End of the trail

Two more photos from the Hoomak Lake trail:

Tree remains in the lake. With lichen.

And this:

Why, people? Just why?

A mere hundred or so steps from the end of the trail and a trash bin, someone tossed this bottle as far into the forest as they could. I had to stumble and crawl over logs and moss to retrieve it and take it to the bins.

Why? It wasn't carelessness; that was a purposeful toss. At least it wasn't plastic, but still ...

Chia recycles

A year ago, my daughter sent me a basket full of Christmas goodies. I'd barely taken the last item out when Chia the cat claimed the basket for a bed. A good idea; she'd been using the basket she used to fit in when she was a kitten, and she overhung the sides all around.

I fitted the basket out for her with the remains of a cushion my grandma (b. 1888) had made. It had been covered in burgundy velvet, which had by now disintegrated, but the inner portion was intact.

It was covered in the leftovers of an old grey wool Hudson's Bay blanket. I opened it up to wash it and found that the stuffing is made from the sweepings off her sewing room floor: shreds of fabric, bits of wool, and threads. Tiny ends of threads, the ones you cut off when you've finished sewing a seam, the last bit left in the eye of the needle. Altogether, it makes a soft, puffy filling. I closed up the cushion again and contented myself with vacuuming it thoroughly.

Chia loves it.

A perfect fit.

Half awake, because of the flash. Then turned herself around and went back to sleep.

I recycle everything carefully, separating and cleaning plastics, glass, cans, paper, dropping off styrofoam (mostly picked up on the beach) and batteries at the appropriate sites, sorting plastic bags, the ones that I can't substitute with my battered cloth shopping bags, or the ones that I find on the shore, into piles for the recyclers, piles to be donated to thrift shops, piles I can re-use.

But my grandmother, and the women of her generation, put me to shame. Nothing was wasted, nothing left to float off to sea or to clog up the wetlands. We should have kept it up. Life would be better, safer for all of us now, if we had.

(The blanket the basket rests on is a vintage Mexican men's wool serape, made in two sections on a waist loom.)

DIY small bird feeder instructions

I promised to post the instructions for making the spinning chickadee feeders. And after I checked out prices of commercial feeders, (15 bucks and up for the basic versions, squirrel-proof ones almost $100!) I realized that this little feeder is even better than I thought. Fun to watch, squirrel-proof, easy to maintain, easy to make, and free, to boot!

A very old photo, from when I had one hanging right by my window. 2008

You will need:

• One empty plastic pop bottle with screw-top lid.
• A clean twig about 8 inches long, slightly thinner than a pencil.
• Sturdy twine, about 4 feet.
• A washer or nut or small button.
• Twine for hanging from your tree or post. A plastic twine that won't rot in the weather is good. Fishing line is ideal, but I've used ordinary household string for years with no problem.

Tools:

• Sharp knife
• One large nail
• Pliers
• Source of heat; stove burner, lighter, or even a candle

Procedure:

• Choose a clean, unscratched plastic pop bottle. I used the medium size. The large 2 litre bottle would need filling less often, but would be too heavy to spin as the birds landed, thereby losing some of its entertainment value. (The chickadees seem to have as much fun at it as we do!)
• Remove any paper or plastic label.
• With a sharp knife, cut a slit about 2 inches up from the base of the bottle, and about 1/4 of the way around. Repeat, making a matching slit on the opposite side of the bottle.
• With your thumbs, squeeze gently just above the slits, to bend a U-shaped section inward. This makes a kind of "mouth" where the birds can reach the seeds.
• Thread a length of twine through the slits, in one side and out the other. Tie one end firmly around the top of the bottle, just below the lid. Pull on the other end until the twine holds the two U-shaped sections in place, with the two "mouths" open. Tie firmly around the neck of the bottle. Trim off any excess.
• Heat the nail on the stove. With the pliers, grasp it firmly and make two holes in the bottle, about 1/2 inch under the center of each "mouth". Make a third hole in the center of the screw-top lid.
• Force the twig through the bottle, in one hole and out the other. It should fit snugly. You may need to enlarge the holes to fit. This will make perches, one at each mouth.
• Thread another length of twine, about 3 feet long, through the lid. Tie the inside end around the washer or nut. Pull the washer tight inside the lid, and tie a knot on the outside, close to the lid.
• Fill your bottle with black oil sunflower seeds. 
• Screw on the cap.
• Hang from a tree or hanging post. To keep squirrels off, hang it at least a foot away from any branch they can stand on. They can't manage the twine or fishing line without solid footing.

