Love in the springtime

I made a quick trip to the beach to pick up eelgrass for my hermits, and on the way back to the car, stopped at the duck pond to watch the redwing blackbirds nesting in the central island. They're busy in there, chattering contentedly, but visible only in snatches as they bustle about in the reeds.

One male came out to take a breather on the fence, where a crow had already settled in.

"What do you think you're doing? This is MY fence!"

And I witnessed two birdy conversations that surprised me.

While I was still out on the sand flats, a gull flew overhead, making a strange, muted sound, almost musical. I looked up, and saw that he had a big clamshell in his beak; maybe that accounted for his voice, I thought. He flew out over the water, then curved back to a sandbar, coming in low, too low to drop a clamshell and have it break. Odd. And then he landed beside another gull waiting there, and handed over the clam.

A gull sharing food? Now that is love!

Back in the park, the sun was setting, and a robin high in a cottonwood was telling the world to "Cheer up, cheer up!" Good advice; I stopped to listen for a moment. And heard a quieter voice from somewhere near the trunk, a simple series of chirps, repeated every time the male robin took a breath. A female in the nest, wanting something? She was insistent, and finally the male dropped to the lawn and went hunting for worms. The chirping stopped. She'd got her point across. Supper would be served soon enough.

That's love, too.

A Round Tuit

I've been holding onto this photo since last September, waiting till I got around to searching BugGuide for a match. It's a moth that I found on the wall by our door in late afternoon.

The wing pattern echoes the feathery antennae motif.

Enough procrastinating! I spent the evening on it tonight. And after scanning all the "white moths" (2933 moths) and all the moths with a mention of feathery antennae (only 52) on BugGuide, and umpteen more on Google, I gave up and submitted my photo.

Which I should have done to start with, long ago.

The feathery antennae mark this moth as a male. He uses them as a "nose"; they're loaded with olfactory receptors - up to 60,000 in some species. And what he's smelling is a female, emitting her alluring pheromones. Somewhere, maybe miles away.

So sensitive are these organs and so characteristic and powerful is the scent, that a female has been known to summon a male from eleven kilometres away. At such a distance there must be as little as one molecule of scent in a cubic yard of air, yet it is sufficient to cause the male to fly in pursuit of its source. (From AskNature)

UPDATE: The BugGuide people are so quick! The moth is a Phantom Hemlock Looper;  Nepytia phantasmaria. Here's a link to a female: note the straight antennae.

By the silvery moon ...

... We want to spoon ...

... love's tune ...

Spring is here, even in my indoor tank. This couple of Nassa snails hung out just under the water surface, cuddling, for a full day. And when the flash reflected this way, I couldn't resist turning it into a moonlight scene, by smoothing out the background.

A few pairs of youngsters, half adult size, got into the mood and are trailing each other around the walls, in pairs, but have never figured out what to do next.

"Love's young dream"

Snatches of song from:

• By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Edward Madden, 1909
• Love's Young Dream, Thomas Moore, late 1700s

Different strokes

This was disappointing. I've seen videos and read descriptions of mating slugs, stories of couples dangling on a rope of their own slime, twisting and intertwining in a slow aerial dance.

So when I came across two slugs in the shade of a flowerpot, obviously mating, I expected something of the same sort.

No. And who am I to decree what counts as fun for someone else, slug or whatever?

They maintained this position, almost without moving, for 20 minutes.

I moved the pot away, to get better light, and kept an eye on them. For all of those 20 minutes, they lay quietly. The only motion was a mite that kept running around at high speed, over one, then the other, then back again. The only other change that I could see was the slow drying of the cement they lay on. I thought that would be uncomfortable, since they had chosen a dark, wet spot, so I brought some water to moisten the cement, and spilled a bit too much. Then there was a response:
 .

Shrinking slugs

The large slug contracted and curled up, and then the lump of connected tissue separated into two translucent balls, still touching. They lay like this for another 10 minutes before they finally retracted their innards and separated.

I'm sure they enjoyed it, anyhow.

Busy bubbles

A family of bubble shell snails came home on the last batch of eelgrass; 2 adults and 4 tiny ones, still just wriggly brown balls. Two of those got lost, eaten, or crushed, but the other two are now full-size.

And they're all working on re-populating the tank. I keep seeing couples twisted together; later, almost every day, there's a new batch of eggs, some on the remaining eelgrass, but mostly on the glass wall.

Bubble shell underside, on glass wall. Cream and grey, with egg-yolk internal shell.

The largest of the bubble shells. This one has dots of orange on his back, and a dark rear end.

