Gardener's companions

While I'm waiting for it to stop raining long enough to transplant seedlings, a tray of alyssum sits on my kitchen windowsill. I keep it well watered, and the word has gone out: there's a constant stream of sowbugs coming and going, loving the moisture.

There's also a bowl of lichen that gets sprayed twice daily. The sow bugs like that, too.

Sow bug on one of those bamboo "paper towels".

You can tell he's a sow bug by the two tails. Pill bugs don't have the tails, and roll into a ball when they're disturbed. Sow bugs can't do that; they just run and run.

Both pill bugs and sow bugs have seven pairs of legs, like their cousins, the amphipods in my tank. In this bottom photo, the seventh pair is partly hidden by a bit of trash. Usually, if the legs are visible, the beastie is running too fast to count them, but here, he'd paused to rest after I chased him all over the counter with the camera. 60 photos; two turned out.

Sowbugs and pillbugs live in moist environments outdoors but occasionally end up in buildings. Although they sometimes enter in large numbers, they do not bite, sting, or transmit diseases, nor do they infest food, clothing or wood. (Entomology, U of K.)

But they do get lost and end up in my kitchen sink. I catch them and replace them in a damp flowerpot. When the weather warms up, I'll be tossing them out the window into the flower bed.

Of two-tailed bugs, absent salamanders, and flipped rocks

Well, we've gone out and flipped our rocks (or not - one of us cheated took an alternate approach.)

It has been a quiet year, probably because I forgot last year, and we lost momentum. In spite of that, we made some interesting finds.

VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE: I just checked Twitter; there are a bunch more Rock Flippers over there. I'll add them to the list in a new post.

Here is the lineup, as it is now, copied from Heather's blog, At the Edge of the Ordinary:

• From Pennsylvania, Kate of Outside My Window participates in IRFD… without flipping a rock! I guess we’ll allow that, especially since she found some nifty spider webs and a small mammal.
•  Here in British Columbia, I (that's Heather - ed.) did flip rocks, and after many tries turned up a couple of worms and a pill-bug (or something like one, anyway).
• Elsewhere in the province, (I, Susannah) face similar challenges with dry rocks, but still manage to find a few things, including (unfortunately) some non-organic debris.
• And to the south in Washington state, Dave Wenning of Wild Fidalgo flips rocks on the beach (and in his garden) and finds several Purple Shore Crabs. And a few other things. Even if he didn’t look very dignified doing it.
• Bill finds several critters under his rocks, including a beautiful millipede. (A beautiful millipede? Well, I think it is.)
• The WNY meet-up page includes a number of rock flipping discoveries, such as a lovely speckled salamander and a pair of slugs from Barbara Newman H., and a pretty black beetle and another salamander from Mark. I’m jealous – I wish I could have found a salamander!

Over in the International Rock Flipping Day Flickr group, many more interesting things have been discovered:

• Sara Rall flipped paving stones and came up with a good variety of small critters, including a rove beetle and a ground cricket. 
• Rob Cruikshank found ants and pupas, and a cute white springtail.
• Paul Fehringer, of Wild Spirit Education, found a red-legged beetle, and a strange (to me) centipede.
• And John Beetham found a spider with the intriguing name of Amaurobius ferox. Among other beasties.

And this was a handy tip: Heather had found a pillbug under one of her rocks. "Or maybe a sowbug," she said; she finds them confusing. So do I, unless I pick them up; pillbugs roll themselves into a ball; sowbugs don't. (Here's a sample pillbug.)

But Sara Rall, in the comments on Heather's post, gave us a quick way to tell the difference, even from a photo.

To tell a pill bug (which can roll up) from a sowbug (which can’t), look at the back end. If it has two “tails” that stick out you have a sowbug (which would be my guess in the photo, but I can’t really see well enough to be certain).

Here's a family of sowbugs I found under a paving stone next door:

"Two-tailed" woodlice, aka sowbugs.

Zooming in. See the tails?

BugGuide has a photo of pillbugs side-by-side with a sowbug for comparison.

