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.

The disapproving stare

This gull has it down pat.

"Well? What do you want? I'm busy!"

Trying to be patient. It's not easy.

"No food in your pocket? Figures."

"I'm leaving. Useless people!"

White Rock pier, 7:00 PM.

This may help

Because those crabs were too well camouflaged, here's a marked-up copy of the photo:

Crabs in red, hermits in green, green ribbon worms in yellow.

And there's a full-sized photo on Flickr, here.

Now, I've got to sleep. Tomorrow, my new critter!

Teeming

On the underside of one smallish stone on the White Rock beach, life happens. Abundantly.

Flatworms, flatworm egg masses, barnacles, crabs, hermit crabs, snails, mussels, green ribbon worms, amphipods, and no telling what else.

Examining the photo, I found 6 crabs. Can you find them? And check out the varied colours and patterns of the flatworms while you're at it.

I uploaded a larger photo than usual, to make the search easier. If you right-click on the photo, you get an enlargeable view. (At least, that's the way it works for me.)

And I'm going to be busy the next couple of days, with an urgent assignment and a big garage sale at the same time, so I won't be posting 'till Monday. But then, I've got a beautiful new critter to show you!

Stone chicken and barnacle tentacles

It rained again yesterday and the day before. The sun came out for a few minutes at noon, just long enough for us to decide to go to the beach; it's been too long. We didn't make it. Before we went for our jackets, the weather was back to wet and windy.

Just as well; we've been making great progress on sorting and clearing out years of photos, film and digital. Laurie's prints are down to two trays (from 21), and I've got a few extra Gigabytes to play with on the hard drive. Another week of this weather, and I'll have everything in some logical order.

But I do miss the beach!

These two photos are from 2012, on the White Rock beach.

I see a chicken in that egg.

Just an ordinary barnacled rock, but I could easily imagine it to be a large camouflaged cuttlefish.

Bed of thorns

Another day of snow with rain for a chaser. Another day of sifting through old photos; my neck is sore, but the computer's happy.

I found these photos of a pair of weevils in the thistles beside the White Rock beach. I had intended to crop and post them in June of 2011, but procrastination won the day, and they were filed unexamined. Today they were a nice reminder of hotter, drier weather.

Wicked-looking spines. I didn't dare move in closer.

The weevil is a lighter colour than the ones I see around the house. They're mostly dark brown, sometimes almost black. This one has brown stripes, but a definite yellow tinge. And a pale yellow fringe around the tail end of his elytra.

And he had a mate waiting for him under the shade of the thistle head.

Two weevils

The male holds his mate by the shoulders and sides. Prickles be damned! This is true love!

Shortest beach visit ever

We hadn't planned on going to the beach; we were out hunting down a second-hand bookstore. But the one in Ladner closed in November, the one in White Rock some time before. Does no-one read old books anymore?

So we went on down the White Rock hill to the beach, where the tide was higher than I ever remember seeing it. It was raining, slightly, enough to wet the camera lens but not much more. But we were dressed for indoor pursuits, and we stood shivering in the parking lot watching the gulls for only a few minutes. Enough. We went back to town for tea and coffee.

Fat brown gull, not minding the damp

I sometimes wonder; gulls and ducks and other shorebirds keep themselves so comfy and warm, all bundled up in layers of feathers from the top of the head to the tip of the tail, but then let their legs and feet stick out totally unprotected into the cold. Don't they feel the contrast? Why don't they hunker down, like, for example, a chicken, or even a sparrow, wrapping their legs in that feather quilt?

Nature is weird.

Rust prevention

For when the sunshine is liquid.

Slip, Slap, Slop. Seek out Shelter.

Baker's dozen

Even with this October's uninspiring weather, photos accumulate in my files.  I've been tidying up. These are random shots from White Rock and Boundary Bay, in no particular order:

Gull, White Rock

Watching the coal train wall off the beach

White Rock tracks

Reflections, duck pond, Centennial Park. Laurie gets me to throw in stones to tangle up the shadows.

Laurie says he took this one by mistake. But I like it. Upper beach, Boundary Bay.

Red, yellow, green and brown.

I was taking photos of mallards in the shade at the duck pond, and I disturbed this kingfisher. He scolded bitterly as he flew to this dead tree, out of my camera's range . . .

 

... but not quite beyond Laurie's.

Texture on drift log, White Rock

Peeking.