One of the egg masses, a transparent jelly with almost white eggs arranged in a rough spiral.

Smaller bubble shell, with new egg mass. It looks like his inner shell was cracked at some time, although he has recovered. The shells are paper-thin, and brittle.

The egg masses gradually disintegrate over a week or so. Looking at a mass a few days old through the microscope, I can see each individual egg; a solid centre surrounded by its own transparent container. Most of these will be spinning around, slowly the first few days, but more rapidly as they develop.

I haven't seen any new babies crawling about, though. It is possible that they get dragged into the filter and destroyed.

Subbing spider.

It's late. I've been playing with the camera and watching snails lay eggs, and now it's too late to process the photos tonight.

Have a fat spider, instead.

He's been sitting under the same sausage vine leaf for days, hardly moving, even when I turn his leaf over. Waiting for a mate to move into the vicinity?

Very obviously a male. Look at the size of those boxing glove pedipalps!

Detail of one of the pedipalps. He uses these to transfer sperm to the female. When he finds one. If he ever overcomes his shyness.

Coming up: those snails and eggs, a couple of tubeworms, and hermit silliness.

On a mission

On the wall beside my desk, a male running crab spider made a thorough search, running up, down, across and back, looking behind shelves and furniture. He didn't find what he was looking for; I could have told him that and saved him the trouble. He was the only spider on that wall. The nearest female was outside, by the back door.

Philodromus dispar, adult male. About 5 mm. long, eyes to spinnerets.

The female he was hunting for is slightly larger than he is, and dressed in mottled light brown. Only the mature males wear black decorated with those whitish stripes down the sides.

They are hunting spiders, always on the move, chasing down their prey rather than sitting in a web waiting for it. But when breeding time comes around, the male forgets to eat and wears himself thin racing, racing, racing; looking everywhere for a mate. Does he know what he wants? Probably not; he just feels the need to run and look and look again. But he'll know her when he finds her.

On his way up again, just in case he missed her. The "boxing glove" ends of his pedipalps are another sign of a mature male.

He's examined that wall and the curtain at the window, and has moved on. Only a few metres left to go before he discovers the female's hangout. I wish him luck.

They've got their priorities straight

At the bottom of the boat ramp at Beach Grove, someone has laid, long ago, a series of broken paving stones, leading out across the rocks to easier walking on the sand. Every chance I get, I turn over a few of these to see what's sheltered there that day.

This time, among the usual crabs, hermits, and mud snails, I found a pair of shore crabs, either mating, or in the pre-mating holding pattern; belly to belly, male and female in a close embrace.

As I found them, jammed in between stones and shells. The male is on the left.

The other crabs around them scuttled off into crevices between the stones as soon as I removed their roof. These two just stayed put. The male wasn't going to give up his female, and she wasn't in a position to run.

Male crabs select a mature female almost ready to molt; they can't mate while she's armoured with a wide plate across her belly. In the brief moments that she is molting, out of the old shell and unprotected, she may be impregnated. So once he's found a mate, he holds on and doesn't let go until she's ready.

I took a few photos, moving around to get better lighting. Neither crab moved. So I gently eased them out of their cubby-hole. They didn't move, even in my hand. So I placed them on the upside-down paver. Again, neither of them attempted to leave.

The male is on the bottom, this time. Mature males have large pincers and go around posturing with them; "Look at me, look at me! I'm big and I'm dangerous!"

Before they got sunburnt, I slid them off the edge of the slab and back into their cozy hideout. And there, they got down to their interrupted business.

The female is on top this time. A curious hermit - aren't they all? - watches from the bottom of the photo.

The female's apron, the wide abdominal plate, is finally opening. She will be backing out of her old carapace any minute now, leaving the hard forms of legs, eyes, pincers and all behind, taking the soft parts except for her esophagus, stomach lining, and part of her intestines; she'll have to make new ones. And as soon as she's free, the male will impregnate her eggs.

After that, he'll leave; the eggs will develop under her apron, where she'll fan them, clean them, and exercise them until they're ready to hatch, up to eight months from now.

An old video of a mother in berry is on YouTube. (It doesn't work as well as it used to; I'll have to remake it, and a whole bunch of other oldies.)

Awwwww!

Some intertidal snails are like rabbits. A Nassa snail in my aquarium, for example, chases down a mate, they indulge in a minute of frantic twisting and writhing, and then it's over. They go their separate ways without a backward glance.

Some, like the Eastern mud snails, Ilyanassa obsoleta, take their time, and prefer company. Lots of it. (See "... snail orgies".)

