Never forget

This will be another very personal post. If you're here only for nature photos, you might want to come back tomorrow.

I have been writing at this since last November; here's where I am right now.

I was a war baby. 1942: WWII had been going on for three years already. Even the US had gotten involved by then. Dad was away in the Canadian Air Force, working on radios. He was almost 30 when I was born; they were calling up older men by that time. When Dad came home, "demobbed", we ended up on the west coast. There was no TV; I hadn't seen any movies, but I must have heard stories; I cringed when airplanes flew overhead, half expecting bullets or bombs. I was 5 then.

We took in a refugee family from Ukraine; Johnny had seen his father shot and killed. Dad took us to the lookout tower where our soldiers had watched for enemy submarines.  In our one-room school, grades 1 to 8, we watched Canadian government films about the "war effort"; I ran the film projector. The war was an ever-present memory.

In my teens, I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Twice.  I met survivors of Hitler's camps and Japanese prisons. Later, I read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. I read Babi Yar; in my dreams I saw the pits where today's dead and dying bodies lay piled on yesterday's dead.

Life has been good to me. I have a loving family, decent health, beauty all around me. But always, always, there is that dark remembrance deep inside. War, torture, prison, death. "Man's inhumanity to man," they say, but it is all too human. Never forget.

A quote from the ending of Babi Yar: "Let me emphasize again that I have not told about anything exceptional, but only about ordinary things that were part of a system; things that happened just yesterday, historically speaking, when people were exactly as they are today."

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The world around us has changed since then. We no longer die - usually - of minor injuries, things like an ingrown toenail. Most children survive their first five years; half of them didn't in my grandmother's day.  We have vaccines; we don't all catch the measles or chicken pox. (I caught both, so did my son, but I  was spared mumps and polio, which my brother caught.) And we have antibiotics; I'm here today due to sulfas and then penicillin when it became available. I don't personally know anyone whose mother died in childbirth, the ever-present fear of days gone by.

But, "historically speaking, people were exactly as they are today." Turn that around; people today are exactly like the people in our history books.

We, here in Canada, are not currently at war. For that, I am grateful. But we have challenges our forebears missed out on. Climate change. Global warming, the not-so-appreciated term for it. Sea levels rising, slowly for now, but accelerating. Pandemics; Covid wasn't the first, won't be the last. People haven't changed; if we don't like the facts, we deny them, refuse to change our behaviour, attack anyone who keeps insisting that we do something to correct the situation. But the fact remains; disasters are accumulating, and our very survival is threatened.

I have seen this with my own eyes. I have been watching the life around me for decades, and the changes are evident. The weather patterns have changed. Flowering plants and their pollinators are out of sync. Huckleberries bloom unvisited and there are few berries. On the shores, there are dead zones; they stink. Starfish, in the millions, died of an unexplained illness. Flocks of birds that used to darken the skies and the water now are reduced to a few dozen here and there. The insects the birds fed on have disappeared, and with them, the spiders. A great kelp forest I saw on my first visit to Campbell River, over 10 years ago, no longer exists. 

And the response to this has been, in large part, to attack. Not the warming, but the science. The scientists. The writers who try to alert us. And even the children pleading with us to save their world while there's still time. 

And there's still the war. Not here, not for the moment, but the war wherever. Or, to call it for what it is, the genocide. Wherever it is, no matter how far away, it still affects us here. (And adds, immensely, to the global warming situation.) 

And next door, the US is rapidly turning itself into a banana republic. I try not to doomscroll, but I can't miss the daily updates. And what I'm seeing is a repeat of the run-up to WWII.

I remember seeing the news about 9-11. I was standing in my daughter's cabin on the hillside above a rural lake, watching her TV. I was not surprised; disasters like this had been happening around the world. Just not here. But it was inevitable; no one nation is immune. I was, instead, dismayed. "Here we go again," I remember saying. The panic, the scapegoating, the paranoia, the calls for revenge; it's a basic human pattern.

I remember standing at my window listening to the radio as George Bush's "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq went down. How many people, how many children, how many nobodies, died in those moments? I felt sick. "Here we go again." Will we ever learn?

I doubt it.

And now, the blatant attack on law, on science, on medicine, on anyone "different".  The deportations, the internment of people the wrong colour in camps. The sudden expansionist theme; Greenland, Canada, Panama; where next? They're following HItler's playbook, Stalin's programs. How many millions died of starvation because of Stalin's denial of so-called "Jew science"? How many good people died in Hitler's prisons for telling the truth?

Here we go again.

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This is a nature blog. I write about mushrooms and birds, rocks and trees and shores; the world as I find it where I am today. So, how does all the above tie in?

