Medicine for my eyes

I've been peering at tinies, straining to see distant birds against the light, sorting photos of millimetre-long lichen squamules; now I need a long view, sea and sky and faraway mountain peaks, to rest my eyes.

View from the dike, Oyster Bay. Looking northeast towards the BC mainland.

From the shore beyond the dike. The snowy peaks are on the mainland, the nearest 100 km away. With one of those distant birds; a gull in the clouds.

I always pause to look at Mittlenatch Island in the centre of the strait. It stands alone, refusing to wear the coastal rainforest green.

Zooming 'way in. You can almost see the big California sea lions resting along the water line. They'll be there until mid-summer.

Mitlenatch Island (11 km. from my spot on the shore) lies in a rain shadow; rain falls here, and over on the islands behind it, but rarely on Mitlenatch. So it is mainly bare rock, with a top dressing of grasses. There are even flowering cacti!

Now, back to those lichens.

A Skywatch post.

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He estado examinando flores miniaturas, tratando de ver pájaros contra la luz en la distancia, revisando fotos de escamas de liquen midiendo uno o dos milímetros; ahora necesito refrescar los ojos con una vista amplia. Mar y cielo y nieve en las montañas lejanas; medicina para ojos cansados.

1. Vista desde el dike en Oyster Bay, mirando al noroeste, hacia el continente.
2. Vista ahora desde la playa. Las montañas nevadas están en el continente; la más cercana a unos 100 kilómetros de esta isla.
3. Siempre me detengo a mirar la isla Mittlenatch, situada en el centro del estrecho, a 11 km. desde esta playa. La isla se encuentra bajo una sombra de lluvia; recibe menos de la mitad de la cantidad de lluvia que cae aquí o en las islas del otro lado del estrecho, con el resultado de que la isla consiste principalmente de roca expuesta, con hierbas bajas adornando las grietas en la roca. ¡Hasta hay cactus que florecen cada verano!
4. Haciendo zoom. Casi se pueden ver los leones marinos de California que duermen en las rocas a la orilla; permanecerán en estas rocas hasta mediados del verano.

Y ahora, regreso a los líquenes.

Poor dry Mitlenatch!

The day before the storm ... Clear and sunny, with a hint of wind. I was looking across the water, watching distant birds, and noticed Mitlenatch Island gleaming in the sunlight.

The view from Shelter Point. Mitlenatch Island; behind that, the southern tip of Hernando Island, and then the mainland, 30 km. away.

Mitlenatch Island sits in the rain shadow of Vancouver Island, and gets less than half the rain we get over here, so close. Here, it's rainforest; there, it's semi-desert, with prickly pear cactus and all. So from here, it usually looks pale, with just a hint of green on top. But this Wednesday, the plants were a toasty brown.

Zooming in. Mostly rock.

Here in Campbell River, we get on an average about 200 cm. of rain every year, most of that in November and December. Mitlenatch gets less than 75. July is our driest month, with an average of about 8 cm. of rain. But this year, after a normal July, we got 3.3 cm of rain in August, and less than 7 in September. No wonder our trees turned brown! And poor Mitlenatch probably got nothing. The cactus was happy, I think.

I'm glad it's raining now, a regular BC soaker. And they say it will rain for a few more days, and then we might get snow by Thursday. Things are looking up.

Those distant birds? One came a bit closer.

Harlequin duck, a male in breeding plumage.

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El dia antes de la tempestad ... El cielo azul, con unas nubecitas, el mar asoleado, un poco de viento. Yo estaba en la playa, mirando aves en la distancia, cuando me llamó la atención la isla Mitlenatch, reluciente bajo el sol.

Foto: Vista desde mi playa; la isla Mitlenatch, el extremo al sur de la isla Hernando. y luego, a 30 km. de distancia, el continente.

La isla Mitlenatch se sitúa en la sombra pluviométrica de nuestra isla de Vancouver y recibe menos de la mitad de lluvia que recibimos nosotros, tan cerca. Aquí, bosque pluvial, allí, desierto, con todo y nopales. Desde aquí casi siempre se ve pálida, pero con un poco de verde en lo alto de las rocas. Pero anteayer, las plantas todas estaban tostadas y sin verde que se pudiera ver.