On a driftwood log, there were two of these brown and orange fungi, standing out against the silvery sand and wood.

Stump, Centennial Park. With a heart-shaped hole, for Clytie.

White Rock, the last sunny day, with a smelt fisherman and 7 paddle-boarders.

More tomorrow. Gotta catch up!

Toasted crab

The summer sun either bleaches or blackens most things that have finished out their days on the beach. The purple shore crab is an exception; his colours become even more vivid as they bake than when he was running about. This crab molt almost looks alive.

Crab, drift log, and black eelgrass remains.

There's still a hint of green in the hinge of his pincer.

Sublime to ridiculous

More White Rock beach photos from last week, in no particular order:

Mount Baker, behind the Semiahmoo hill

Disappearing seaweedy rocks, with gull.

Setting out nets for smelt.

Vicious sea monster?

Rock "garden"

Hawkweed by the railroad tracks.

More hawkweed.  With aphids.

Green-gold hover fly

Many of these were busy over flowers at the edge of White Rock beach last week.

Look at that green spotted eye!

Top view

I looked through 5,000 of BugGuide's photos of Syrphids last night, without finding them. There are only another 5, 215 to go.

Good news!

Two years ago, in November of 2011, polluted water from the White Rock beach killed my aquarium. A month later, we found a zone of the beach that was basically dead, too.

There were no crabs under any of the rocks I flipped. No hermit crabs. No snails. No limpets. No worms. A few of the higher intertidal amphipods that always swarm on the bottom of these rocks. Just a few.
I walked west, flipping a few more rocks after every couple of steps. Nothing was alive but the amphipods.

We've been back, off and on. The view is always beautiful, but so often, I flip stones and find nothing. With time, even the barnacles were all dead. The rocky west end stunk of a cannery in summer; a long-dead fishy odour. I was beginning to dread walking that direction.

Last week, we headed that way again. It had been a while. And the beach is back! It smells fresh and salty, as it should. I flipped rocks and disturbed whole communities of hermit crabs, hairies, grainy hands, and those little orange ones I can't identify. Shore crabs scuttled away to hide, or stood their ground, menacing me with their mighty half-inch pincers, according to their various personalities. Big eelgrass isopods slept on the bottoms of stones; polychaete worms burrowed into the sand away from the light. The stones were dotted with pinhead snails, probably periwinkles.

I collected a bit of eelgrass for my critters in the tank. Washing them off at home, I found tiny limpets. One blade held at least 10, plus a raft of spiral tubeworms.

And the barnacles and mussels are growing back.

Detail of a stone top.

And flatworms! I'd never seen so many at one time before. Every stone held a few; on some stones, every barnacle seemed to have a flatworm oozing around it.

I count 7 flatworms on this corner of a rock. I don't know if they're the same species or not. Since their bodies are semi-transparent, whatever they've been eating changes their colour and pattern.

Not all the ooze on that stone is flatworm. The more shapeless and patternless blobs seem to be some sort of sponge.

And I've never seen these anemones anywhere but near the American border on the Tsawwassen beach. I didn't see them when I took the photos, but at home, counting flatworms, I noticed quite a few. And two came home on three barnacly stones I brought to feed my one predatory snail.

Orange-striped anemones. Five here, plus one flatworm that I can see. This corner of the photo was blurry, and I've sharpened the anemones to make them stand out.

We walked quite a distance west from the end of the park. I flipped stones at intervals all the way. Every stone harboured a thriving community.

I am so relieved! Life on the edge is tougher than it looks.

If only they could talk

Beach rocks, no two alike, all colours, assorted textures. I wonder what histories they could tell.

White Rock beach, east end.

Big day tomorrow; birthday party out in Chilliwack, a drive through farm country, maybe in the rain.

When I've recovered, I've got a bunch of flatworm photos for you.

Illusions

"Never point your camera at the sun," they say. But rules are made to be broken.

Mid-afternoon, over the White Rock beach.

Why does the horizon sometimes curve upwards? All the explanations I can find say it's an optical illusion, but the camera sees it, and drawing a straight line, edge to edge, leaves a gap in the centre. There must be a better theory!

A Skywatch post.

They had heads back then

1913. 100 years ago. BC was still new, still half empty. White Rock was a railway station and a narrow strip of summer cottages along the beach and straggling up the slopes. On the Semiahmoo Reserve lands to the east of the station, some 40 Semiahmoo natives remained on their ancestral grounds around the mouth of the Little Campbell River.