Just this: it seems to me, in my more pessimistic moments, not as rare as they used to be, that we are coming to some kind of an end. Each war, each "little" skirmish, is more violent, more destructive than the last. The unravelling of the advances in medicine of the last century is accelerating. And each of the climate disasters, the fires and the storms and the disappearance of our food stocks, is worse than the preceding ones. We, all of us together, seem to be running full-tilt towards a cliff to fall and drown like lemmings. Yes, I know lemmings don't really do that, but we are providing them with a good example to follow.

In mid-summer I look for the beautiful orange-backed cross spiders around my garden, where they used to hang their webs. Not one. Not even a small one. There are no fat Steatodas, like glossy brown marbles with legs, either. On the beach at low tide, under a rock, I find a half-dozen purple starfish. One seems to be sick. I drive and drive, on the empty north-bound highway, watching the skies for dark wings, an eagle, a turkey vulture, a raven; after a couple of hours, going and coming, I have seen one.

And I feel like giving up. Am I now just documenting the disappearing act of the world I have known? Making some sort of a record; things as they were, so they won't be completely forgotten? Is it worth it? Will anyone be around to remember?

Some days it seems just too hard to look at photos and process them, to ask questions and search for answers; what is this, why, how, when? What's the point?

I have been writing this at intervals since mid-November.  Yesterday, in an interview with Ed Yong, I read this: "These ... ideas anchor me in these moments when it feels like the gulf between what we hope the world should be and what it actually is seems vast and growing. That gulf is agonizingly difficult to bear, but we bear it nonetheless."

And he is writing a book about life at different scales, "The Infinite Extent", the third in a nature trilogy. Bearing that gulf.

If he can still hold on to hope, who am I to wimp out? Onward! Maybe there is a tenuous hope; maybe we'll make it. Chastened, maybe, sadder and wiser, I might hope. Maybe we're not lemmings, either. Maybe.

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Otra vez estoy subiendo un poste muy personal, sin, por el momento, una traducción. Apenas hoy subí la traducción del poste anterior. Este seguirá en unos dias.

So many!

Maybe it's the weather, rainy and warm; I don't think I've ever seen so many mushrooms as I have these last couple of weeks. Hundreds and hundreds, along the trails I've walked, beside the roads, in my lawn; and a friend just messaged me to come and see the mushrooms in her lawn. After culling duplicate photos (and just plain blurry photos) I still have five dozen mushroom photos from just one afternoon walk.

Here's the first dozen, mostly un- or half-identified:

Xerocomellus sp.

Another bolete, as found, showing the pores.

Glistening Inkcap, Coprinellus micaceus

Chanterelle

This one grows between two logs. Only the underside was visible.

Tinies, the caps no taller than the mosses' sporophytes.

More of the tinies.

Orange gilled mushroom.

Small, pale shelves.

These were everywhere. Very small polypores.

The one in my book that looks most like these, with the wet, slippery cap, is the Fried Chicken mushroom,

More wet-topped 'shrooms, on the ground.

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¡Nunca he visto tantos hongos! Tal vez sea por el clima; no he visto antes tantos hongos como los que vi en esta quincena pasada. Cientos, miles de hongos, en el bosque, al lado de los caminos, en mi césped; y ahora una amiga me invita a ver los hongos en su jardín. Después de una sola tarde en el bosque, me quedan 5 docenas de fotos de hongos para procesar.

Aquí está la primera docena, la mayoría sin identificación.

1. Xerocomellus
2. Otro Boletus, tal como lo hallé, mostrando los poros.
3. Coprinellus micaceus.
4. Chantarela
5. Este hongo, creciendo entre dos troncos, mostraba solamente las laminillas.
6. Honguitos muy pequeños; el sombrero mide apenas lo largo de un esporofito de los musgos.
7. Musgos y hongos.
8. Un hongo anaranjado con laminillas.
9. Creciendo en madera.
10. Poliporos pequeños.
11. Hongos con el sombrero siempre mojado, resbaloso. El que más se parece a estos en mi libro guía es el hongo "Pollo Frito", Lyophyllum decastes.
12. Otros hongos con sombreros húmedos.

Data point.

View from the shore of Upper Campbell Lake, mid-island, 50°N, -125°W, filling a long valley 221 metres above sea level, mid-April, 2024. The water is low, with plants that I usually see growing with their roots in water, now sprouting through dry mud. On land, the moss is crunchy dry, crackling underfoot. But new, yellow-green leaves on the shoreline trees promise summer shade.

From the Reservoir campsite.

A BC government bulletin warns of another dry summer this year:

As of February 1st, the provincial snowpack remains very low, averaging 61% of normal (39% below normal) across British Columbia. ... Low snowpack and seasonal runoff forecasts combined with warm seasonal weather forecasts and lingering impacts from previous drought are creating significantly elevated drought hazards for this upcoming spring and summer.

