Under a green sky

What a difference a change of season makes! Even here, with our mild climate, winter and summer. Walking in mixed woods, down a trail I last saw in the winter; a heavily-logged off area, in recovery, with young trees; I was hard put to find landmarks I had noticed before. Back then, the light was greyish; the deciduous trees, mostly alders, were bare and everything overhead was outlined in black and white. The ground, though, was green with moss and the evergreen Oregon grapes. Ghostly green lichens covered damp stumps.

Now, in the summer, the colours are reversed. The green is overhead; the sunlight looks yellow and highlights every branch. But on the ground, I looked and looked for the stumps I had photographed in the winter. I think I found one. Can't be sure. All the stumps are brown and dry now; so is the moss, shrivelled and crispy-looking. The Oregon grapes stay the same.

A healthy forest includes a mix of living and dead trees; in an older forest, the dead trees lie on the ground (mostly), rotting away, providing nutrients for their kin, and for the shrubbery in the understory, the mosses and lichens and fungi. Here, in this young forest, the dead alders, still barely sticks, are still upright, but fall over with a gentle push. The branches that cross the path are easily snapped off. The evergreens are tougher material; tangles of dead branches line the trunks, but far overhead, there are still green needles.

Some of the dead or dying pines wear marble- to golf ball-sized hard lumps.

Western gall rust, Endocromartium harknessii on Lodgepole pine.

These lumps are caused by a fungal infection that affects pines. The spores are yellow, produced in the spring. These ones are old, spent. I brought a couple home; they're hard as stones, and I wasn't able to cut them open. Maybe if I'd slammed them with a big hammer they would have shattered, but I was looking to see if they had harboured larvae, and that would have destroyed their tunnels and exit holes. As it was, though, there were no exit holes, and on FieldNaturalists of Van.I, they identified them as the gall rust; no larvae needed.

Gall formation is typically not detrimental to old trees, but has been known to kill younger, less stable saplings. (Wikipedia)

A few more finds from that walk:

Moss and scars on alder trunks.

A mushroom sprouting from a punk wood log at the bottom of a ravine.

And nearby, in the shade, a trillium ripening its seed.

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¡Cuanta diferencia hace un cambio de estación! Aun aquí, en nuestro clima tan templado, verano e invierno. Caminando en un bosque mixto, en un sendero que vi por última vez a mediados de invierno, (un sitio donde talaron el bosque varias veces, y que ahora se está recuperando) me costó trabajo hallar puntos de referencia que había notado en el invierno. Entonces, la luz era un blanco con tonos de gris y los árboles de hoja caduca, por la mayor parte siendo alisos, portaban puras ramas desnudas, y todo lo que se veía arriba estaba delineado en blanco y negro. En el suelo, al contrario, todo era verde, con musgos y helechos y el arbusto corto, uvas de Oregón. Líquenes en verdes pálidos, fantasmagóricos, cubrían los troncones cortados.

Ahora en verano, los colores se vuelven al reverso. Lo verde está arriba; la luz del sol se ve amarilla y delinea cada rama. Pero abajo, en el suelo, busqué los troncos que en invierno se cubrían de musgos de verde brillante. Busqué y tal vez encontré uno; no puedo estar segura. Todo está seco y color café ahora y el musgo está como tostado. Las uvas de Oregón (mahomia) no cambian.

Un bosque sano incluye una mezcla de árboles vivos y muertos; en un bosque viejo, los muertos reposan sobre la tierra, sirviendo de sostén y alimento a los vivos, y a los poblantes del sotobosque, los musgos, los arbustos, los hongos y líquenes. Aquí en un bosque joven los alisos muertos, todavía delgados, se mantienen de pie pero caen con un simple empujón. Las ramas secas que cruzan el sendero se pueden romper con una mano. Los pinos son más fuertes y ramas muertas enredadas envuelven los troncos, pero allá arriba, se ven las copas verdes.

Algunos de los pinos muertos, o tal vez al borde de la muerte, llevan unas pelotitas del tamaño de una canica al de una pelota de golf.

Foto: rama muerta de Pinus contorta con las masas.

Las masas, o roya de los pinos son producto de una infección fúngica de pinos, causada por el hongo Endocronartium harknessii. Producen esporas amarillas en la primavera. Estas ya están muertas. Llevé unas a casa y traté de abrirlas, buscando larvas o los agujeros que dejan los insectos al salir. No las pude romper ni cortar. Tal vez con un golpazo de martillo se podría, pero eso destruiría las señas que buscaba. Pero al fin de cuentas, no vi agujeros, y en el sitio Naturalistas de la Isla de Vancouver, me las identificaron como estas agallas. No habría larvas de todas maneras.

"La formación de agallas típicamente no daña a árboles maduros, pero se ha visto que matara a los arbolitos juveniles, aun menos fuertes." (Wikipedia)

Otras cosas vistas por el camino:

Fotos:

1. Musgos y cicatrices sobre el tronco de un aliso.
2. Un hongo creciendo en madera bien podrida, al fondo de un pequeño barranco.
3. Y a su lado, un trillium madurando sus semillas.

Volunteer planter

An ancient piling at Oyster Bay, unused now for many decades, enjoys a second useful life as a tall planter.

Young alder growing high above the bay.

A kingfisher uses this piling as a perch from which he can watch for small fish. It's at the end of the sea wall, and the only approaches are in plain sight from a good distance away. I tried once to sneak up on him, doing my old tree impersonation after every couple of steps. When I was halfway to camera range, he up and left.

I'll try again.