Thanks, Sara!

As usual, there were a couple or more Rock Flippers who did the "work" but didn't pass on their findings. If you're one of them, either Heather or I would be happy to add your name to the list; just give us a shout.

And many thanks to Heather for hosting this year. And I hope it rains soon and she finds a salamander; she well deserves it!

Speedy woodlouse

A patch of yellow dead nettle is blooming next door, and my neighbour has moved out, so I picked all the flowers to prevent them from going to seed and invading the world. Or at least, my part of the world.

Hidden beneath a flower head, I discovered a sowbug.

Philoscia muscorum, the  Fast woodlouse. Well named.

Moving the stem around to get a better view of him, I knocked him out onto the table, and he took off running, much faster than any sowbug I've seen before. I chased him down, trapped him, and took a batch of photos, then searched BugGuide. He's a European import, and, while he's built like the sowbugs I see every day (aka woodbugs, pill bugs, roly-polies, etc.), he doesn't act at all like one.

First, he runs. Fast. "Our" woodbugs trundle along slowly enough for me to go for a pill bottle and come back, and still find them on their way to shelter.

Second, he "hides" in the first available shadow he finds. He freezes there, and takes quite a bit of nudging before he realizes he can really still be seen. The usual woodbugs here keep on going until they're invisible.

Fast woodlouse "hiding".

Next, if you flip him on his back, he lies there, playing dead. The other woodbugs either roll into a ball (pillbugs, Armadillidium vulgare), or wave their 14 legs frantically in the air until they manage to right themselves again.

Not so fast, any more. Playing dead.

And last, he and his family live in plants, rather than under some shelter at ground level. This one was on yellow dead nettle; one on BugGuide was found in a rosebush.

In one way, he acts like the others; once he's found a safe spot, he tends to stay put. This critter is still in the dying dead nettle flower that I found him in. As soon as I post this, I'll take him out to the nettle patch and set him free.

UPDATE: I've been asked, on Facebook, how I know he's male. I don't. When I don't know, I randomly pick a sex, because I don't like calling critters with a mind of their own (no matter how feeble) an "it".

A female sowbug may have brood sacs at the base of some of her legs, seen when she's belly-up. I don't think I see any in the photo above.

And the first two pleopods of the five on the pleon (that triangular covering at the tail) of a male are elongated. In the photo, only the last three are visible.

Consumer testing London Pride glue sticks

I've been working on the London Pride question; each step opens up more alleys to get lost in. And more questions. Story tomorrow. I'm too tired to type, let alone make sense, tonight.

For now, here's one of my experimental subjects in a plastic cup:

Pill bug sharing space with London Pride

And now, goodnight!

Fourteen leggers, all

The Christmas season seems to have started. Laurie's making Christmas cards; I'm making lists.  Food, gifts to make, buy and/or wrap, seating and eating arrangements, cleaning to do, guests ... my family will be here Christmas Eve, some 25 or more of them. We probably won't be getting out much for the next two weeks.

I'll be getting my critter fix from my files; good thing there are so many!

These sea slaters were on the rocks at Oyster Bay, on Vancouver Island this summer.

The antennae look like old lead pipes.

Ligia pallasi

These isopods live just above the high tide line, hiding in the cracks of the rocks in the daytime, coming out at night to scavenge for dead plants and animals or growing algae. They can be quite large, up to about 1 1/2 inches long. Most are uniformly grey; the ones we saw at Oyster Bay had a cream-coloured dotted line down the center of the armored plates.

They are in the same sub-order as our common woodbugs or pillbugs, and look very much like one, only larger and faster-moving.

Compare:

Armadillidium vulgare, our common pillbug

And here are some intertidal isopods, also for comparison:

Intertidal isopods, next beach up. About 1/3 the size of the sea slaters.

Local eelgrass isopod. About 1/2 inch long.

Armadillidiidae. Pill bugs, for short

I like that word, Armadillidiidae. Step back and take a look at it. It kind of looks like a pillbug, on its back, with the legs waving in the air.