Doesn't look good.

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Esta es la vista desde la orilla del lago Upper Campbell, situado a media isla, 50°N, -125°W, llenando un valle a una altura de 221 metros sobre el nivel del mar, a mediados de abril de 2024. En la orilla, plantas que normalmente encuentro con las raices en el agua, ahora brotan en lodo seco. En el bosque, el musgo está seco, tostado, crocante. Pero las hojas nuevas, verde/amarillos, prometen sombra para el verano.

Un boletín del gobierno de Columbia Británica nos advierte que esperamos otro verano seco este año:

A la fecha del primero de febrero, la nieve acumulada de la provincia sigue muy baja, con un promedio 61 porciento del nivel normal (39% bajo el normal) en toda la provincia de CB. ... Pronósticos de niveles bajas de nieve acumulada y escorrontía estacional combinados con pronósticos de temperaturas de temporada elevadas, además de los impactos sostenidos de sequías anteriores crean peligros elevados de sequía para la primavera y verano.

Desalentador.

Pink roses

This cool weather has been good for my little garden. These roses were planted two years ago; now the bush is as tall as me, and loaded with flowers.

An opening bud.

In full flower.

One thing not so good: I've barely seen any bees or other pollinating insects this summer. Worrisome.

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Este clima, no muy calurosa este año, le ha caído bien a mi jardincito. Apenas sembré estas rosas hace dos años, y ahora el arbusto es más alto que yo, y lleno de flores.

Fotos: rosas.

Una cosa no tan buena: casi no he visto abejas ni otros insectos polinadores este verano. ¿Efecto del cambio de clima? Me preocupa.

I'm back

I'm sorry; I've been so disheartened by the drowning and destruction of our highways and farms and homes, even though where I am, it doesn't touch me directly for now, that I have not been able to look at my cheerful photos, some taken while the water elsewhere was busy creating havoc.

I started blogging, so many years ago now, celebrating the life and beauty all around us. So much to see, underfoot, underwater, in the air above us, in the forests and fields; so much to rejoice in!

But increasingly, I find I'm documenting the losses. The starfish died. We've been clearcutting our forests, destroying habitat for bears and bees and birds. Invasive plants crowd out the deer's fodder. I rarely see moths these days; walking down forest trails, I no longer find myself walking into spider webs. After this summer's heat dome, the beaches smelled of rotting mussels, not able to survive the baking sun at low tide. 

We have fouled our nest; it's about time we started to clean it up.

And this flooding, these landslides and washouts, are part of the picture. Clearcutting destabilizes slopes; dead wood encourages fires; roots no longer hold back the water. And it comes rushing down the hillsides, ripping out our roads and homes as it comes.

This isn't the end of sorrows; while we continue as if nature were indestructible, more torrential rains will fall, more snow will melt, more animals will die.

I am still disheartened.

But we must go on. Even if it's just recording what is and soon may not be.

So here's a beaver pond and lodge, surviving the high water.

The beavers have built their lodge tall, so they still have a dry sleeping space.

The back side of the pond. The water has covered the usual crop of waterlilies and reeds. The birds are too far away to be identified.

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Lo siento: he estado tan desanimada por lo de las inundaciones y derrumbes, donde se ahogan nuestros hogares y campos y se destruyeron nuestras carreteras principales; aunque por ahora, donde vivo, no me ha afectado directamente; que no he podido ni mirar mis fotos, demasiado alegres, algunas sacadas mientras que el agua en otras partes de la provincia causaban catastrofes.

Empecé a escribir el blog, hace ya muchos años, para celebrar la vida y la belleza que nos rodea. ¡Tanto hay que ver, bajo nuestros pies, en el agua, el los bosques y los campos, en el aire donde vuelan las águilas; tanta razón de regocijarnos!

Pero cada vez más, me doy cuenta que estoy contando las pérdidas. Las estrellas de mar se murieron, por miles, millones. Hemos estado tumbando nuestros bosques, dejando la tierra desnuda, destrozando los hogares de los osos, los alces, los pájaros y todo. Plantas invasivas no comestibles crecen donde antes los venados encontraban alimento. Casi nunca veo mariposas nocturnas en estos dias; caminando por los senderos del bosque, ya no me doy con la cara en las telarañas. Después del calorón de este verano, las playas apestaban a mejillones podridos, que no pudieron aguantar el sol durante la marea baja.

Nos hemos destrozado nuestro nido. Ya era tiempo de que nos pusiéramos a limpiarlo.