I've never managed to see the other invasive mud snail, Batillaria attramentaria, with a mate. However private they may be about it, they are definitely successful breeders, judging by the billions covering our beaches, and the 70+ in my tank. (How they all got here, I don't know; I didn't import that many on purpose!).

But the trophons! I never thought I'd be saying this about a basically faceless snail, but these critters are seriously cute.

Mike and Tillie, the trophon snails; pair of hermits using Mike as a seat; and a lonely limpet.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported on the trophon that laid her eggs in the tank. I thought at the time, that the second one was getting ready to lay her own, and that these would be infertile eggs. But there were no eggs forthcoming. Now I'm convinced that Snail #2 is male; we may end up with babies.

(I've got to quit calling them #1 and #2: from now on, it's Tillie and Mike. That's Tillie on the right, above, Mike on the left.)

After Tillie laid her first batch of eggs, she holed up for a couple of days, barely moving. Mike retired to the far end of the tank to stuff himself with barnacles. When Tillie was ready, she joined him. Then they explored the tank together, allways side by side. Wherever one went, the other followed, until Tillie laid her second batch of eggs. Then she rested for a couple of days and joined Mike again. She's just coming, now, out of her third round of rest after egg-laying, and she's on her way over to where Mike waits for her.

"We travel along, singing our song*,
Side by side."

*Or however it is that snails communicate. Spreading pheromones, perhaps?

Bed of thorns

Another day of snow with rain for a chaser. Another day of sifting through old photos; my neck is sore, but the computer's happy.

I found these photos of a pair of weevils in the thistles beside the White Rock beach. I had intended to crop and post them in June of 2011, but procrastination won the day, and they were filed unexamined. Today they were a nice reminder of hotter, drier weather.

Wicked-looking spines. I didn't dare move in closer.

The weevil is a lighter colour than the ones I see around the house. They're mostly dark brown, sometimes almost black. This one has brown stripes, but a definite yellow tinge. And a pale yellow fringe around the tail end of his elytra.

And he had a mate waiting for him under the shade of the thistle head.

Two weevils

The male holds his mate by the shoulders and sides. Prickles be damned! This is true love!

Yay!

I think I've got my computer whipped back into shape. Now I can get back to the good stuff. Like this tiny critter:

Unidentified, as yet. Something to look up on BugGuide. Very small. How small, I've forgotten. They'll know. 

And speaking of critters, here's an interesting article, with video, about how male spiders tie down their mates to avoid becoming supper.

A gift for Little Momma

Sorting old photos, I came across a file of spider shots that I'd put aside "to deal with later", and then forgot about. They showed a pair of American house spiders, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, grandkids of the one I'd been tracking since 2007, still living in the same corner.

I obviously hadn't looked closely at them, back in 2009. I did today. Look what I'd missed!

Day 1, afternoon. Female in her skimpy web at the bottom, male visitor (suitor) at the top left. The fat, "boxing glove" pedipalps identify him as a mature male.

Day 2, 5:48 PM. He approaches with a gift, a silk-wrapped weevil.

Will she accept the gift? If not, she may eat him instead.

Yes! "Thank you very much; this is delicious!"

5:49 P.M. 16 legs. They're mating. He's on the far side; you can still see his pedipalps. She's not letting go of the weevil, though.

5:50 Success! He's impregnated her, and escaped uneaten. She's busy.

5:55 He rests, she eats.

And the next day:

Day 3, 5:07 P.M. She's finished with the weevil, but he's brought her a gift-wrapped bug.

And from what I remember, they raised a healthy brood of spiderlings, several egg sacs worth.

Out of character

He's polite, peace-loving, gentle, co-operative. A good neighbour, tolerant of youngsters, patient. A typical Canadian (YMMV).

He's a hermit crab, of course. They're like that; pleasant company.

And then he goes and transmogrifies into a stereotypical cartoon caveman*, when he discovers girls.

Oog, the hairy hermit, with his captive mate.

A mature male hairy, big and strong and about 3/4 of an inch long, chooses a female. She's smaller than he is, usually quite a bit smaller. He grabs her by the corner of her shell, near her face, and drags her wherever he goes. Oog, here, chose the top of the tall abalone shell as a perch; from here, he has the drop on any challengers. And there he waited, only coming down for lunch, still dragging the female with him. (She didn't get much; she was trapped and could only catch a few spare crumbs.)

From the time I first saw him with her, until she finally was allowed to go her own way, was three days. Night and day he held her; she lay quietly in her shell, not bothering to struggle.

