Off to an early start

 I promised lichens for today, but then I saw this:

First skunk cabbage of the year.

I scrolled back through several years; the first skunk cabbages I found each year showed up from the end of March through mid-April. This one is a whole month early.

Lichens tomorrow.

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Les prometí líquenes para hoy. Pero ayer vi esto; una linterna de pantano, Lysichiton americanus, una de dos en una zanja. Muy temprano, me pareció, y busqué en años anteriores; las linternas brotaron siempre entre finales de marzo hasta mediados de abril. Estos llegaron un mes entero antes de su tiempo acostumbrado.

Y dejo los líquenes para mañana.

Lament

It has been a poor year for little beasties, the insects and wormies and garden crustaceans, the bees and the butterflies, the showy orange underwing moths; there were no cabbage white larvae eating my nasturtiums, just the deer. Forest trails were devoid of banana slugs. Moving plant pots in the garden exposed one or two sowbugs, rarely more. The annual summer invasion of ants through a crack behind my kitchen window failed to materialize. And the spiders, oh the poor, hungry spiders; they patrolled empty webs, stayed tiny, and guarded few new families.

Whether the cause is climate change, here showing up as dry weather, or the increasing pollution of our air and water, or our ongoing destruction of habitat, I can't tell. All of the above, maybe.

Whatever the cause, I'm missing the spiders. Cellar spiders arrange their webs in the corners of the carport, and, indoors, along the edges of the ceiling and under plant stands. But they're all tiny, almost transparent; some I've seen are only recognizable by a sudden sense of movement. Outside my door, a couple of fat house spiders, Steatoda sp., hung around for a while; one tried to raise a family, but I never found spiderlings. There's an undersized giant house spider that does her rounds in my bedroom, finding a cricket or two, maybe a stray crane fly. I did see a jumping spider in my garden once. Once.

And now it's October. Or Arachtober, as I know it. The time when several hundred spider lovers from around the world post our year's crop of spider photos to the group pool, (go look) one a day, then the last week, two a day, and three for Hallowe'en; some 40 photos each. And this year, I doubt that I'll make the count. There will be a few finds this month; it's the time to look for cross spiders, before the rains wash away their webs. But last week's sorting of photos turned up only 17 spiders.

(It's close to midnight. In desperation, I just went out to the carport with a flashlight and searched every crack. I found two very small cellar spiders and one tiny house spider eating a young sowbug. And a fragment of a spider molt. I'll take the camera out in daylight to see if they're still there.)

Still, with the help of a friend who scouted some out for me, and held a flashlight on a couple in deep shade, I've been able to add a couple of cross spiders, Araneus diadematus, to the Arachtober pool. These:

Female, in characteristic pose, head down.

Trapeze artist

Brownie on the edge of the deck.

About that first photo, I'll discuss some of the anatomy tomorrow.

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Ha sido un año pobre con respeto a los animalitos; los insectos, los gusanitos, los crustáqueos terrestres en nuestros jardines, las abejas, las mariposas, esas mariposas nocturnas con las alas secundarias anaranjadas; ningún larva de las mariposas "blanquita de la col" se comió las hojas de mis capuchinas; eso lo hicieron los venados. En los caminos entre el bosque, no aparecieron las babosas Ariolimax. Al mover las macetas en el jardín, solo salían a la vista una o dos cochinillas, casi nunca más. La invasión anual de hormigas que entran por una rendija tras la ventana de mi cocina no se produjo. Y las arañas, ah, esas pobres arañas hambrientas, cuidaban sus telarañas vacías, dejaban de crecer, no produjeron familias. 

Sea por causa del cambio de clima (aquí expresado por la falta de agua), o de la contaminación del ambiente, o por nuestra persistente destrucción de habitat, no lo sé. Puede ser todo en conjunto.

Sea lo que sea, extraño las arañas. Las arañas fólcidas arreglan sus telarañas en las esquinas y bajo soportes para plantas. Pero todas son miniaturas, y casi transparentes; algunas apenas se reconocen por la idea de movimiento. Afuera de mi puerta, dos arañas caseras Steatoda sp. duraron unos dias; una trató de formar una familia, pero nunca encontré sus arañitas infantiles. Hay una araña "gigante" pero no tan grande, que se ocupa en vigilar mi recámara, encontrando algunos grillos. Vi una araña saltadora en mi jardín una vez este año. Una sola vez.

Y estamos en octubre. O como lo llamamos, Aractober, el mes de las arañas. Es el mes cuando varios cientos de amantes de las arañas de todo el mundo suben fotos al grupo Flickr, #Arachtober, (haz clic), subiendo una foto por dia, dos en la cuarta semana, y tres el Dia de los Muertos, una 40 fotos cada quien. Y este año, creo que no voy a tener suficiente para terminar el mes. Habrá una que otra nueva foto este mes; es la temporada de las arañas Araneus diadematus, mientras no lleguen las lluvias fuertes. Pero al revisar mis fotos la semana pasada, encontré solo 17 fotos para subir al grupo.