Y estas inundaciones, los corrimientos de terreno, los torrentes que se llevan las casas y caminos, forman parte del mismo imagen. Cortando los bosques al ras desestabiliza las laderas de las montañas; la madera muerta, dejada tras las máquinas, se prende facilmente; incendios forestales destruyen las raices que detienen el agua. Y ahí viene ese agua, llevando la tierra con ella, destrozando nuestras casas y construcciones en camino.

Este no es el fin de problemas: mientra sigamos como si nada, como si la naturaleza fuera algo indestructible, seguirá lloviendo en cantidades inesperadas, se derretirá más de la nieve de las cimas, se morirán más animales.

Sigo desanimada.

Pero la vida sigue. Tenemos que marchar adelante. Aunque no solo sea para documentar lo que hay, y que tal vez luego no haya.

Así que aquí hay una laguna con madriguera de castor, y el agua a su máximo. (Por ahora.)

Fotos: la madriguera es grande; todavía hay lugar adentro fuera del agua. En la laguna, el agua ha cubierto todos los lirios acuáticas y cañas que normalmente cubren la superficie. Los pajaritos están demasiado lejos para poderlos identificar.

Underwater

So southwestern BC is now basically a pair of large islands: Vancouver Island, and what we've been calling the mainland, now cut off from the rest of Canada and northern BC. Our main highways going north and east are either underwater or completely destroyed, with no hope of repair for the rest of the year. At least. The railway is closed.

The Fraser Valley is flooded. Merritt is no more. Cows are being towed to safely from small boats. People are stranded between landslides. Houses are floating down the rivers. Dikes have given way. Evacuations continue.

Climate change is upon us, and we weren't prepared.

I am north of the affected area. Today the sun shone brightly, the roads were clear. I felt guilty, as if I should be suffering with the rest of the area.

I'll save my cheerful photos for tomorrow.

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Parece que todo el sur y oeste de la provincia se ha convertido en islas. Está la isla de Vancouver, donde yo estoy, y lo que hemos llamado hasta ahora, tierra firma; ya no funciona ese nombre. Estamos ahora aislados del resto del pais, e incluso del norte de la provincia. Las carreteras principales hacia el este y hacia el norte o están bajo el agua, o han sido completamente destruidas, sin esperanzas de estar abiertas en lo que resta del año, tal vez ni en la primavera siguiente. El ferrocarril está fuera de servicio por los derrumbes.

El valle del rio Fraser, donde vive la mayoría de la población, está inundada. La ciudad de Merritt ha desaparecido. En el valle, rescatan vacas, llevándolas atadas con cuerdas, nadando atrás de barcos. Gente, familias, están atrapados en sus coches, sin poder salir por los derrumbes adelante y atrás. Casas van flotando rio abajo. Los diques se han reventado. Siguen evacuando centros de población inundados.

Nos agarró el cambio climático y no estábamos preparados.

Yo estoy un poco al norte del area afectada. Hoy salió el sol; ni siquiera había nubes. Los caminos están secas y enteras. Yo me sentí algo mal, como si fuera culpable de no sufrir con los demás.

Guardo mis fotos, demasiado alegres, para mañana.

To be a barnacle: a rant.

Oh, to be a barnacle, with my head down there, deep in the dark, unseeing, unknowing! And with armoured plates over all to keep it that way!

Acorn barnacles, large and small, shut down for the duration.

I feel powerless, mostly. The news is always bad, the future unpromising. And I can do nothing to change that.

So I putter along with my little blog, focusing on the beauties all around us, the glories we should be preserving and protecting. Maybe if there are enough of us noticing, we can hold back the tide.

Or maybe not.

Today's news; 50 people. For starters. 50 people killed, 53 more shot but surviving. 100 people with friends and families; make it 1000 people grieving. More; those of us who care; tens of thousands of us.

When will it ever end?

The climate is changing. The oceans are faltering. We all know that, even people like Donald Trump, who denies it, but takes care to protect his own property from rising seas. But what do we do about it? Insist on our creature comforts, the hot tubs and iced drinks, the smooth rides, the good foods from the far ends of the earth, while we pump more carbon into the sea; it's all good, it's not happening, or if it is, someone will fix it. Not to worry.

Once upon a time, the slogan was "A chicken in every pot." Now, it's a gun in every pocket and purse. And when someone uses theirs incorrectly, liquidates someone or many someones, the solution offered is "More guns!" The good guys will always outshoot the bad guys. Except that they don't. Still, that's what police and jails are for. Not to worry.

In politics, in religion, in conversations over coffee, the issues of the day revolve around hate. Who do you hate? White people, black people, browns, reds, women, men, teachers, the poor, the different, the stranger, the immigrant; someone hates you! Fundamentalist Christians hate fundamentalist Muslims (never mind that Islam is the closest religion to Christianity) and by extension, all Muslims, and by extension from there, all brownish people, or people who speak the "wrong" language. And vice versa.