He was waiting for her to molt. Only then could he fertilize her eggs. Until then, he wouldn't let any other male near her. On the third day, I was watching when she started to signal to him that she was ready; she stretched part way out of the shell, and tapped at his big pincer with hers. After a bit, he let go, so that she could get out of the shell to molt.

And then another male, slightly smaller, (Glok, I'll call him) decided to horn in. He came up and grabbed the female's shell. Not allowed! Oog attacked!

I have never seen such an angry hermit before. He tangled with the intruder, tugging and hitting and pinching until Glok had to drop his prize and run away, with Oog pursuing him furiously for half a tank length before he turned back to his mate.

Now he stood guard, at arm's length from her, watching, watching. Glok tried to sneak up from behind a blade of seaweed; Oog caught him and pounded him some more. Glok came around from the back; Oog chased him away again. And again. And again. Each time, the pursuit was longer, angrier.

I don't know if they ever managed to mate; I missed it, if they did. The next day, Oog was wandering around, sadly poking at random females without picking them up.

I haven't named the female. I don't know if I could recognize her again; her shell is much like anyone else's, and I never saw her features. I'll be watching to see if one turns up in berry.

*Re the "stereotypical cartoon caveman": I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that they've been maligned; maybe they were quite the gentlemen. And maybe they had nicer, more musical names, too.

Winged heart

At the edge of a tiny puddle of a lake, the dragonflies and bluets were dancing. This pair of bluets flew over to where I was looking for frogs (Plop! Plop!) and perched right in front of me.

The blue male was doing the steering; he already had the female firmly held by the back of her neck with the graspers at the end of his abdomen. She came along like a trailer on a hitch.

Landing. She's still trying to fly.

She rests, hanging loose.

He gets himself well anchored ...

... and pulls her back to his level.

She curls her abdomen forward.

He has already pre-loaded the sperm bank on the bottom of his thorax, from the genital organ at the tip of his abdomen. Now she has to get her own genital opening into position.

Almost there.

Contact! And they make a two-tone heart together.

I shifted position, getting a firmer foothold, and the winged heart flew away. She will lay her eggs now in a plant underwater. He will hold on, staying dry himself, keeping her safe, until she is done.

(And another heart for Clytie.)

Caught in the act!

Update on Bubbles in Love.

The hermits have been eating the egg ribbons. I caught one of them at it this afternoon, and there were no more to be found. But tonight, Hammy II laid another ribbon.

Egg ribbon on sea lettuce. Slime and bubbles.

H/she laid the eggs, attached to that brown fragment of eelgrass at one end. The last thing h/she did was to glue the whole thing flat against the sea lettuce.

(Poor photo; no time: I have to catch a plane.)

Bubbles in love

On a wide, flat beach, small animals seek shelter wherever they can get it. Under the eelgrass, in burrows, on the sides of waterlogged wood, under rocks; or in populated areas, under and around human artifacts, trash, boats, anchors, bottles. One favourite hiding place is an abandoned clam shell, the bigger and more solid, the better.

At low tide, I keep an eye peeled for large shells, especially the older, seaweed-encrusted, barnacle-thickened ones. I look inside each one; no telling what I may find. Sometimes it's a scale worm or two. A couple of weeks ago, it was a collection of those little, unidentified egg casings.

Scale worm, 1 cm. long.

Egg cases. I've seen them identified recently, but can't remember where. UPDATE: Possibly the Leafy Hornmouth, Ceratostoma foliatum.

On our last visit to Boundary Bay, 'way out near the bottom of the intertidal zone, a clamshell I collected had a live bubble shell snail inside. I didn't have a container big enough for the shell, and in a plastic bag, the critter would dry out, so I walked back towards shore, carrying this clam shell half full of water. But it leaked; there must have been a crack somewhere. So at every little pool, I stopped to fill the shell again. I needed some better way to keep it wet.

When we reached another tide pool full of eelgrass, I dug out several plants, roots, a handful of sand each, and all, and stuffed it all into a plastic bag. I carefully put the clamshell and bubble snail on top, and covered it with more eelgrass, dripping wet. That should hold it.

And my last handful of eelgrass roots and sand came up with a second bubble snail. Two in a day! It went into the bag to keep the first one company.

Hammy the second, at home in a plastic cup. Love the eyes!

They both made it home ok, and made themselves at home in the tank right away. They are not like the previous one I had, a Haminoea japonica (I think); it spent most of its time in the sand. This pair wanders around on the eelgrass, and often on the glass walls of the aquarium.

Belly view, just under the water surface. With a grazing snail. (See the little pink mouth.)

