Round trip

Third sunny day in a week!

I went to Salmon Point and walked the beach, looking for whelk shells for my hermits, who are growing out of the last batch. An hour of difficult walking, casting up and down the slope, over loose sand, round rocks, tossed-up logs. On the way back, I took the path through the small forest, looking at moss and lichens, and past Woodhus Slough, keeping an eye out for waterfowl, following side trails to look at the water.

I'm not used to it, after this rainy winter  (and a leg injury, to boot); I came home, dropped the shells into the tank, and limped into the bedroom. Woke up 6 hours later, stiff and sore.

And one of the hermits is wearing his nice, new, white shell!

I saw a flicker, a raft of buffleheads, a flock of Canada geese, mallards sleeping and flying, all far across the fields and the slough. My photos will end up posted on the Facebook page, "The worst bird photographs ever."

Well, maybe you can forgive me a photo of the flicker.

Basking in the sunshine

I took one step closer, and he flew away.

Woodhus Slough, glittering in the unaccustomed sunlight. No birds here.

All in all, totally worth the sore leg!

Rainy day in Woodhus Slough

When it rains lightly, the colours are different. The greens are greener, the skies greyer, the reds and browns bluer. And my shoes are muddier.

In summer, a field. In winter, a pond, with mallards, geese, swans, and sometimes coots.

Corner where I sometimes see swans in mid-winter, swimming, sleeping, or rooting down in the muck, heads underwater.

Lichen on a tree trunk.

Waxberries, Symphoricarpos albus.

The white fruits look and feel like foamed wax, or sometimes like discarded styrofoam. They don't look appetizing, but the birds love them. Each berry contains two seeds, which the birds spread about.

When the leaves are gone, the lichen keeps the tree green. Ish.

Slough sedge, Carex obnupta. 

Birds of all type (waterfowl, shorebirds, songbirds and game birds) eat the seeds of Slough Sedge in moderate amounts. ... Waterfowl nest in areas where sedges form a dense cluster. Amphibians lay their eggs at the base of these plants and the young are somewhat protected from predation.(NWPlants)

Lichen on branch against the sky.

And it's still raining. Ah, BC weather!

Rainy day in the slough, with distant birds

The weather is going to turn rough; they're saying we'll have winds up to 100 km/h today. For now, it's just raining.

Before the rain got going in earnest, I went down the Salmon Point/Woodhus Slough trail to look for mushrooms again, with no luck. But two flocks of trumpeter swans flew overhead, discussing the weather as they went. I forgot about mushrooms.

The second group. The first group was about 60 noisy swans strong.

Heading back, near sunset (but there was no sun), I took the summer trail along the slough floor; last chance, because the water is already rising, and it will soon be covered.

The water begins to rise. Last time I was here, this was dry. In mid-winter, the water will cover all the grasses and sedges.

Slough bottom, with rose hips.

Birds forage busily among the trees here, eating old berries and rotting fruit. I saw towhees, sparrows, juncos, chickadees, bouncing happily through the tangled branches, mostly too dark to see clearly on this dark, rainy afternoon.

Junco in a tree with lichen

The water will rise soon. The berries will drown. The small birds will move to higher ground. And the mallards will move in, eating the summer vegetation, as it rots underwater.

Woodhus Slough flowers, June

The fields where in the winter we look for trumpeter swans in pools surrounded by drowned and frozen grasses, where in late fall mushrooms red, purple, white, dot the forest floor, are now glowing with masses of flowers, mostly yellow.

Gold star, Crocidium multicaule, with fool's onion and wild rose leaves.

A small guide to this spot, Woodhus Slough, published in 1995, gives the blooming time for these as early spring: March through April. We looked for them this year in April, but there were none to be found. They're running a full month late.

The white flowers above are fool's onion:

Triteleia hyacinthina. Not an onion. The midvein is a purplish blue.

We also found a few Hooker's onions:

Allium acuminatum. This is an onion, edible, but not common, so should be left alone.

Note: a couple of weeks ago, I put my pocket camera down on a picnic table and the wind grabbed it and threw it on the cement slab, and now it doesn't work. I've dug out my old underwater pocket camera, an 8 year old model; these photos were trial shots. Not too bad for the cheapest of the old underwater cameras. This one's supposed to be shockproof, too; I wish it had been the one caught by the wind.

Ducks in the distance

I must confess; sometimes, briefly, I envy those people down on the shore with their foot-long (or more) lenses attached to their cameras, and their sturdy tripods to hold up those lenses, too heavy for human hands. Because they can point that equipment at a bird that we can all barely see, press the shutter button, and record the gleam in the bird's eye, while I'm still squinting into the light, wondering if that circle on the water was made by a diving duck or a loon.

Briefly. Then I look at the lenses: heavy. And the tripods: heavy and awkward. And am glad that I can be more flexible, and that my back doesn't ache, even if my birds are dots on the slough.

Woodhus Slough, with buffleheads and mallards.

Bufflehead female, off Tyee Spit, with tree shadows.

Coming closer: Barrow's Goldeneye female, by Tyee Spit airplane dock.

A few minutes after I saw the Goldeneye, I was on my knees at an old log, taking photos of lichen and miniature polypores. Do that with your foot-long lens, will you?

Beside Woodhus Slough

The annual winter Comox Valley Trumpeter Swan count started again a few weeks ago. My group this year will be surveying the Woodhus Slough once a week until the end of March, following a path that skirts the shore side of the slough.

The trail goes from Salmon Point Marina to the Oyster River estuary. 

The official public trail crosses the slough before it turns towards the shore, but this year, with all the steady rain we've been having, that part of the trail is completely flooded.

Only the tops of the fence posts along the trail are visible.

This area, in other years, has been open field. There are a few ducks, mallards and pintails, at the far side.

It is a pleasant walk, but we have seen few birds. Someone was out hunting; we heard the shots, and the distant clamour of Canada geese as they fled the area. A large flock of snow geese flew overhead, circled a couple of times, and left. And there have been no swans yet.

But there are mushrooms everywhere; showy amanitas, small brown umbrellas, wine-red Russulas (I think), and more.

Amanitas:

Fly agaric. Orange or red cap, with remnants of the veil, white gills and stem, with more veil shreds.

An almost clear cap, but the obvious "skirt" of the torn veil around the stalk.

Another, with reindeer lichen. I don't know if this is the same species; some Amanitas are edible. But I'm not experimenting, because others are extremely toxic.

Typical fly agaric. Deadly poison, but very pretty.

Almost colourless.

Apple-red mushrooms:

Red caps, white stalks and gills.

Tempting.

Clean, white gills and stalk. No traces of a veil.

And another pink mushroom:

Unidentified. There were only a few of these.

And a patch of white coral fungus:

These are growing on a pile of crumbling logs, covered in moss.

Each clump is about the size of my (small) fist.

And a bit more lichen. These are everywhere; on logs, on bare soil, on moss.

Arrow tip to tip is about 2 km.