Yesterday's shooter hated men in love. He saw two of them kissing, thought it over, and went out to solve the problem. Because hate is encouraged, and guns are there. After all, aren't our good soldiers doing the same thing, solving the ills of the nations with firepower? Good, noble soldiers, bravely protecting our freedoms. Not to worry, then.

I'm reminded of the lines from the old hymn, "Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." Of course, I don't hold to that theology; I don't believe humankind is vile. Sure, there are vile people, maybe many of them, but in general, I see good people around me, doing the best they can.

But en masse, I think we must be terminally stupid.

Rant over. End of sarcasm. Back to noticing beautiful anemones and smart snails. Before they're gone.

Counting backyard birds

More from the "when I get a round tuit" files; these are from 'way back in 2009.

Cedar waxwings in budding magnolia tree, Strathcona, Nov. 2013

I posted the original of this photo, back then, but I was not happy with it. I had taken it with a point-and-shoot, from a distance, against the light, on a dull, grey day, and tried to fix it with free photo-processing software. I gave it another try tonight, with better software and a clearer screen.

That day in 2009, the centre of Strathcona (almost downtown Vancouver) was alive with flocks of crows, sparrows, and cedar waxwings; crows on the rooftops, sparrows in the hedges, and all the treetops sporting their flashes of yellow waxwing breasts.

Tree over MacLean Park. With waxwings.

I checked back: I've seen a flock of waxwings at the Centennial Park duck pond, in 2011, and solitary birds several times at the Reifel Island bird sanctuary, the last one in August of 2012. Since then, not one.

It's a pattern. We used to have families of chickadees at my door, emptying the feeders almost daily, chattering at me as I tried to do a bit of weeding. This last year, there were never more than half a dozen at Laurie's feeder, none at mine.

A busy, mixed flock of juncos, towhees, chickadees, and assorted sparrows ate in my free restaurant every day for years. Last year, I was happy to see one or two juncos.

I saw one varied thrush this summer. No flickers. No goldfinches. No house finches. One Steller's jay. One wren, three whole times. No golden-crowned sparrows. No bushtits. No nuthatches at my feeder; one did turn up at Laurie's feeder a few times.

I've been wondering what caused this disappearance. Pollution? Plastics? More and more buildings going up; noise and smoke and smells? Pesticides; fewer insects (yes, I've noticed that, too) mean less food for hungry young birds. Climate shift? All those co-ordinated schedules of insect and bird lifestyles being offset?

I don't know. But I definitely can see the results.

Is it just Vancouver area? The Fraser Valley? The Lower Mainland? Maybe. There are more birds on the water and the beaches here in Campbell River than there have been in Boundary Bay for some years. And I'm hearing sparrows twittering in hedges as I pass.

Two days ago, I hung out a suet cage for the chickadees. I had only seen one chickadee here, standing on a tree on the front lawn. Maybe he'd notice the feeder next visit.

And yesterday, I looked out, and there was a whole flock of bushtits working on that suet! Yay!

Tomorrow, I'll put out sunflower seeds, too.

An end and a beginning

Here's an update on the aquarium situation:

The three remaining hermits have died. I replaced about half the water, again, this time with an emergency mix (bottled water and sea salt), and then Sunday afternoon, with freshly collected water from Boundary Bay. The shrimps and crabs seem almost back to normal, and the anemones are tentatively opening up again.

I am grateful for the concern people have shown, and for your understanding of the analogy I presented. The life and death of a few miniature hermit crabs and amphipods seems such a small thing, almost not worth wasting time on, much less grieving over (as I have done), but it's like a trickle of sand down a steep mountainside warning us: watch out for landslides! Stop digging at the bottom!

I have been wondering what to do now. I have an almost empty aquarium. I could return the snails to their beach, with no difficulty. But I feel that I have a responsibility to my maimed crab and brain-damaged shrimps. They would not survive the challenges of the wild for very long. So I must keep the aquarium going.

On the other hand, I don't dare import more critters until the construction next door is finished. I've been thinking, though, that I've been so entertained by the more active residents that I've almost completely ignored the plodding workhorses, the snails that aerate the sand and clean the algae off the glass. Maybe this is an opportunity to learn something more about them. So for starters, meet Sir Molasses.

What's not to love about that face*?

* Well, not exactly a face; the "eyes" you see and the "whiskers" are mouth and neck features. We're looking into his mouth. I've started on a video; watching a snail eat turns out to be surprising.

Midnight survey

I was grumbling to Laurie, a couple of days ago, that there are hardly any bugs this year. Except for a plague of tiny biting black flies, he reminded me.

