birds gossiped and called all around me. None were visible. But ...

Deer in power line valley.

A well-travelled trail led off the main route into deep shade. I followed that, then another trail, this one barely visible, branching off down the hill. And came out onto the shores of the Oyster River.

Sandstone and shallow water.

I stopped at Woodhus Creek, which enters the Oyster a short distance upriver from this point, in the early spring. The water was up to the top of the banks, racing and tumbling down, roaring. The sound was deafening.

This week, the banks are dry, although the creek is still too deep to cross dry-shod. The Oyster River is wider and deeper, but shows the same pattern; sandstone banks, swept clean by the winter surge, smooth and dry under the summer sun.

The current is still strong enough for a good tumbling wave or two.

Sandstone rocks, carved and polished by water power.

More bird-free birding pics, tomorrow.

A ladder for fishes

Woodhus Creek, part II. (First post)

The wide, sandstone-paved section of Woodhus Creek ends abruptly, top and bottom, entering and leaving through narrow openings in the forest.

Looking upstream. The creek flows from that black hole in the centre.

This was our special place, a room built for us by Ma Nature, unspoiled ... but, no; what's that wall at the right side?

Solid cement walls. No sandstone here.

A fish ladder, about two feet high, with strong cement baffles. It goes from the middle of the flats, up and around the bend, disappearing at the entrance to the bush.

Gentle stream, outside the barrier.

But why is a ladder needed here, where the water flows sedately over smooth stones, meandering from pool to still pool? A spawning salmon could climb this in his sleep! A minnow could navigate it! Why put a fishway here, of all places?

It might help to look at our 2010 photos. We came in June, while the spring floods were not fully abated. A good part of the creek bed was still underwater. And some of this water was white.

A few dry patches, a bit of turbulence. Nothing major, though.

Google maps helped a bit. The creek runs downhill through a narrow, deep gorge, turns a sharp corner, and spills onto the sandstone at high pressure.

Google photo; from the highway, 600 feet above our spot, the creek funnels down to its mouth.

Turbulence and jagged stones, just below the entrance.

In the fall, Coho salmon and cutthroat trout* come up to spawn in the shallow streams beyond the freeway. The water is deeper here then, up to the top of the ladder. It races out of the gorge, and hits a confusing choice of channels. Look closely at the photo above; water enters that pothole from three different angles, churning around as it finds the exit. Now imagine two feet of water above that.

These are smallish fish; the adult Coho averages about 8 pounds and a bit over 2 feet long. The cutthroat trout goes from 1 to 4 pounds, and up to 20 inches long. (Compare with the Chinook salmon; over 30 pounds and 3 feet long.) Both spawn in small streams, where the hatchlings and fry are protected from larger fish.

The Woodhus Creek salmon have grown to adulthood in the ocean. When the cold weather comes, they head up the Oyster River to the entrance to the creek, then up the canyon to the watershed above the highway, always coming back to the streamlet where they hatched. The stocks have been in decline in recent years; the cutthroat trout is blue-listed in BC, the Coho is yellow-listed and endangered. They need all the help they can get.

How the fish ladder works: this ladder is a Vertical Slot Fishway. It slopes upward, divided into individual "rooms", each opening onto the next on the perpendicular to the direction of the stream. This creates doorways with strong enough current to orient the fish, and corners with little current, for a resting spot. The total flow is longer than the stream bed, which makes the slope less pronounced.

Detail of the ladder. Even a small cutthroat can make it safely home here.

Ok. I'll go with what I wrote above: "a room built for us by Ma Nature, unspoiled ...". With the addition of the builders of the fishway, ORES. The salmon and we thank you!

*Oncorhynchus is a genus of fish in the family Salmonidae; it contains the Pacific salmons and Pacific trouts. The name of the genus is derived from the Greek onkos ("hook") and rynchos ("nose"), in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season (the "kype"). (Wikipedia)

An idle afternoon

Laurie comes from Yorkshire, UK, and for a while as a boy, lived in York. So when we saw the York Road sign on the highway near our motel in Campbell River, we decided to follow it and see where it went. (Sure, that's a silly reason to pick a destination, but when you're exploring, any excuse counts.)

York Road heads off into open country, mostly flat, mostly empty of anything but abandoned development sites, cleared and growing back in alders and young evergreens. Here and there we passed a house or small farm, some selling eggs or veggies, some with greenhouses and flowers. 9 kilometres of two-lane, winding road, with not much else to see. A pleasant enough drive, if a bit boring.

We came to a dead end. There were three houses, nicely fenced and landscaped, then nothing. We parked; we were here, wherever here was, and we might as well make the best of it. A narrow trail led off into the bush; we abandoned the car and walked in.

The bush was just bush. Tall evergreens, huckleberries, vanilla leaf, ferns. The trail went on, like the road, winding, seemingly aimless, until we came out onto the bank of a wide creek.

Woodhus Creek*, looking upstream.

This was in 2010. It had rained recently, and the creek was full, and flowing fast. But the bed was sandstone slabs, some carved down to make winding channels, most near the surface, both above and below. We were able to walk up and down the creek, and across to the other side without getting our feet wet.

It was beautiful; so calm, yet so busy with rushing water, so enclosed, like a room with green curtained walls, so varied, with deep, still pools and hurrying falls, green and red-brown and yellow and reflected blues, against the background of smooth, beige sandstone.

We came back again this year, after a long, dry summer.

Wavy sandstone, a green and brown pool.

Clear water, turning the sandstone green.

Have I mentioned before that I love sandstone? Probably. One thing I like is that, unlike most other rock, it absorbs water like a sponge. The wetness seeps up above the water level, painting the rock, softening all the contours.

Laurie taking a photo of wet rock.

A tiny pool between two stones, reflecting the sky and trees above.

Waterfall

A thin sheet of water pours over a slanted slab. The little lines are individual plants, about an inch long.

Turbulence in a shallow, yellow pool.

Calm water, a brown growth on the bottom, and Water striders!

The pinpoint feet make big snowshoe reflections on the bottom. If you click on this to see it full size, you will notice that the water striders are not above the shadows. If you were a bird looking for a cool snack, you'd get a beak full of nothing. 

Reflections.

Laurie, out in the middle of the creek, deciding that, in spite of his injured leg, he could easily jump that channel.

Green and beige of the sandstone, yellow-ochre muck, glittering water.

We had been hot and tired (me) and sore (Laurie); now we were behaving like children. We floated leaves down the stream to see them drop over falls, then be caught by eddies and spin off into becalmed pools. We followed them as they wound back and forth, dropping every now and then to a new level. I threw that stick, above, into deep water and watched it get hung up in the shallows, then, no doubt because of the pep talk I was giving it, shaking itself free and finding a good current again.

Eventually, we remembered our dignity, calmed down and went home.

Near the edge, a fern finds a crack in the rock.

But not yet. There's more to see! But that will wait until tomorrow.

On the trail back, the trees stand tall.

*Woodhus Creek flows into the Oyster River, just a couple hundred metres beyond this point. The river is on the map, but not the creek.