A couple of hunters.

Crows are scavengers, eating almost anything they find, usually anything left out in the open, easy pickings. On the shore, that may be anything from a hermit crab too slow to get undercover at low tide, to taco chips left by human beachgoers. This was the first time I've seen one actually work for his supper.

Here he is, looking over a snail. But no, he had other ideas.

It's in this clump of rockweed.

He dug at this rockweed for a while, ripping out plants and tossing them aside. The one in the photo is the third I saw him tear out. He dug out an oyster shell and threw that away, too. His target was hiding deep underneath; a rockweed isopod, a 3 cm. long, squirmy, leggy morsel. 

Got it!

Rockweed isopod. They hide at low tide, and cling tightly to the seaweed; it's not easy to pull them off.

Herons are always hard workers, intense stalkers. The little fish found in tidepools are elusive; as I walk towards a pool, I see movement; a ripple and no more. The fish have seen my shadow and are now hiding. And though I stand perfectly still, they don't show themselves again until I've lost patience and moved on. The herons are more patient than I. And faster than the fishes. This one caught two fish while I watched.

Standing perfectly still, pretending to be another rock.

Mouthful

A heron eats about 1/2 kilo of fish every day, twice that in breeding season. That's a lot of little fishies!

And I came too close. On to the next pool!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Los cuervos son carroñeros; comen casi cualquier cosa que descubren, generalmente alguna cosa  abandonada; hallazgos fáciles. En la playa, recogen desde un cangrejo ermitaño que no se escondió a tiempo hasta tostadas dejadas por humanos haciendo picnic. Esta fue la primera vez que he visto que un cuervo haga algún trabajo para ganarse la cena.

1. Aquí está, mirando un caracolito. Pero no, no se le antojaba.
2. Lo que quería estaba escondido bajo este grupo de fuco, algas marinas pardas. Se ocupó por un tiempo arrancando plantas y tirándolas a un lado. La que tiene en la foto es la tercera que vi. Luego encontró un ostión; eso también sacó y desechó. Por fin capturó lo que buscaba; un isópodo de alga parda, un bocado patudo de unos 3 cm. de largo.
3. Aquí lo tiene.
4. Isópodo de Wosnesenski. Se esconden bajo las algas y se agarran fuertemente; es difícil arrancarlos.
5. Las garzas, en cambio, son trabajadores muy dedicados. Los pescaditos que se encuentran durante la marea baja son tímidos; caminando hacia una poza intermareal, veo algo que se mueve; una ondulación repentina, y nada más. Los pescados vieron mi sombra, y ahora están escondidos. Y aunque me detengo largo rato sin moverme, no vuelven a salir hasta que me haya ido, habiendo perdido la paciencia. La garza es mucho más paciente. Y ataca rapidamente; es más veloz que los pescaditos.  Capturó dos en unos minutos mientras yo observaba.
6. Un bocadito. Las garzas comen medio kilo de pescados a diario; ¡un buen número de pescaditos!
7. Y me acerqué demasiado.

Stones and shells and hiding hermits

That low-tide beach at Little Bear Bay is stony, for the most part; with a grand mix of stones of varied colours and textures. And the more stones there are in any spot, the more beasties it harbours. And the harder it is to find them, except for the spunky little crabs, who are only too happy to challenge intruders to a battle.

The common Green Shore crab. And, if you look closely, there are at least 4 hermit crabs and a half-dozen limpets in the photo. Probably more.

Hermit crabs in periwinkle shells.

I looked at hundreds of these hermits, all in the tiny periwinkle shells, almost all of them tightly rolled up, sleeping while the tide was out. And they were almost all in dark shades of grey, even black, so that they blended in with the shells they're using. I think they're just a dark colour variant of the Hairy hermits, maybe more suited to this beach with so little seaweed cover.

 

This one woke up and scrambled off the rock.

Yes, it's a Hairy hermit; white tips to the olive-green chelipeds, blue knees.

Rockweed isopod, Idotea wosnesenski, with a gaggle of hermits.

Another, with hermits and barnacles on the large rocks at the top of the beach. The red colouring is an alga.

A tiny red crab daring me to come closer. The long snail is a Dire whelk, Lirabuccinum dirum.

Where the sand is clean individual clumps of rockweed lie attached to stones.

Sandscape, mostly because I liked that green  and black stone. Hermits and another Dire whelk.