Something is definitely odd, though. Last summer, the evergreens across my lawn were festooned with hundreds of big cross spider webs. (Both the spiders and the webs were big.) This year, I've found fewer than a dozen, all tiny.

Last year, I had to put out crushed eggshells to stop the slugs. This year, the eggshell container is still full.

Last year, I was monitoring Fat Momma and Chica, my American house spiders, chronicling their doings and matings. This year, the final batch of eggs hatched in March, and a couple of tiny males set up their webs. And that was it. No females, no matings, no babies. And no photos.

Last year, my visitors included big brown moths, crane flies, assorted caterpillars, leafhoppers, lemon-yellow lauxaniid flies, bald-faced hornets and granddaddy harvestmen. This year, a moth or two, a pair of crane flies, no caterpillars, a few tiny harvestmen. The only flies so far are those biting black flies. And a few mosquitoes. (I could do without those.)

I am wondering whether that is a normal variation, or whether it is because of the changes in our weather patterns.

Almost a year ago, in September, I went out with a flashlight to see a big cross spider that built his web on our bicycles every night, and found the patio crawling with life. I've looked out at night this year, and rarely saw any more than a few pillbugs.

I decided to do a thorough search; I went out Tuesday night and last night with the lamp on an extension cord, and peered into every corner. With some success.

There were slugs. Several kinds of slugs.

Doesn't it look awfully snake-ish, coiled up? It does to me.

A light-coloured slug, eating something dried and red. Maybe an old earthworm.

A dark-brown slug, climbing the wall with a harvestman for company.

And a couple of kinds of pill bugs:

The ones that make pills.

And the ones that don't.

I thought this one was a pillbug until I saw the photo. Now I don't know what it is.


Besides these, I found an earwig or two, two snails, a tiny leafhopper on the rhododendron, and a couple of earthworms out for an evening stroll. No moths, no caterpillars.

There were a few spiders: the tiny cross spider whose web I broke, and a miniature cream-coloured one that never stopped running.

Fuzzy photo; the spider wasn't co-operative.

And -- and this made me happy! -- a female American house spider, possibly one of Fat Momma's brood. She was setting up shop at the crook of an old boat smokestack that I've had hanging around, and tying her web to the beak of a wooden shorebird beside it. Not a safe location, but I'll try not to disturb it.


There are a few small males in the vicinity; she should have plenty of suitors. I'll keep an eye on her, hoping for photo ops.

I also found several of these beetles. Out there in the semi-dark, they just showed up as brown blobs, so I brought this one inside to have his picture taken.


This is the same as the one that Chica caught last year. He's lucky I brought him in; when I went out in the morning, the new spider* had one of his relatives:

Beetle taco.

So there's life out there. But not nearly as varied or as numerous as last year. I hope it bounces back next year.

One last photo: a pile of stones I will be flipping the 7th of September. With a slug on the turtle.



*I'll have to find her a name. It's awkward to be always writing "the new American house spider".
.

Sad comment

This is a photo from the Bella Coola trip that I posted on Flickr.


A glacier, unnamed, somewhere along the ferry route, melting into the valley below.

Two days ago, Nod 432 left a comment: "Take a good look 'cause these things are melting fast!"

So true. So sad.

I have noticed, in the years since I left, that every year's crop of photos of my beloved Nusatsum mountain shows more rock, less ice.

As it was, once.
(Government photo, from a defunct page)

Chester Fried Snootli, originally uploaded by Dru!.

Snootli Peak, also in the Bella Coola Valley. Barely a hint of ice on top now.

Today, browsing mountains in the area, I came across this ex-glacier.

(Image by Dru.)

Dru describes it thus:

This lake was a glacier until about 1985, when it started to break up as melt water accumulated. Now it's full of giant icebergs that you can see the layering from the original glacier in. It will probably take another 30 years to fully melt. Located off the Satsalla River valley on BC's central coast at an elevation of around 1800m.

What can I say? Will we get around to turning down the heat before our mountains are bare rock?

I'm not too hopeful.

Weekly (more or less) Five (actually, twelve)

Five Science Links:

Latent memories from previous generations may help birds to fly. From Science Daily. Note: they say may. Something to think about, anyway.

I mentioned this earlier. We knew about global warming, some of its causes and results, back in the 1950s. GrrlScientist has the video.

Squirrels raise the temperature of their tails to warn off rattlesnakes. Wierd. From Afarensis.

How to build a bat detector. Hat tip to Hugh.

Practical science: Developing a better font for highway signs. From Cognitive Daily.

Other stuff:

25 World's Wierdest Animals. They left some of the goodies out, though.

Larry Moran quotes Mark Twain.

You can run, but you can't hide. Discussion on Pharyngula about the spy technology in use, and about to be expanded - to watch all of us.