Elusive

A flock of tiny birds was browsing in the evergreens at Oyster Bay. Really tiny; they looked like large, fast moths. They bounced from twig to twig, sometimes hanging upside-down, sometimes perching on the trunk, but never for more than a couple of seconds. Stop, peck at twig, flit to another, peck, flit, flit, flit. Neither my eyes nor the camera could focus that fast, but I could see flashes of yellow on back and head.

I took about a hundred photos. Two sort of turned out.

A golden-crowned kinglet, I think. 

Hanging upside-down

In the deciduous shrubs and around the logs on the shore, a flock of juncos were feeding. Easier to identify, but much more cautious; any attempt to approach on my part, and they were off.

Alder branches, mini-cones, and junco against the sky.

A Skywatch post.

A hint of pink

The snow is gone. Rain pounded down all day yesterday, cleaning the streets, the lawn, my steep, slippery driveway (Yay!). All that is left are the mounds of muddy snow in the corners of store parking lots and beside the driveways of neighbours more ambitious than I was.

Before the end, though, I shuffled through boot-top snow to the tip of Baikie Island.

Someone had made a trail here, too. Much appreciated.

At this time of year, the bare alders seem to take on a pinkish tinge towards the tips of the trees; a slight hint of redness against the insipid browns of the winter bush. Looking closely at a branch, I can see why.

Red alder, Alnus rubra. The long, greenish-yellow catkins appear before the leaves do; male catkins have a touch of red now, and will be quite red when they mature. The dark brown cones are last year's fruit.

Look at the very tips of the branches. See the new leaf buds appearing? They all have that bit of red, too.

Another branch, with cones, new catkins, and the pinkish leaf buds.

At this time of year, when the landscape is painted in grey, grey-brown, grey-blue, and grey-green, this glimmer of warmer colours is welcome. Summer is coming, believe it or not, it tells us.

Looking up

From above, on a map of the terrain, the mid-section of north Vancouver Island has the texture of crumpled paper or tinfoil, sharp-edged folds going every which way. We humans mostly crawl like insects along threads of road down in the valleys, wondering at the snowy peaks and rock faces so far above us.

Google map. Woss and Gold River marked in red. Campbell River is off the map, to the upper right.

Snow and cloud intermingle.

A light snow cover; it is spring, after all. The lower slope has been logged off; the next generation of trees is just starting out.

In those high valleys, the snow lies deep.

(I think this is Mount Abel, just over a mile high. Or it could be the Jagged Mountains; it's hard to confirm the shape from Google maps, because they travelled this road in the summer, when most of the snow was gone.)

While the sun shone in the valley below, it was warm enough this week to walk without a coat, but as soon as I stepped into the shadow of the trees, I was shivering. Old snow still lies in ditches and dark corners. There are signs on the highway warning of ice and frost; snow tires are still needed until next month.

Coming down the Sayward hill; I was warned not to attempt the climb when it's icy.

Red catkins on an alder tree. From a distance, in sunlight, they look almost pink.

Cross-eyed chickadee and alder hieroglyphics

I'm back, rested and in my right mind. If you can call it that. Because I've been seeing strange things around here.

Like a cross-eyed chickadee.

And messages left by a red alder next door, written in discarded male catkins on cement.

One-armed man threatened by an angry cobra?

I can't read this one. Can you?

Maybe the chickadee has been trying to read the sidewalk.

Beavers never give up.

Two months ago, I wrote about the ongoing feud between a beaver family and the city of Surrey (three years and more!), over the optimum use of the creek and lagoon. The beavers were winning at the moment; they'd enlarged the upper creek area, turning a muddy trickle into a duck pond. I commented, later, "The strange thing is that in all this time, I have never seen a beaver here. Just the dams and the felled trees."

The battle continues. The human residents have been trying new tactics. Where the beavers cut fresh trees, men went in with chain saws and cleared the banks, opening more land up to the sunlight. And they've removed a couple of dams; the new pond is gone again.

Not that the beavers seem to mind this; they're taking advantage of the newly felled timber to feed on fresh, green inner bark.

Alders are weed trees; they grow quickly in wet land, and the bark of the young tree is tender and juicy.

Beaver-felled alder.

They had cut some of the new timber into shorter lengths, which they can haul away to make new lodges. Quite a few of the branches are already piled in the quieter end of the lagoon, a start on the next community lodge.

And we saw beavers, finally: (Looks like we didn't; that's an otter. I didn't expect that!)

Resting between patches of ice, against reflections of still-standing trees.

There were at least two, probably three, adults, swimming back and forth across the lagoon, ducking under the ice, occasionally coming close to the edge to rest.

The beavers will have to hurry with the building program; it is breeding season now, and a warm nest area will soon be needed. Although their kits from last year will still be with them for another year or so, the next litter will be born around April. The yearlings will help with babysitting, and probably with dam construction.

*Update: Annie, in the comments says he looks more like an otter. He does. This is entirely confusing to me. Can a tiny lagoon in a muddy creek support both otters and beaver? What do you think?

Update #2: Others agree; it's an otter. Post corrected.

Chirp, tweet, Caw!

At ground level, ice and snow; up in the treetops, warm, glowing sunshine. While the cormorant and mallards moped around at Cougar Creek Park, looking grumpy, the trees were a-twitter with happy birds.

16 birds here. Can you see them?

I think they're pine siskins, by the streakiness, the size, and the activity.

Eating the dried alder cones. And chirping in between bites.

Some of the birds weren't twittering:

Caw!  Caw!

At the eastern end of the lagoon, a congress of crows was having a convention. Every one of them had something urgent to say, and they weren't waiting for microphones. I wonder what they were discussing. Maybe the new buds all over the branches, signs of coming spring?