Morning stroll

 Some random shots at Oyster Bay.

Morning stroll

Dungeness crab molt. It always amazes me how they back out of their old skin, legs and all, leaving behind even the eyes.

Large clamshell.Nutall's cockle, Clinocardium nuttalli, I think.

Grass gone to seed.

Gumweed flowers still half closed.

Happy dance.

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

Algunas cosas que vi caminando en Oyster Bay.

1. Paseo matutino.
2. Cangrejo Dungeness, Metacarcinus magister. Siempre me asombra como es que los cangrejos se retiran de su carpacho viejo, con todo y patas, dejando atrás lo que parece un cuerpo entero, incluyendo hasta los ojos.
3. Almeja de Nuttall, Clinocardium nuttalli
4. Pasto alto, produciendo semilla
5. Grindelia integrifolia. Las flores se abrirán cuando calienta el sol.
6. Baile alegre.

Meadow plants under snow

It's slow going, walking through new snow. Especially when last summer's flowers keep making me stop. Like walking through an art gallery; stop, stare, go on to the next, repeat...

Queen Anne's lace and grasses in the Oyster Bay meadow.

Yarrow among the logs.

Gumweed (on the right) and yarrow.

The same Queen Anne's lace, from a different angle.

Yarrow with hats

And yet more hatted yarrow.

It's 9° below zero tonight. The snow on the ground is crispy; it crunches underfoot.

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

Las hierbas que en verano cubrían la pradera y las dunas de Oyster Bay, ahora en invierno me hacen detenerme para admirarlas contra la nieve virgen.

1. Zanahoria silvestre, Daucus carota. Aquí se conoce como "Encaje de la Reina Ana".
2. Milenrama, Achillea millefolium.
3. Grindelia integrifolia, aquí conocida como hierba goma. Y, a la izquierda, más milenrama.
4. La misma planta de zanahoria silvestre, vista desde otro ángulo.
5. Milenrama con sombreritos de nieve.
6. Y más milenrama.

Esta noche estamos a 9 grados bajo cero. La nieve por encima lleva una capa de hielo, crujiente bajo mis botas.

Defiant

Gumweed in winter.

Standing tall, dead but defying wind, rain, and now snow.

Grindelia integrifolia, Oyster Bay meadow.

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

Grindelia en el invierno. Muerta, pero aun así se mantiene en pie, a pesar de vientos, de lluvias, y ahora de nieve. En el prado de Oyster Bay.

Blending into fall

 Early fall colours at Oyster Bay:

The meadow, September 24, 4 PM

The last of the gumweed, with a still-busy bee.

The late gumweed flowers are on the skimpy side.

A pair of juncos. They will be here through the winter.

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

El año gira hacia el otoño. Aquí, el campo en Oyster Bay empieza a pintarse de colores apropriados para la temporada.

Las flores de Grindelia se secan y se contraen. Las flores otoñales son escasas y chicas, pero siguen atrayendo una que otra abeja.

Los juncos viven aquí todo el año, haga calor o frio.

Almost got away

I was trying to take photos of bees and hover flies working on the last of the gumweed flowers, but they danced too quickly from flower to flower. One hadn't gotten far enough away to escape the camera.

He's blurry, and almost off the edge, but I loved his busy wings.

Caught him!

Zooming in. Those wings are fast!

How fast?

Honey bees can beat their wings over 230 times per second. (Ask a Biologist, ASU)

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

Estaba tratando de capturar fotos de abejas y moscas que buscaban polen en las flores tardías de Grindelia integrifolia, pero sin éxito porque no se quedaban más que unos segundos en cada flor. Pero una abeja casi casi se me escapó, pero la cámara la vió, aunque en el mero borde de la foto.

Y está algo borrosa, pero me gustó por esas alas tan entusiastas.

Foto: la flor y la abeja, y haciendo zoom, la abeja a solas. ¡Esas alas sí que son rápidas!

Las abejas de miel pueden batir las alas más de 230 veces por segundo. (Ask a Biologist, ASU)

Spiky, sticky, and yellow

 Gumweed. Just gumweed, closing down at the end of a warm day.

Grindelia stricta. Dunes, Oyster Bay. The white blobs are latex, the gum that gives the plant its name; very sticky!

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

Grindelia, hierba de goma; una planta muy pegajosa, esta creciendo en las dunas cerca de la playa en Oyster Bay. Los botones producen latex, que le da su nombre "hierba de goma".

Gumweed beasties

In the meadow at Oyster Bay, I stopped to look at gumweed. And the critters it harbours.

Big bee, little fly. Gumweed, Grindelia sp.

And a tiny jumping spider, keeping her eye on the big round eye above.

Isn't she cute?

Unidentified moth

I've spent hours trying to find this moth. It looks so familiar, but I can't remember where I've seen it before. It looks sort of like a hawk moth.

*UPDATE: It's a woodland skipper, a butterfly. Thanks, Sara!

And not on the gumweed; on the path nearby:

Grasshopper, watching me closely. One step more, and he was gone.

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

En la pradera de Oyster Bay, me detuve a mirar las flores de Grindelia (hierba goma) y los animalitos que las frecuentan.

Una abeja, y una mosca. Una araña saltarín (¡Tan curiosa; daba vueltas para siempre estar mirando ese ojo grande!) y una mariposa nocturna que no pude identificar. Muy activa; botaba de flor en flor y por fin la perdí.

Y un saltamontes en el camino entre las flores.