Cleavers. Those tiny prickly seeds that get all over your pant legs and socks. I got them in my hair, crouching down to take their photo.

News:

Volcano erupts in Guatemala. Night shots by MyBootsnMe. Aug. 8 and 9 (so far).

Earthquake in Peru, a few hours ago. 8 on the Richter scale. (I've been through a few 6s; those are scary enough. I've seen the results, close up, of an 8. Newspaper stories don't do justice to it.) Here, with links to more stories.

Humour: We need some, after the news.

Remember the Doomsday clock? It has run down.

And Elvis laughs!

Glass Half Empty, Glass Half Full

Adrift

We've had a chilly, rainy August. And a cool July. Not for the first time; BC's weather is generally unpredictable.

But this year, it seems, has been a little more out of kilter than usual. There were severe storms last winter, flooding in November, a severe windstorm in December, when thousands of trees were blown down; not only Stanley Park suffered, but all our green spaces. I blogged about the damage in Watershed Park last spring; we passed a big downed tree just last week in the SAMWMA.

Add to that, a record (for this area) snowfall (I measured 18 inches on my birdbath), a 5-metre high tide plus winds that washed out a section of Boundary Bay's seawall, storm-caused power outages (50,000 homes here, 200,000 just across the border), flooding in the upper Fraser River this June leading to sandbagging as far south as New Westminster, and more. The Lower Mainland's reputation as a laid-back paradise may not recover.

The storm that swamped Ladner's harbour was just one of these events, but a significant one. Not in terms of the immediate damage, but possibly as an advance warning.

Natural Resources Canada, in a page on climate change impacts, focuses on the Fraser Delta.

Even today, parts of the coastline of the Strait of Georgia are eroded by waves during winter storms. Higher seas may also flood deltas, tidal marshes, and other low-lying coastal areas. Dykes may have to be built or upgraded to protect these areas.


Fraser Delta tidal marshes are critical habitats for waterfowl, shorebirds, and salmon fry. A rise in sea level may drown the marshes or squeeze them against sea dykes that protect Richmond, Ladner, and Delta.

...
What impact would the loss of Fraser Delta marshes have on ducks, geese, and shorebirds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway?

Climate change. We experience it as a local series of events, but we know it is happening around the globe. Flooding on the Thames, calving icebergs in northern waters, hurricanes in the Pacific not following their own rules, drought in the US, typhoons in China, a heatwave in Hungary ... Bird flu and malaria, HIV and the latest viral mutations ... Extinct dolphins and invasive snails ...

And nothing we can do about it. Or is there?

It certainly feels as if nothing I can do will make any difference. Sure, I can avoid useless consumption, eat local foods, keep the car tuned up, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". But so what? The roads are still jammed with SUVs, the grocery still sells fruit and veggies from the other end of the globe. What good is my little bit?

And here is my pessimistic, glass-half-empty, outlook: some of us, quite a few of us, see what's happening and want to make any changes necessary to at least ameliorate the impact. But many people, important, influential people, do not see this. Or do not care. And the majority will go along in their happy cloud, "eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage", as the Bible puts it, until disaster slaps them in the face.

Then, oh, then; there will be an uproar, a hullabaloo; "We've got to do something!" And people will pursue solutions -- any solutions, possible or not -- with great energy. But it will be too late by then.

Really, it is already too late for our best efforts to have much effect. We should have been working at this back in the 1950s.* We knew at least some of the dangers, even then. We have been inexcusably lax.

Painted cement block, Ladner Harbour Pub

But ... I am not always pessimistic. My glass might be half-full.

This old earth, and we two-legged, chattering inhabitants with it, have weathered many storms before. Not easily, not comfortably; but we made it. And provided we don't blow ourselves into clouds of hot dust, we will possibly make it through again.

Our children and grandchildren are in for a rough ride. And their world will not be the one we know. But they will see the clouds in the sky, the green of growing things; they will feel the warmth of the sun. They will look at the fruit of their efforts, they will look into smiling eyes, and they will feel joy.

One can hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Update: GrrlScientist has a video from 1953 that is a must-see in this context. Quite exaggerated, with a 150-foot rise in sea levels, but the basic idea was there. Did people ignore it because it was just too unpleasant to live with? Or because it was a SEP? I know that I knew about the "Greenhouse effect", as it was called back then, in the 1960s.

Weekly Five, and an update on the green bug

First, the bug.

I planned to send my photos to What's that Bug?, but when I went to the site, I found this announcement:

We're Swamped!!!!!!!

We've Returned
(05/29/2007) We were in Ohio between May 20 and May 29 and we returned to over 700 emails. Sadly, we can only answer a few.

There is such a thing as being too useful, I guess.

