Mini umbrellas

Mushrooms, Woodhus Creek woods.

With a bit of moss, some lichen, dead ferns, Douglas fir twigs.

It rained and blew, then rained some more. At noon, the sun attempted to break through the clouds, with scant luck. The Woodhus Creek woods were dripping wet, and dotted with tiny and tinier mushrooms.

Late early mushrooms

I've been looking for mushrooms since the rains started, but with little luck. So I looked at the last two years' posts; in 2016, I was finding many mushrooms around here since the last week of September, earlier on visits north and west. But in 2017, they started to show up near the end of October, and in greatly reduced numbers.

This year, it looks like we're following last year's schedule. I found a very few last week; half a dozen puffballs in a patch that is usually thick with them, three small brownish ones on Tyee Spit.

And finally, this Wednesday, a short walk near Woodhus Creek turned up a crop of varied 'shrooms.

Down in the moss, a brown mushroom with purplish stripes. With an unidentified critter poking his head out from behind.

One puffball, already gone to spores. There were two others in the vicinity.

Mushrooms often grow in the shadiest, dimmest parts of the woods, and even there, they hide under logs or in the shelter of deep moss. The camera doesn't like this; there's not enough light to get a clean photo. But you can't use flash; most of the light-coloured mushrooms concentrate and reflect all the light, so that everything but the mushroom comes out nicely, but the mushrooms are a featureless glare. Puffballs are the worst. I was lucky to find one in a ray of filtered sunlight.

Tiny, delicate, pinkish mushrooms on a log. With a young sowbug. There were many of these.

A foot-long piece of burnt branch with a topping of moss, nurtured these tiny tongues, most under 1/2 cm. long.

Getting down close. The bases are a greyish blue, the tops pure white.

No mushrooms here. Leaf lichen with fruiting bodies on a dead twig, and Oregon grape leaves.

I met another mushroom hunter along this trail. He was looking for chanterelles, that he has found in large quantities here in previous years. Not this year; he hadn't seen one.

A walk in the autumn woods

Along the trail under the trees, it's dim and brown...

The path to Woodhus Creek

... outside, it's all saturated colour; yellow,orange, blue.

Last turn before the exit.

Sleeping it off

Walking in the woods this afternoon, I passed a garter snake basking in the sunlight. Usually, all I see of them is the tail end disappearing into the undergrowth, but this one was more asleep than awake.

He's watching me. Once he stuck out a tongue. Once.

I passed him before I saw him, a few inches off the trail I was on. I turned back and took a bunch of photos, getting right down in his face, then went on down to the end of the trail. Not until I came back up the trail did he think it wise to move on, slowly.

He's about two feet long.

Looking at the photos, I notice a suspicious bulge in that first U bend. A frog, half digested? A big slug, maybe? No wonder he's lethargic!

I heart Woodhus Creek

Woodhus Creek goes from a torrent of raging, roaring water in mid-winter to a silent trickle over its smooth sandstone bed in summer. I stopped in a week ago, half-way through the transition. The water still races and foams, but there are mirror pools ...

with heart-shaped rocks breaking the surface.

Double heart, underwater and out in the air.

And a heart-shaped pool with reflected trees.

Fairybells in the forest

In the woods beside Woodhus Creek, the summer flowers are gone; it's berry time.

These are Hooker's fairybells, aka drops-of-gold, Prosartes hookeri.

The berries start off yellow, and ripen to red. Some BC First Nations people ate them, but most think they're poisonous. I haven't tasted them. I will, someday when I'm feeling adventurous.

The berries are finely hairy.

Woodhus Creek after a dry summer

We discovered Woodhus Creek in 2010, after a rain. When we went back in 2010, (and again last summer) the sandstone bed was mostly dry. This year, 7 years and a day later, after this hot, rainless summer, it's even drier. Crispy, in parts.

Bare sandstone, and the bottom of the fish ladder.*

That same patch of stone, Aug. 16, 2012. The edge of the fish ladder is at the far left.

Shallow streams trickle down to the river below.

Alder leaf and evergreen needles, barely floating.

Near the edges of the creek, the stone wears moss This year, it's hard and crunchy. But down in holes worn through the sandstone, a few plants find moisture and shade.

And wherever there was water, there were water striders.

Two water striders. The shadows are always bigger than the insects, and usually a distance away, depending on how deep the water is and the angle of the sun.

One water strider, possibly an Aquarius remigis, on very shallow water. It has orange spots down the sides of its abdomen.

And another. Look closely at the feet; see how the water fans out into round or long feathery shapes? The legs have thousands of hairs to grab the surface.

Last July, I found many caddisfly larvae in these waters. I looked and looked for them this time; there was nary a one to be found. Too late? Too dry? I'll look again next year.

Still, the shallow puddles, even without larvae or water striders, were interesting.

Needles and a wing of an unidentified insect, floating over bubbly algae and pond scum.

More bubbly algae.

*And a grumble: in that first photo, there are two extraneous objects. One is my bag, which I brought in and hauled out, of course. The other is a two-litre orange juice container, emptied and left on the fish ladder. I found its plastic lid down in a pool. Why, people; why? Is it too much work to cart your leavings out?