Foto: Haciendo zoom, para ver la isla mejor. Casi pura roca.

Aquí en Campbell River, recibimos un promedio de 200 cm. de lluvia cada año, con la mayor cantidad cayendo en noviembre y diciembre. En Mitlenatch, solo alcanza a 75 cm, o menos de lluvia cada año. Y el mes de julio es el de la sequía para nosotros; nos llega apenas 8 cm. de lluvia en ese mes por regla general. Pero este año, después de un julio normal, recibimos 3,3 cm. de lluvia en agosto, solo 7 en septiembre. ¡Con razón se nos volvieron cafés los árboles! Y la pobre de Mitlenatch probablemente no vió ni una gota de agua. Los nopales estarían contentos, por lo menos.

Y ahora llueve. Una lluvia normal, mucha agua, todo el dia, toda la noche, empapándolo todo. ¡Qué alivio! Y nos prometen más lluvia, y luego, para el jueves próximo, nieve. ¡Formidable!

¿Y esos pájaros en la distancia? Uno se me acercó.

Foto: Un pato arlequín, en plumaje nupcial.

Rock garden

In the late 1800s, a local sheep herder rowed his stock over to Mitlenatch Island every spring. The island is small, with an area of 35 hectares (one third of a square kilometre), mostly bare rock, reached only by water. It's 13 kilometres from Manson's Landing on Cortes Island; imagine ferrying a herd of sheep and a few calves over this stretch in a rowboat!

In the fall, the sheep, now fatter, were rowed back to Cortes, or over to Comox (30 km) to be sold. The cows, too large for the rowboats now, had to be butchered on the island.

The effort was worth it; back on Cortes, wolves had decimated Mike Manson's herd. There are no wolves on Mitlenatch, no cougars, no coyotes. The herds thrived.

Mitlenatch Island. Google map with colour enhanced and background replaced for visibility.

The sheep and cattle are long gone, but the grasses they browsed on remain. A few trees have recently taken root, and Saskatoon berry bushes and wild roses grow in crevices, but the rest of the vegetation is low and small, suited to thin soil and dry weather.

View over Camp Bay, on the Northeast end of the island.

The park receives less than 75 cm (30 inches) of rain each year – about half the Campbell River average. Rain-bearing clouds pass eastward from the Pacific Ocean and drop much of their moisture on Vancouver Island. As they descend across the Strait of Georgia, they warm and pick up new moisture, which will be dropped on the Coast Mountains of mainland British Columbia. (BC Gov. brochure)

An information kiosk above Northwest Bay shows some of the plants we could expect to find here.

Of these, I saw only the blue camas. Someone else saw the tiger lily, but I missed it.

I saw all of these, except the harebells and the brodiaea.

Blue camas chocolate lily, gone to seed.

Death camas.

The blue camas is edible, and was an important food crop for BC's native peoples. The death camas is extremely poisonous. In the spring, while they are flowering, they are easily distinguished; once they've gone to seed, they're almost identical.

Though the bulbs were traditionally gathered after the flowers had withered, weeding was done during flowering. The primary objective was to remove death camas (Zygadenus venenosus), which often grows mixed with blue camas. (North American Native Plant Society)

Most of the blues were already forming seeds last week on Mitlenatch; the whites, or death camas, were still flowering.

Above our heads (we had to stay on the trail) clumps of prickly pear cling to the rocks. The pimples on the rock are lichens.

Stonecrop, Sedum acre

Fence detail, with stonecrop

Typical mix; stonecrop, Hooker's onion, grass, lichen, gumweed (not flowering yet), and the woolly sunflower. Plants that grow both here and in Campbell River, like the gumweed, are generally smaller here.

Salal flowers. These generally like a wetter climate, but this one was growing in a deep crack between the rocks.

More plants tomorrow.

(4th in a series of 9 Mitlenatch Island posts. #1, #2, #3, #4. #5. #6, #7, #8)