Every time a bird lands or takes off, he gives a push to the perches, setting the feeder spinning like a merry-go-round.

I make a second bottle to match the first, but without the lid. When a bottle is empty, I fill the second one and exchange it with the empty, screwing it into the lid, which stays attached to the tree. This allows me to wash the bottle as necessary, and to dry it completely before filling it again.

A pair of house finches, 2009.

Today, as well as the chickadees and sparrows, I had a pine siskin at the feeder. It's several years since I've seen one.

A bagful of bugs

Over the winter, I wrap a few of my more sensitive potted plants in several layers of recycled brown paper bags. In the spring yard cleanup, the bags get their second (or third) recycling, this time shredded into the compost. After I remove the critters that have used it for their winter quarters, of course.

In the bags around my sausage vine, besides a humongous slug, I found a nice assortment of tiny creepy-crawlies.

A striped springtail, Orchesella cincta. Most of these were impossible to catch, and went into the compost with the bag. This guy was lucky.

A quick red mite.

There were quite a few of these long snails, about the size of a short grain of rice. (Update: Columella edentula)

Spiderling with a yellow belly.

As I demolished the bags, I brushed off all the little ones I could into a pill bottle. Before I took them outside and set them free, on a whim, I pointed the camera straight down into the bottle. I liked the result:

8 or 9 snails, several different springtails, a couple of spiders, and a handful of sowbugs. The mite is in there somewhere, too.

And then they all went out into the warm spring night to find a new home.

Shelter from the storms

Found at the back of the vacant lot/new forest:

"Somebody loved me."

The Watershed recycles

In a healthy forest, nothing stays the same; everything is in a state of flux. Sure, a tree may live for 60, 100, 500, even 1000 years, but it is never static. A tree is a community; a forest is a complete world of sprouting, hatching, growing, dying, and birthing living creatures. Everything is reused, reshaped, repurposed.

Take the Watershed Park:

Cedar grove, surrounded by fast-growing red alder, paper birch, and salmonberries.

These are third- and fourth-growth trees, youngsters, as trees go. Their ancestors are now the rotting remains of enormous stumps. And they are already self-selecting, the stronger, taller trees hogging the sunlight, crowding out the smaller ones. In this photo, there are skinny logs on the ground; birches and alders mainly. One dead tree still stands, leafless; three or four more are in the process of falling, tipped over but still alive.

Even the dead trees are alive.

Herb Robert sprouting in a compost of dead leaves and twigs, on a Big-leaf maple.

Canker or rot on an old birch, on its way down.

Split and hollowed maple, growing moss.

Heart rot, caused by various fungi, weakens the tree without necessarily killing it. Insects move in, looking for shelter or food; woodpeckers bore holes to feed on the bugs. Sometimes the tree splits, but sometimes it looks solid from the outside, but is completely hollow inside. Red cedar is good at this, and many small animals nest inside, dry and hidden from predators. The list of possible residents is long: squirrels and chipmunks, chickadees, nuthaches, owls and flickers, wood ducks (near water), mice and bats - many bats - and woodrats, woodpeckers of all sorts, and on and on. Even bears; a female bear likes to den high up in a big hollow cedar.

Insects. One word to cover thousands of critters to be found in any forest. In this visit, on a dry day, most were in hiding, but the traces of beetles and wood borers were evident on every tree and log. Broken pieces of bark, pulled away from a trunk, revealed a fine, brown dust, leftovers from many buggy meals. And of course, there were spiders. I found one I do not recognize, and will send my poor photo to the good people at BugGuide.

Black and gold spider, under bark.

I found a centipede, many ants, several millipedes (scooting out of sight in an instant), and eleventy-three woodbugs.

Under the bark of a fallen tree, something has eaten paths in the cambium. An insect larva, maybe? A slug?

Laurie says this is a bitter cherry log.

I noticed several of these logs. The old bark holds on, shredding but still keeping its shape while the wood inside crumbles to dust. Several of the logs were mostly a hollow bark tube.