I loaded my photos, instead, on Bug Guide. Hopefully, someone will help with their identification. The real difficulty is that some of these creatures go through several different shapes and habits in the course of their life cycle. So that a nymph, which I'm thinking this guy is, may not look anything like his adult form, nor even live in the same environment.

Next: science links, the weekly five.

1. May as well give you Bug Guide's home page. Well worth just wandering around.
2. Astronomy picture of the day. Yesterday's was amazing; I was going to link to that. But today's is wonderful, too. I'm going to go back and browse the archives.
3. Sharks do too get cancer! On Junkfood Science.
4. Arctic ice caps reach tipping points. Scary, but a bit premature.
5. And GrrrlScientist passes on a report on Body Bugs. Denialism blog explains this in a more credible, less credulous fashion, in Folie a news. (Not to say that GrrrlScientist is credulous, but the producers of the report certainly were.)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to look at those astronomy pics. G'night!

Weekly Five (Science Links)

A day late, but it is the long weekend. Victoria Day, in other words. Queen Victoria's birthday. Not that we're thinking about her, of course; what we're really celebrating is summer just around the corner.

Here's what I found interesting in science blogs and news this week:

1: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed From NewScientist.com news service, a "round-up of the 26 most common climate myths and misconceptions." A handy reference.

2: From grrlscientist, at Living the Scientific Life, Gay Flamingos ... Raise a Chick. What the title says. With a great photo of a flamingo chick in a fake egg.

3: From denialism blog, a new blog I am finding fascinating, "Denialists Deck of Cards: The 9 of Spades, "Exploit Others' Ignorance". Although one would wish that they didn't put half the post in the title.

This is part of a series of tactics used by denialists of all stripes. This one, in particular, pinpoints a technique that has had a large and pernicious impact on some members of my family. (I may end up blogging about this.)

4: Joel Pel, in the Science Creative Quarterly, generates and tests the formula that describes Murphy's Law:

Ground-breaking research!

5: At the Cognitive Daily, Greta and Dave Munger report on a glitch in our assessments of popular opinion: How to make your personal opinion seem "popular". They explain (although they don't bring this up) why your kid comes home telling you that "everybody" is buying/going/doing whatever. And when you phone up a couple of other parents, it turns out that their kid (a) says exactly the same thing, (b) definitely is not b/g/d it and (c) can not identify more than one person in the category "everybody". And why one loudmouth can browbeat a whole group into compliance.

Something to think about. Especially, how have we (I) been influenced by one-man peer pressure? How does listening to the same person tell you the same thing every day or once a week (a family member, pastor, news commentator, etc.) lead you to consider his views to reflect the general consensus?

Hmmmm...

The Easter bunny!

We walked yesterday, Easter Sunday, along the Mud Bay dike. It was a grey day, a bit windy along the shore, but warm enough.

The grasses in this area stay green throughout the winter; the rest of the plants are sprouting now. Horsetails are about 6 inches tall:

The elderberry is in flower, and the lupins are up. Laurie says it's quite early for them. I wasn't paying enough attention last year, so I wouldn't know. But something doesn't seem quite "right". We saw very few birds; a couple of crows and a house finch or two. We heard a red-winged blackbird. But there were no shore birds at all, no bird tracks in the mud. No hawks, no sparrows, not even any starlings. Last year, I know, there were great flocks. Worrisome.

At low tide, a vast expanse of empty mud, as far as the eye can see.

We scrambled among the detritus thrown up by the winter storms along the seaward edge of the dike. Wood, logs, trash, chunks of foam, a barnacle-covered skiff. I found a coconut washed up among the dead eel-grass, still sloshing full of coconut milk. I wonder how far that has come? From Mexico, or further south? Or just fallen off a house-boat moored at Ladner?

At the far end of the trail, in a sheltered meadow, a rabbit sat watching us, until we got out the cameras again. Then she left, scampering under the blackberry canes. In a tree overhead, there was a nest. Must have been hers; don't Easter bunnies bring eggs? Then they must have nests. Stands to reason, doesn't it?

Anyhow, here's the proof:



Question: do the little yellow chicks come out of bunny eggs? When they grow up, do they lay bunny eggs?

Mushroom fruiting changes tied to global warming

GrrlScientist passes on the results of a study involving 52,000 sightings of mushrooms over a 50-year period.

"A unique research project has revealed that rising temperatures are affecting fungi in southern England by allowing mushrooms to grow during the winter when they never did before, and to fruit earlier and later, as well as more often."

I had noticed something that ties in; the coral and the tapioca slime that we discovered in the Watershed Park last week, according to the Guide, should be showing up in July or thereabouts, through the fall. Not in the springtime.

I'll be checking expected dates more carefully from now on.