Tenacity

The snowplow came and I went out for a long drive, and a short walk, some of it through snow up to my knees. Trees and lakes (3) and a river, all white and smooth and gleaming, even the packed snow of the road once I was off the highway. And then I came home and found this at my front door.

My sweet peas, still doggedly producing flowers, snow or no snow.

My iron birds in their iron birdbath.

I hadn't noticed, until I downloaded the photo, the two sprouts of alyssum, one already flowering. Doing fall cleanup a couple of weeks ago, I cut the whole patch down, They're not giving up, not them!

And this was along the road, near Mirror Lake: towhees are ground foragers, but their ground was under a foot of white stuff, so they were picking at the bedraggled leaves still hanging on the bushes.

And then another car went by and they all flew away.

The temperature went down to -8° Celsius yesterday, A bit low for this location, but not the lowest it has been historically. Now it's back up to 2° above zero, and rain is on the schedule. So the snow will melt, down by the shore at least. Not up where the towhees were; that's a bit over 200 metres above sea level, enough to make a difference.

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Llegó el quitanieves, y yo tomé la carretera y caminos hacia el oeste. Un paseo en coche largo, y una caminata corta, en parte abriendo camino en nieve que me llegaba a las rodillas. Los árboles, los lagos (3), un rio, todo era blanco, liso, brillante, hasta el camino de nieve comprimido una vez dejada la carretera. Y luego llegué a casa y encontré esto esperándome frente a mi puerta.

Fotos:

1. Mis guisantes de olor, todavía produciendo flores. Con o sin nieve, a 8° bajo cero o no; persisten.
2. Dos pájaros de hierro (uno cubierto de nieve) en su fuentecito de hierro. No había notado en el momento, pero luego vi esos dos brotes de flor-de-mel. Hace unas semanas, haciendo la limpieza de otoño, corté las plantas hasta el suelo. No se dan por vencido.
3. Y esto no es en casa. Al lado del lago Mirror (Espejo) vi unos pipilos entre las ramas. Normalmente son pájaros que buscan su comida en el suelo, pero ahora su suelo está bajo 30 centímetros de nieve. Y estaban buscando en las hojas desbaratadas que todavía siguen colgadas bajo el amparo del árbol de hojas perennes.

La temperatura bajó hasta 8° bajo cero Centígrado ayer. Algo más bajo de lo acostumbrado en esta zona, pero no sin precedente. Pero ahora ya subió a 2° sobre cero, y nos prometen lluvia. Entonces la nieve desaparecerá, por lo menos aquí al nivel del mar. Pero persistirá allá donde viven los pipilos; ese rumbo está un poco más de 200 metros sobre el nivel del mar, suficiente para hacer la diferencia.

If at first you don't succeed ...

Arachtober's almost over; nine more days, nine more photos to add to this year's hundreds of spider pics. Have you gone to see what we've come up with yet? Here: Arachtober 2017.

Yesterday's and today's photos are of a spider that was driving me crazy, arranging himself on the wall in an inverted Y shape. Whenever I got close enough to focus on his eyes - always focus on the eyes, they say - he brought his knees up to protect himself. I'd go away, wait half an hour, and come back. He'd be making the Y again.

Hiding

Caught halfway

Finally!

Hangin' in there

Sometimes there's too much responsibility for one small struggler.

This little youngster is supporting a free-loading slipper snail, and a busy limpet, while he works his way to the high eelgrass feeding grounds. And his feet are slipping.

Break time. Holding on tight, resting. And then, forward! Never give up!

Tomorrow, I'll have the story of that intrepid ballooning infant snail.

Beavers never give up: Round Eight already

The war between Cougar Creek beavers and householders continues, with the beavers mounting a strong offensive again.

A quick history (links below): I think we first saw them in 2008; at least, those are my first photos of beaver-felled trees. At the time, they were colonizing the newly-landscaped lagoons in Cougar Creek park, and had dammed the outlet of the creek. The next year, they had dammed the inlet, as well, creating a small pool on the upper level.  The city has fenced and wired the trees, sometimes reinforcing them with wired-on chunks of wood. They've removed the dams, they've caught and killed a male, they've cleared trees off the banks, which just exposed the banks to erosion, but didn't deter the beavers.

By last November, the family had succeeded in damming the upper creek, filling in what had been a wasteland with a slow, muddy trickle down the centre. It made a pretty duck pond, striped with reflections from the alders around it, over patterns of green and gold animated by swimming, dabbling ducks.

Map of ponds last November. The newest addition is to the right of the blue area.

This January, the dams and the new pond were gone. We went back in March, and the three dams were back; the upper pond was filling again. Mallards, wigeons and mergansers were busy in the new feeding ground; as usual, a heron was hunting along the edges.

I took my grandson down to the park to show him the beaver dams in September. We were disappointed; not only had people removed all the dams, they had gone into the wasteland with machinery and scraped off all the vegetation, leaving no small wood for beavers to start up with again. (So much for the much-advertised "Releafing Project".) All that was left was bare, oozing mud. A lonely pair of ducks patrolled the lower lagoon; nothing else, not even the heron.

We went back yesterday. Now there are three good dams, and a lodge. The upper pond covers the machine scar nicely, and they've built another dam at the top, making a new, third pond. The ducks are back.

The upper pond, with the re-routed creek coming in at upper right.

Squiggly reflections

The upper lip of the second dam traps fallen leaves.

On the far side of the new duck pond, the latest dam raises the creek to a third level.

The latest tree felled. It has been stripped of small branches for food and construction materials. About a meter along the trunk, the beavers have cut half-way through, to make a sturdy support beam for one of their projects.

Mallards peacefully grooming in the middle pond.

Mallards and reflections.

Persistence pays; it's been a long, slow struggle, but the beavers are advancing. Two steps forward, it is, and one step back. But those steps forward add up.

I've blogged their ongoing story here: March, 2007; May, 2009; November 2011; January, 2012; March, 2012.