White gum, yellow petals, blue-black spider

It's gumweed (Grindelia stricta) season again. The dunes and the meadow at Oyster Bay are bright with all their yellow blooms.

And more, about to burst into flower.

The white stuff is glue. Very sticky. It doesn't hold back the petals when they flare out, though. The little white critters are whiteflies.

Half opened. With a blue-black spider.

I hadn't seen the spider until I looked at the photos. In the field, I'm too busy trying to focus on a petal swaying in the wind to see all the details.

I've never seen a spider this black here before. The legs are pale, and there's a brown patch on the cephalothorax. I can't identify the spider, so I'll send it in to BugGuide. They're good; they even identified my newborn spiderlings!

Here's the spider, cropped out of the photo above.

The colours of summer

Against a background of green, blue, brown, grey; BC's year-round colours.

Beach pea, Lathyrus japonicus, among the logs on the Oyster Bay dunes.

Gumweed, Grindelia integrifolia. It's blooming near the shore everywhere. This one was on Tyee Spit.

The gumweed flowers, according to my guide, are covered with an extremely sticky latex. Actually, the glue goes much farther. I touched the lower stem of this plant, removing an intrusive dead straw, and my fingers got so glued up that they stuck to the camera.

Foxgloves in full sun, Brown's Bay.

Foxgloves in the shade, Elk Falls.

Hardhack, Spiraea douglasii. Likes wet feet, bogs and streams and marshes, but this one was growing on the shore beside a well-watered lawn.

A more modest flower, Silver burweed, with an ambitious name: Ambrosia chamissonis. The flowers are small and greenish, enclosed in their bracts. These are growing just above the high tide line at Oyster Bay.

Black twinberry, Lonicera involucrata. Past the flower stage, but the red bracts remain. Tyee Spit.

Persisting

Some plants just won't give up. On Tyee Spit, the rosebushes are bare sticks, the Queen Anne's lace is reduced to dry, brown heads on empty stalks. Only the grass is green; the blades will stay green, even sleeping under a snow coverlet, although there will be no new flowering heads until next year. But the gumweed is stubborn. Winter? Freezing nights? No light? So what?

You never know! A bee just might come by: we're ready for him!

Three new flower heads on the way.

Grasses and yarrow, sleeping.

Olive slices, lemony stripes

Checking out the gumweed at Oyster Bay ...

That white gum is sticky! But we have visitors, too!

A green and yellow caterpillar. And look again; there's another, a young 'un, on a petal. And two aphids, one covered in pollen. Those brown and black lumps are caterpillar poop.

It seems to be grub season. I found a couple in my flower beds, and one trundling across the kitchen floor.

Now he's on the kitchen counter. And not happy about it. Those little black ovals look like slices of black olives.

I sent him outside to look for weeds. I've got plenty to spare.

How old is a flower?

Bees can tell.

An older flower, and a honey bee with full bags of pollen.

And a young flower.

And this gumweed flower is half-way between the two above.

Gumweeds are composites; their flower heads contain many smaller flowers, the petal-like ray flowers around the edge, and a mass of disc flowers in the centre. The individual flowers mature first at the outer edge, then progressively inward, with the youngest flowers in the middle.

Look again at the flowers above; the younger flowers are still closed, the recently mature ones, where the bees are busy harvesting, have protruding anthers loaded with pollen, and on the outer edge, the tiny flowers are busy making seeds. Each single flower will produce one seed.

The ray flowers are sterile.

Still here. Moving on tomorrow.

Conundrum

Question: why does gumweed trap insects if it doesn't plan to eat them?

Sticky gumweed bud, Grindelia stricta, with recent capture and bleached skeletons.

Here in BC, we have 12 carnivorous plants. Among them, the sundews use glue to trap the insects. Gumweed's glue is probably as efficient as the sundews', and more copious, but it has no use for the insects it kills.

Maybe some things just happen that way.

Sticky mud, sticky flowers

The Oyster Bay Shoreline Park stretches along a narrow strip between the highway and the ocean. The beach is stony and steep, difficult to walk on, but a good place to sit on a log and listen to the waves rolling in.

At the northern end, protected from the rush of water in the channel by a rocky spit, is the slough, with its ancient, rotted pilings left over from a long defunct marina; now they hold nest boxes for purple martins. The slough is bare mud at low tide, gluey, foot-swallowing mud. It looks solid enough until you step on it; under the crust, it oozes. A skin of rotting seaweed covers large patches, and the whole area stinks. Shorebirds love it.

The inner end of the slough. Somehow, without the stink, it looks prettier. Assorted peeps are foraging in the shallow water. The pilings with nest boxes are off to the left, in the deepest mud. I tried to walk closer to the birds, but the mud wanted to keep my shoes, so I gave up.

From the pathway above the water line, looking down on a piling housing an adventurous elderberry shrub.

Between the parking lot and the slough is a dry, flat plain covered with dry, often prickly plants. Signs at intervals warn us off; some of these plants are rare, some are sensitive.

I've been spending time recently sitting or kneeling on the moss and stones, looking at plants, some thigh-high, others in mats fingertip deep.

The most obvious at this time of year is the bright-flowered gumweed:

Gumweed, Grindelia stricta. Grows on dry land or sea shores. Salt tolerant.

The white exudate on the buds is really sticky.

Half closed at the end of the day.

Typical gumweed plant, this one among the driftwood lining the beach.

Tomorrow, an unusual clover.