BC natives used this bark for binding the joints of tools and the hafts of bows, because it is so tough and long-lasting. It is still used as a decorative accent on basket work.

In a well-rotted log, something blue, some sort of fungus infestation.

Insect larva tunnels in the heartwood of an old fallen tree.

In a small semi-clearing, we stood amazed. What is that?

Is that a man in the tree? Or a mermaid?

Zooming in. I think it's a blonde mermaid.

And the tree is a cedar. It looks like it broke off, many years ago, perhaps in a windstorm, and then sprouted side branches curving upwards to become four new trunks. Cedar branches droop down before they turn upwards again; these bare branches show the pattern well.

What a wealth of critters that tree must house!

Something green to rest our eyes. Moss on a rotten stump.

I wish it were all about coconuts.

I promised you coconuts. And I'll deliver. But first ...

Shorelines reflect the dynamics of water currents and the characteristics of the adjoining land. Sandy, like Centennial Beach, protected from "outside" waves, just upstream of tall sandstone cliffs, and always gently watered by small creeks and slow tidal waters. Rocky, like Kwomais Point, sticking out into a less-protected strait, washed by strong currents from two sides. Or deeply muddy, like the inside of Boundary Bay, especially Mud Bay. Two rivers bring silt from the Delta; the outflow joins with the retreating tides, curving southward, hurrying to sea; the waters dredge a deep canal, but leave the inner end in a backwater.

On this shore, high tides and the occasional storm toss up great masses of debris. It stays there, and rots into the mud; a strange variety of objects and materials, stranded among the weeds. This is not what people leave behind. This shore does not attract beach-goers. What shows up here either grew here, or was brought by sea.

We have found the most unexpected items here. A few round stones, foamy like lava, the size and shape of marbles; they float. I don't know where they came from. Rabbit pellets, coconuts, balls and boat floats. For a couple of years, a fiberglass skiff, barnacled and badly in need of paint, but still watertight, lay wedged among logs. It's gone now, maybe crumpled and buried under the last season's logs.

Two-seater, with outboard shelf.

This Wednesday, I took photos of items I found for about a dozen feet along my path, just a few steps above the mud. Here's a sampler:

These - except for the lumber and rocks - grew here. And notice the new growth coming up. Tansy, I think.

A chunk of styrofoam packing material. It's been shedding pellets for a long time.

Styrofoam, from marine uses, protective packaging for our electronics, cheap ice chests, disposable dishes, "peanuts", and so on, turns up too frequently on our shores, especially this one. It is highly dangerous to marine life, birds and critters alike, and won't disappear for centuries.  One of the problems with it is that it disintegrates into bite-size pieces, even for the smallest animals. And once it has crumbled even more, to microscopic dots, it still retains its dangerous properties.

What is clear, however, is that polystyrene is a widespread contaminant in the world's oceans. Samples taken off the coast of Malaysia and in the northern Pacific all contained styrene monomers and other products of styrofoam breakdown, according to Katsuhiko Saido of Nihon University in Chiba, Japan.

Until recently, research into the harmful effects of styrofoam and other plastics in seawater have mainly focused on damage to marine life from ingesting visible chunks or from getting caught in plastic nets. The new research adds to fears that this line of research may be missing significant amounts of plastic that are in particles too small to see. (From Yahoo, via Gary Partain.

Look closely at these next photos. Can you find the styrofoam pellets in them? (They're in all but the last two.)

One sandal. With styrofoam pellets.

Polyethelene wrap, and plastic food bag. And styrofoam pellets.

Shampoo bottle. This has been exposed for a long time.

And here are the coconuts:

Coconut, from some far-away shore. And styrofoam, of course. At least the coconut is edible.

Another coconut, with styrofoam pellets. This is the first one I've found that was cracked open.  Something has eaten most of the innards, recently. (There was no mud inside.)

And a third coconut. No styrofoam, visible, at least. Whatever ate the meat, also nibbled on the inner skin.

A fourth coconut, half eaten. And I think the white specks are coconut meat.

And no, I didn't collect all the plastic. It was just too discouraging; I would have needed a team and a truck to make a dent in it.

In the storeroom at home, I have the cartons that things come in, held while the warranties are still in effect. They're full of styrofoam.  Now I'm wondering; how can I get rid of them, when the time comes?