In 1908, the Blaine border crossing, a mile to the east, had been opened. The next year, 1909, the Great Northern Railway line was rerouted to follow the coastline around Semiahmoo Bay, as it does to this day. The trains ran on steam; diesel came much later.

By 1913, developers had already seen the potential of the beach, the railway, and the proximity to the US border, but growth was slow.

Indeed, officials were so keen to develop White Rock that for a brief period in 1912, property lots could be had for free with the purchase of a subscription to a British Columbia travel magazine. (Super. Natural. British Columbia)

1913 changed all that. The Campbell River Lumber Company began construction of a large shingle mill on part of the Reserve lands. By 1918, . . .

The company, with its allied shingle mills and lumber camps, has a pay roll of over 300 men, running into some $35,000 per month. The big lumber mill is fitted with the latest and most up–to–date machinery and labor–saving devices, all run by electric motive power, with steam auxiliary, and turns out timber, flooring, siding, ceiling, shiplap, mouldings and other dressed lumber with an average cut of 100,000 feet per day. This lumber is shipped in carload lots to the prairies and other eastern Canadian points, as well as to a number of places in the United States.
Three shingle mills are operated by the Campbell River Lumber Company, . . . Each of these mills turn out some thirty thousand shingles per day, averaging about 560,000 for the week, the bulk of which is shipped to Pennsylvania. (Surreyhistory.ca)

 This is where the beach walkers came in. They had heads back then.

Row of footings and boards wander along the old breakwater, heading out to deep water.

The Campbell River mill was built on the slope below the present-day Semiahmoo townsite, and on pilings over the last curves of the Little Campbell River, on the inland side of the railway line. Beyond the line, the river was dredged and bordered with a stony breakwater, creating a straight, deep channel for boats.

The river still stays within these banks, though the tide covers them twice daily.

Logs were brought in from near Cloverdale to the east, by a temporary (removed in 1929) railway line, and from Hernando Island, in Georgia Strait; these were boomed down by tug boats, and moored in the bay. A few years later, logs cut near Cultus Lake in the Fraser Valley were hauled down to Bellingham by rail, then dumped into the bay, boomed up, and tug-boated back up to Canada. (A long way around, but transportation wasn't as easy then as it is now.)

The finished product, shingles, shiplap, siding, etc., was shipped out partly by rail, from the siding directly behind the mill, and partly from the scow berth at the end of the pier.

Layout of the mill, ca. 1923. From Surreyhistory.ca.

Most of the mill site was built on piles. Only at high tide was there enough water in the river to store logs. Continuous dredging was required, and piles placed every 12 feet in the river to hold back the sand and silt. Eventually, the dam was built to hold water, and store logs to keep the supply constant. ... The 1800 foot company pier was built in 1921.

And here are today's remains of that old mill:

Old cement footings, and the pilings holding the river in place. Taken from the path beside the rail line.

I have often wondered what those blocks were, down on the flats in the mud and silt. I'm glad I thought to look up my mysterious dog walkers.

This picture was taken from the top of the hill in front of the White Rock Hotel, on Dolfin Steet, looking east. ... The picture, taken in the 1920's, shows the Campbell River Saw Mill pier. At this time buildings were allowed on the beach. (Surreyhistory.ca)

There is an excellent, clear photo of the bay, showing the pier and the river channel, here, on Flickr. (Copyrighted, so you'll have to go there to see it.)

Here's a Google maps photo taken from the Dolfin Street corner, last year:

The current pier is behind us, to the right. The old mill pier is gone, except for the barnacled bits poking out of the sand. Seen full size, the border crossing at Blaine is marked by a white spot (the Peace Arch) near the centre, at the end of the bay.

The mill closed in 1927; many of the workers moved out, leaving empty housing in the community. The mill pier was dismantled. The buildings and machinery were removed. All that remains are the pilings, and those rusting walkers out on the tide flats.

Another Google view, slightly cleaned up. This is from the Reserve, looking over the mouth of the river, where the old mill was. Some of the pilings still stand, gently rotting away.

Google again. The railroad bridge, the mouth of the river, and the flats where the log booms were moored. If you look at it full size, (click) you can see, faintly, the crowds of metal and barnacle ghosts from the old booming grounds.