Rocks, stones, spider, but not a frog

 From where I sat in the shade at the top of the intertidal zone, these rocks caught my eye.

Water, salt, wind, alternating wet-dry conditions, and the grinding action of other stones and sand create organic-looking shapes in beach sandstones.

This one looked, to me, as if someone had tried to blanket stitch the edge. Google images says it has a frog shape. It does, sort of.

A wolf spider on beach rocks, no two alike, but almost all nicely smoothed.

There were a bunch of wolf spiders out that afternoon. In a short walk, maybe 10 minutes, I saw eight. There's one on the big sandstone in the top photo, as well.

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Desde donde me senté en la sombra de una roca en la zona intermareal cerca de tierra seca, vi estas rocas y piedras.

    1. El agua, el viento, la sal, las condiciones alternativas húmedas y secas, y la acción abrasiva por  otras piedras y la arena, esculpen formas que parecen ser orgánicas in las piedras areniscas de la playa.

    2. Esta piedra me hizo pensar que alguien había estado cosiéndola con punto de festón. Imágenes de  Google dice que se parece a una rana. Bueno, sí, más o menos.

    3. Una araña lobo sobre piedras playeras. No hay dos piedras iguales, pero casi todas están alisadas.

Había muchas de estas arañas lobo en la playa esa tarde. En una caminata breve, de unos 10 minutos, vi ocho. Y hay otra en la primera foto también, encima de la piedra arenisca.

Cave dwellers

The morning brought a faint hint of sunshine, a promise of more. I loaded the camera, grabbed my coat, and hit the road. By the time I'd run a couple of errands, it was raining, but not too hard. I drove down to the shore to look at the water from the shelter of the car.

The waves were high and pounding in; as soon as I parked, I could hear them roaring. Rain or no rain, I had to be on the beach.

Waves, and a duck, resting calmly in the trough..

The tide was out farther than I've seen it so far this fall and winter. I went down to the water's edge, turned over a few rocks: crabs, crabs, crabs, and tiny barnacles.

Barnacles on the bottom of a rock. One limpet, one mussel. The crabs all ran for cover.

Sandpiper, just out of reach of the waves.

It was raining a bit harder now, but off in the distance, I could see the strange sandstone formations we had explored in bygone summers. I sheltered the camera under my coat and went to look at them.

Round rocks, and a dark row of flat sandstone, on a dark, rainy day.

This part of the beach has a solid underpinning, not sand, but flattish sandstone, with occasional "tables" fringed with seaweeds, rimmed and topped with small round indentations, up to about an inch in diameter. In between the sandstone tables, smallish, round stones  cover most of the lower slab. Large rocks are scattered randomly across the whole area. An unusual mix.

Sample arrangement.

This one got tipped on an angle. How, I don't know; it's heavy.

Holes around the rim of two tables. They remind me of cave dwellings I have seen on a Mexican mountainside.

When we investigated rocks like these a few summers ago, most of the pits were occupied by small, green anemones. I couldn't see any now, in the winter; instead, small periwinkle snails are hiding there. Maybe the anemones are underneath them, waiting for warmer weather.

Barnacles out in the open, snails in the tubs.

Anemones in sandstone pits, summer of 2010.

The rain picked up, and my camera was getting wet. I clutched it under my coat and hurried back to shore. I'll be back, next sunny day at low tide.

Stones and jelly

Stones under water:

Near the high tide line, Boundary Bay

Stones under jelly:

Lion's mane jelly, Cyanea capillata. A small one. The first I've seen washed up this year.

It's the end of the Lion's Mane's life cycle; they've raised their young, and now they drift, dying, onto the nearest beach.

The female jellyfish carries its fertilized eggs in its tentacle where the eggs grow into larva. When the larva are old enough, the female deposits them on a hard surface where the larva soon grow into polyps. (Wikipedia) 

The jellyfish are pelagic for most of their lives but tend to settle in shallow, sheltered bays towards the end of their one-year lifespan. (

The top few metres of the intertidal zone along the southeastern coast of Boundary Bay are stony and a bit steep (in comparison to the rest of the tidal flat plain.) Jellyfish that get tossed up here are often shredded before they arrive. I must go down to the flatter shore east of White Rock, to see how many are coming in this year.

The stones are alive

I love beach stones. Wading along the shoreline, I often pick up one to marvel at its colour or pattern, to wonder about its history. Sometimes one is too beautiful to throw back, and I drop it in my pocket. And later find it has turned a nondescript grey, all its life and lights left back there on the shore.

But stones underwater, or with the waves washing over them; what a dazzling variety of colour and texture and pattern!

"Dead" stones, out of the water. Mostly dull blue-gray.

"Live" stones, under a couple of inches of water.

Some of the patterns are a feature of the stones themselves, the end result of millennia of mixing and melting, crumbling and compressing. The water itself, even standing still, makes its own ephemeral designs; circles where a stone distorts the surface, stripes and swirls as wavelets sweep by, shadows from floating bubbles and weeds. All of these show up in the photo above.

Boring blue-grey? No! (It's worth clicking on this to see it full size to appreciate the detail on the two stones on the left.) 

Textured stones.

Water rippling over a mottled peach and grey stone.

More variety. Every colour of the rainbow, including violet.

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.

It's all a matter of time. And water.

Mountains; all massive, jagged rocks:

Tall, sharp peaks, to our south, in Washington State.

Mount Baker

Which will eventually crumble to this:

Beach rocks, with barnacles and brown rockweed. Boundary Bay.

And then be ground down and smoothed out, by water and critters, to this:

Sand, still being ground down, this time by worms and snails. And water. (Other tracks; human, dog, sandpiper.)

Just give it time.

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.