Digging through the mulch, checking to see if my perennials are starting up, I came across three shiny black balls. I collected them and brought them inside. On my desk, they immediately unrolled themselves and started running. Pillbugs.

Armadillidium vulgare

I have at least two different species of their relatives, the sow bugs or woodlice, in my garden, but I hadn't seen these here before. Nor had I seen any, anywhere, so big. The largest of the three was well over 1/2 an inch long. The woodlice that I collect for my spider are half that, at most.

Woodlice (Oniscidea sp.) and pill bugs (Armadillidiidae sp.) are isopods (meaning same or equal feet), and look almost alike, but only the Armadillidiidae roll up into a ball. And the A. vulgare makes a nice, tight, perfectly spherical ball; not all Armadillididae do. (Sorry. I just like that word.)

Unrolling.

These guys ran fast, and pushed aside even plastic lids meant to contain them. They're like little tanks. I photographed this one inside a jewelry tin that I have fixed up with a non-slip bottom.

Trying to escape.

It has two long antennae, and two short, stubby ones that you can see in this photo. The eyes are behind these and to the sides.


Seven thoracic segments, head and abdomen (the tail end). Seven pairs of legs. Nicely sculpted armor-plating.

On its back, legs waving.

I finally put them into the spider's bottle. She tried to tie them up, but they kept breaking her web; too sturdy, too well protected. Eventually, they died, probably because it's too dry in there. They need moisture to be able to breathe.

The next ones I find go back to the garden after a brief, damp photo session.

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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".
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Scrape, scrape, yum, yum!

Slug:

About an inch long. On a broken flowerpot.

Slug food*:

The winter's crop of algae. And a brown springtail.

My early perennials are sprouting. I was examining them when I noticed this pattern on a broken flowerpot, kept over the winter for drainage material at the spring planting.


I brought the pot inside and inspected it. It harboured a pack of brown springtails, a few mini-millipedes, a couple of pillbugs, and this slug.


See the path of scrapings below it? The slug travels over the surface of the pot, scraping at the algae growing there, leaving cleaned marks where its mouth reached. Here, it's made a meandering path, swinging back and forth. In other spots, it nibbled here and there, making a spottier pattern.

It's a pity it will soon abandon the algae and go for my hostas, bringing all its relatives. But I'll be there first, with a ring of crumbled eggshells to scratch their bellies and discourage them. There is plenty of good food on the lawn; they are welcome to it.

One of the two pillbugs panicked at my flash; he ran hither and thither, tripping over his own feet as often as not. He spent a good part of the time upside down, legs flailing wildly in his effort to flip back upright. Very entertaining, for me, at least.

Calm down little one; I won't hurt you.

*On Snail's Tales, Aydin investigated the contents of an algae-eating slug's stomach. And without hurting the slug. And nor did I; I put the pot back outside in the rain, critters and all.

Notes along the way: Bioblitz homework

Later tonight, animalia from my lawn.

But for now, bits and pieces picked up as I organize and fill out my notes:

• Centipedes have one pair of legs per segment. Millipedes have two (mostly). They move them in sequence, so it looks like a wave moving down the body. So the one I found in the vacant lot was a centipede. One closer to home (and smaller) was a millipede.
• Sow bugs and pill bugs are not the same. Pill bugs form a ball when disturbed; sow bugs do not. (And I always called them all wood bugs, rolled up or not.)
• Google images works, unless you don't know what you're looking for. It helps to have at least a genus name.
• It was Montia exigua. Was. Now it's Claytonia exigua. At least I found it.
• Carex macrocephala is red-listed.
• Something weird: I am not in the least squeamish about assorted bugs and beasties, but whenever I see a photo of a millipede on someone's finger, I shudder involuntarily.
• Bug Guide is a great source. Of bug id, naturally.
• "Although they look white to the human eye, many springtails are beautifully colored. Since they are so small, people can't see the colors without a microscope." From The Field Museum.