(Es medianoche. Se me ocurrió ver si podía encontrar arañas en mi cochera a estas horas. Con una linterna busqué en todos los rincones. Encontré dos arañas fólcidas, muy pequeñas, y una arañita casera también muy chica comiéndose una cochinilla joven. Y un pedazo de una muda. Mañana, cuando hay luz, saco la cámara.)

De todas maneras, con la ayuda de una amiga que fue en búsqueda de arañas y detuvo una linterna para alumbrar unas que tienen sus telarañas en sombra densa, pude subir fotos de dos Araneus diadematus al grupo de Arachtober.

Fotos:

1. Una hembra en su postura característica. Haré comentario sobre ésta mañana.
2. La misma, haciéndose una trapecista.
3. Otra, la misma especie,pero café, mostrando el diseño de su abdomen.

Curiouser and curiouser

I haven't seen many bees this summer; one or two on my roses, one checking out the nasturtiums, and that's about it. I walked down a short path by the beaver pond, past daisies, fireweed, and St. John's wort, in profuse bloom. No bees. And then there's a patch of hardhack. Swarming with bees.

I was too slow to catch the bee on this one.

Pink reflections in her eye. Only the females have those pollen baskets on their legs.

So intent on her harvesting.

A honeybee with wings like deer's ears.

Blurry wings and dangling legs.

There were many bees on a friend's lavender, too. But not on all the other flowers in her garden. Curious. Why are they limiting themselves to a few specific plants this year? I've never seen this behaviour before.

And would this have anything to do with only 2 pears on a pear tree that usually bears bags full?

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Este verano he visto muy pocas abejas. Una o dos visitaron mis rosas; había una viendo mis capuchinas, nada más. El otro dia visité la laguna de los castores, entrando por una vereda donde florecían abundantemente las margaritas, las adelfillas (hierba de fuego), y hierba de San Juan; no vi ni una sola abeja en todas esas flores. Y luego siguen los arbustos de Spiraea douglasii. Y aquí era un hervidero de abejas, de varias especies, apurándose de una rama de flores a la siguente.

Fotos: Spiraea douglasii, con abejas. Menos la primera; se me escapó la de esta rama.

Hoy había muchas abejas en la lavanda de una amiga, también. Pero las otras flores de su jardín, ni una. Esto me parece muy curioso. ¿Porqué están escogiendo solo esas plantas ahora? Nunca antes he visto esto.

¿Y será por esto que el peral este año solamente lleva dos peras?

Slim harvest

A few more mushrooms...

Mushrooms, moss, and Douglas fir needles.

The straight, flat needles of Douglas fir have two pale white stripes running the length of each needle,... (TLEHCS)

It hasn't been a good year for mushrooms. In my usual haunts, I find only the smallest, pale brown ones, and pinhead white mushrooms; even those are scarce. I compared with my notes from last year. Where I found many and varied mushrooms by this date, now I find almost none. And none of the large, showy ones at all.

Discussing with other local mushroom observers, I have heard the same observation; the beautiful Amanitas are nowhere to be seen, there are no puffballs, the pine mushrooms near Elk Falls are missing, the turkey tails are old and dry; there are no new ones.

I seem to be finding fewer slugs this fall, too. Mushrooms are among their favourite food sources.

Could it be because of the long, hot, dry (very dry) summer we've just had? What else has changed?

Or is it also due to habitat loss? One of the places where I used to always see mushrooms, especially Amanitas, has been torn up by earth-moving machinery on its way into the bush to clear ground for a small shed; a lot of damage for a few square metres of use. There are no mushrooms here, not even the little brown ones.

Where have all the critters gone?

Something's odd. The house this winter has been unusually critter free.* I have seen no sow bugs for a couple of months; they used to patrol my windowsills regularly. The big spiders that preyed on them are gone. I've seen three or four micro-dot spiders in as many weeks. No flies. No stray beetles. No crane flies, moths, or mosquitoes. Not even any of the Western conifer seed bugs that usually seek out warm houses for the winter.

Yesterday, I brought in a handful of soil from the garden, and examined it with a lens. There were no pill bugs. No spiders. No springtails, even.

Looking at that last paragraph, I said to myself, "That can't be right!" So I went out and collected another handful of dirt, and looked at it under a bright light with the lens and then the hand microscope. I found two slug eggs and one lonely springtail. No mites, no worms, no mini-spiders, no globular springtails, no sow bugs, no tiny snails.

I don't know what has caused this. Not the weather; inside, there's heat. Outside, it has been freezing and everything burrows down deep, but it's been warmish for some days now, and today the sun is shining on the soil I collected; it should be swarming with happy life.

I found my first spider** of the year, though. Yesterday, the 22nd.

Just a baby still. About 2 mm. long.

*I checked my photos for last year, Dec. 2015 and Jan. 2016; I had spiders inside and out, including a batch of spiderlings, tiny snails, and a ladybug. And I remember chasing crane flies all over, but never getting a decent photo. I was feeding sow bugs to the mother of the spiderlings. The cat was busy tracking big, black beetles around the baseboards. So the critters were still here, still active even when it snowed.

**That is, first spider big enough for the camera to be able to see. It doesn't glom onto biological motion the way my eyes do.