I took it, and the lid, out with me. I'll even get a few cents for recycling it.

Web and wall

At the fish ladder on Woodhus Creek, a spider takes advantage of the summer drought to build her web.

Cement, rocks, and fine silk, catching the sunlight. The spider is there in the centre, dazzling white in the afternoon sun.

So fragile, that web; I can brush it away with a finger; a frantic wasp can tear a great hole in it. And yet pound for pound, it's stronger than the rocks beneath, stronger than the heavy concrete wall.

And at the end of the day, the spider will eat it, and reprocess it for tomorrow's web.

Cat's tongue mushroom

I found this growing under the pines in the Woodhus Creek woods.

Pseudohydnum gelatinosum, aka jelly tooth, cat's tongue, hedgehog. With globular springtail demonstrating the size.

I'd never seen a mushroom with two heads before, and leafed right past it in my Guide; it was among the polypores and tooth fungi, where I never thought to look. Luckily, I asked a friend, who identified it immediately from a brief description.

The mushroom looked more like jelly from close up. It felt like jelly, too; firm like the finger jelly I used to make for snacks, cool and damp, but not slimy or slippery. The flesh, of both stalk and cap, was translucent and slightly rough. There was no odor that I could detect.

Turns out it's neither a regular "umbrella" mushroom, nor a polypore, nor a tooth fungus, although it does have tiny teeth on the underside of the cap. It is a jelly fungus, like witches' butter or apricot jelly. The Latin name, "Pseudohydnum gelatinosum" means "False jelly truffle".

And it's edible, even raw, though the guide remarks that "it has little or no flavor." Besides, isn't it too beautiful to eat?

Hard water

In the summer, Woodhus Creek is a lazy little stream, mumbling sleepily to itself as it trickles from pool to pool in its sandstone bed. Come fall, it switches personalities; now it is a rabid monster smashing its way downstream, bellowing as it goes.

The sign on the path to the creek warns that the fishway can be extremely dangerous. So is the rest of the creek, but one might be tempted to try to walk on the sturdy cement walls of the fishway. Unwise; the water pounds over the lip, as forceful as a firehose, and less manageable.

My camera saw the racing water as if it were rocks.

The fishway is there to cushion the blow, to allow spawning fish to climb the hill safely.

Waterfall and wave

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. (A ladder for fishes, 2012)

Frothing, pounding waves.

Looking downstream

The water looks solid. It would feel solid, too, if you dared walk into it.

A couple of photos from the summer of 2012 for comparison:

The fishway in summer.

Just below the fishway. The entrance wall juts out at the left.

There was still a little bit of sandstone river bed exposed at the edge of the creek. The water will be higher after the next rains. And angrier.

Wet and wild

I spent much of my childhood in the rainforest. The wet, dripping rainforest. And still, so many years on, it calls to me.

I went to see what was happening at the upper end of Woodhus Creek, where last summer we basked on the warm sandstone in the bed of the river, where caddisfly larvae rested in the pools and fallen leaves spun lazily in the eddies. Now, after the recent rains, it is a tumultuous, thundering torrent.

From the end of the road, a path cuts through the woods to the creek. I dawdled there, looking and listening.

Almost the end of the trail. The sign reads, "WARNING Stay off fishway. The fishway can be extremely dangerous." (About that, later.)

It had rained in the morning. Out in the open, at least on paved roads, the ground was dry. Not here, under the trees; everything dripped. Everything glistened. Drops fell from above, leftover rain. Wandering about down side trails, I was soon soaked from the knees down.

Moss on a stick. The green twigs are huckleberry branches.

It is dark under the trees, even on sunny days. On a fall afternoon, the sun reaches in almost horizontally, touching and highlighting a branch here, a wet leaf there.

Stretching out wet arms towards the light.

And there is a strong sensation of silence. Odd, with the continuous roar of the creek, its bass notes audible even from the far end of the trail. But still, the drops falling from the branches overhead played a silvery tune, "ping, ping, plop". Leaves rustled wetly as I passed. There are no other sounds. In between the swishes and the pings, a profound stillness hangs over the wood.

Lichen hair caught on bare twigs.

Fallen salal branch, turning red as it dies.

In every direction, trees hem me in, stretching out restraining arms.

Mossy branches. The moss collects the rain, so it falls to the forest floor in easy installments, like timed-release supplements.

At the foot of a tree, a mushroom pokes through the wet moss.

Another mushroom, well past its prime. I thought it was interesting, the way it has split from the centre, while the gills are still intact.

A small green caterpillar makes his way over a wet rock. About half an inch long.

A clump of hair lichen on the ground. This grows on the branches, but often falls off.

Dripping and bedraggled fern. By spring, it will have crumbled into the ground, fertilizer for the next generation.

Coming out of the wood, I was somehow surprised to find the sky clear, the car dry. I got in and turned on the heat to dry my feet.

Spider geometry

The simplest of webs...

And a patient weaver.

In wet woods near Woodhus Creek.

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.