These two are a native species, Haminoea vesicula, the white bubble snail. They are eating the algae off the inside of the walls, and probably off the eelgrass. When they have been knocked off onto the sand, they usually head straight for a wall and go on up. They move quite rapidly, for a snail.

Hammy the Third (aka Sir Ham), the smaller of the pair, checking out the big world above the waterline. He looks like some fat owl in a waistcoat. The round "belly" is his shell, and the flesh folds over it.

I can always find one of these if they're somewhere on a wall, because they leave a slime trail behind themselves. It catches bubbles from moving water, marking their path for several hours.

A couple of inches of slime trail, with bubbles.

I had tracked Hammy II to a spot on the front wall, and went looking for Sir Ham. I found him at the beginning of Hammy's trail, hurrying along it, staying with it, like a bloodhound on a scent. When he ran into a gap where a snail had broken the string, he cast about, up and down, until he found it again.

When I checked back, the two were together, doing what snails do in the springtime.

Hammy II above, Sir Ham below. And an intrusive periwinkle. Ignore that; the bubble shells certainly are.

They twist around some. At one point, HII was floating free, except where he held onto Sir H. Slime swirled around. This I couldn't get on camera, but towards the end, a long, thick cord dangled down below them, several inches long. When they left to go about their separate ways, it stayed behind, and gradually dissipated in the current.

And the next morning, this is what I found on the eelgrass:

Ribbon of eggs. Thousands of eggs, it seems.

This helps to identify the bubble shell; each species makes a different egg mass.

And the next day, they mated again. This morning, there is a new egg ribbon. This afternoon, they were back together. Busy little beasties. I'll be looking for eggs again tomorrow. I wonder if any will survive to grow into new little Hammies.

These snails are hermaphrodites, so both can lay eggs. I don't know who is responsible for the eggs they've laid so far.

Après-orgy

The orgy is over.

Among the couple of dozen hermit crabs that came home with me (under false pretenses) a week ago, were three couples preparing to mate. It's a bit early, but we have had a warm winter; maybe they're anticipating an early summer.

When breeding season comes around, the males capture a female, usually smaller. They get a good grip on the edge of her shell with their large pincers, and hold on, never letting go, even for a moment. The female usually just retreats into her shell, and apparently waits.

Male trying to climb a wall, female along for the ride.

But inside the shell, she is very busy. She lays her eggs, gluing them to one side of her abdomen, ready to be fertilized. As she does this, she releases pheromones, which influence her male to hold on tighter. Sometimes, they also attract other males; one of my couples turned for a while into a threesome, with two males playing tug-of-war over her. The larger one won.

Couple resting in a bowl. The male is the one upright. Females often are held upside-down.

Whether it was the effect of the pheromones, or just because it was time, the rest of the hermits in the tank got the idea, and every time I looked, I saw another couple linked together. There are three species of hermits in the tank; all three were pairing up.

When the female is ready, maybe after several days of being dragged around, she partially leaves her protective shell, the male follows suit, and they mate. I have never seen this happen; it's over quickly and I'm never there at just the right moment. And then the courtship is over and done with; the male goes his own way and leaves the female to deal with the family.

It's not an easy job. Ma Hermit has a humongous "baby bump" attached to her abdomen, and it can't be comfortable. She wriggles around in her shell, trying to fit, sometimes jerking back and forth, sometimes pulling half out of the shell and fanning the eggs, then making repeated attempts to squish herself back in.

Ma Hairy Hermit, with a mass of pink eggs.

She gives up, and goes searching for a new shell, something a bit more roomy. As I watched the shell battles, various females competing for the largest shell in stock, I caught on and donated a handful of the largest mud snail shells I had; they were all occupied in a couple of hours.

Sometimes they forced bigger males out of their shells. They, in turn, went shell shopping, having to settle, as often as not, for a shell too small for their taste. They got in fights; I watched one male drag another out of his shell and move in. The evictee was too big for the abandoned shell, and panicked, running around and over his old shell, snapping at the thief, refusing to go looking elsewhere. Eventually, he got his way; the usurper gave him his shell back, and went off to find a more co-operative donor.

Besides finding a good maternity shell, the mother has to keep her eggs healthy. Like a "true" crab, she brings them out into the water and fans them, to remove waste products and aerate them. And she has to keep them safe at the same time; hermits are vulnerable out of the shell, pregnant hermits even more so. She spends a good part of her time up on the seaweed, out of reach of the crab.

Blue berries

Some of the hermits have pink eggs, or "berries", while others' berries are a deep blue-black. I'm not sure if these are greenmark hermits, or if they're just in a different stage.

I'm hoping some of these survive. It's difficult in a tank environment.