Red algae, and a white crab, a juvenile Green Shore crab.

~~~~~~~~~~~

La playa en la bahía Little Bear con la marea baja, está casi toda cubierta de piedras, con una mezcla bastante variada de colores y texturas. Y entre más piedras haya en un lugar, más animalitos se encuentran allí. Y más difícil es descubrirlos, aparte de los cangrejitos tan valientes, que siempre están listos para ofrecer batalla a cualquier invasor.

1. Un cangrejo costero verde, Hemigrapsus oregonensis. Y, si buscas entre las piedras, por lo menos unos 4 ermitaños y media docena de lapas.
2. Ermitaños en conchas de bígaros (Littorina sitkana).  Examiné cientos de estos ermitañitos, todos llevando las conchas de bígaros, casi todos bien enrollados, durmiendo mientras la marea los había dejado expuestos al aire. Y casi todos venían en colores oscuros, gris o hasta negro, de manera que se desaparecían entre las conchas que usaban. Creo que son un variante oscuro del ermitaño Pagurus hirsutiusculus,  tal vez mejor adaptados a la vida en esta playa que tiene muy pocas algas marinas.
3. Uno que se despertó y se echó a correr.
4. Tiene el color pardo y el extremo blanco de los quelípodos y las "rodillas" azules característicos de P. hirsutiusculus.
5. El isópodo Idotea wosnesenski, con un grupo de ermitaños.
6. Otro, este en las rocas grandes en la zona superior intermareal. Con bálanos y ermitaños.
7. Un cangrejito rojo, retándome a acercarme. El caracol es un Lirabuccinum dirum.
8. Donde la arena está limpia y casi sin piedras, allí las algas pardas, Fucus sp., crecen fijadas en piedras individuales.
9. Varias cosas, piedras, ermitaños, otra bocina.
10. Algas rojas y un cangrejito blanco.

Hitchikers and their kin.

My little home aquarium is a self-sustaining habitat. (Well, with a lot of work on my part, but that's just maintenance, making up for the lack of the tides which keep their home clean on the shore.) It's always full of life. Because over the years critters keep appearing, sometimes coming in on seaweed brought in, groceries for the current residents, sometimes sandwiched between barnacles I bring home to keep the snails happy. And sometimes they just sort of appear, whether brought in as eggs or floating in the clean water I collected at the shore. I'm cleaning the tank, scraping off brown algae, getting rid of leftover crumbs, and I see a tiny shape, sometimes just a hint of movement, a crab-like walk, or a waving tentacle. Something new living in the tank.

And I have to keep up the maintenance because I can't abandon my tiny friends, not without carrying every single one down to the proper level of the intertidal zone and releasing it safely. 

Green isopods arrive clinging so tightly to rockweed that I don't see them, even while I'm rinsing it off before I anchor it in the tank.

Rockweed isopod, Idotea wosnesenskii. Showing up on a piece of red alga. About 4 cm. long.

A fourteen-legger. Notice the hooks at the tip of each leg. They cling tightly to the algae, so that even with strong wave action (or me harvesting it) they are not dislodged.

And growing up in the tank is a large community of tiny isopods.

Isopods on an oyster shell. The largest are about 5 mm long. 

A large one, captured on its own.

Whenever I take a shell out of the tank, I find it covered in these critters, all running about, always in a hurry. I don't know what species they are.

A mussel shell, holding two isopods, and a couple of amphipods (the curly ones). The isopods always lay flat.

And this: I first noticed it a month or so ago. It was stuck to the glass below the sand level, only the size of one of the isopods, and looked like a baby limpet from that point of view. But the shape was wrong; it looked oval, not circular. Even with a lens, that was all I could see, but I thought it might be a chiton.

Two weeks ago, it turned up, now recognizable, on an oyster shell. And today it was on a small rock, which I took out, still keeping it underwater, to get a photo.

Woody chiton, Mopalia lignosa. With two orange-striped green anemones.

As far as I can tell, he's a woody chiton. If so, he will grow up to 8 cm. long. Today, he 1.7 cm.

He was not pleased with the trip. As soon as I replaced him in the tank, he hurried back to the oyster shell. These are shy beasties, hiding on the underside of rocks and shells. There, he barely moves from one day to the next, just peacefully eating algae and diatoms; he especially likes green sea lettuce, Ulva spp.. Tomorrow is a low-tide day; if the weather holds, I'll go find a handful of the lettuce for "Woody". And some eel-grass for the hermits, kelp for the crabs, barnacles for the carnivore snails, and ...

And no telling what else will hitchhike in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mi acuario casero es un habitat que se sostiene vivo solo. (Bueno, aparte de mucho trabajo de mi parte, pero eso es mantenimiento solamente, debido a la falta de la marea, que en el mar les mantiene su casa limpia.)  Siempre sigue llena de vida. Porque año tras año siguen apareciendo criaturas nuevas. A veces llegan escondidos entre las algas que traigo a casa para la comida de los residentes ya presentes; a veces se cuelan entre los bálanos que mantienen felices a los caracoles marinos. Y muchas veces aparecen como por magia, tal vez habiendo llegado como huevos o como el plancton que flota en el agua que traje desde el muelle.Estoy limpiando el tanque, raspando algas invasivas, aspirando restos de comida, y veo algo que se mueve, apenas el movimiento ya que el animal es tan pequeño; el movimiento lateral típico de un cangrejo, o el ondeo de un tentáculo miniaturo. Algo nuevo que ahora vive en el acuario.

Y tengo que seguir con el mantenimiento, pues no puedo abandonar a mis amiguitos, no sin llevarlos uno por uno al sitio adecuado de su zona intramareal.

Isópodos verdes llegan cogidos tan fuertemente al alga parda, Fucus spp., tan apegados que no los veo, ni cuando estoy enjuagando las algas antes de instalarlas en el tanque.

Foto: # 1, 2: Isópodo de Fucus, Idotea wosnesenskii. Visible sobre un alga roja. Nótense los ganchitos en cada una de las catorce patas; estos se agarran tan fuerte al alga que ni las olas ni yo al trasportarla logran despegar el animal.

Y han crecido en el acuario una generación de isópodos muy pequeños.

Fotos # 3, 4: Isópodos en una concha de ostión. Los más grandes miden aproximadamente 5 mm. de largo. Siempre que saco una concha cualquiera del tanque, la encuentro cubierta de un gran número de esto, todos corriendo de acá para allá, siempre con mucha prisa.

Foto # 5: en una concha de mejillón hay dos de estos isópodos miniaturos y dos amfípodos; estos son los que se doblan, haciendo medio círculo.

Y esto: lo vi por primera vez hace un mes o más, apegado al vidrio debajo del nivel de la arena. Desde ese punto de vista se parecía a una lapa chica, pero la forma era diferente. Con una lente de aumento lo examiné y pensé que tal vez sería un quitón juvenil.

Hace quince dias estaba, ya más grande, en una concha de ostión y si era un quitón. Y hoy lo encontré en una piedrita. Lo saqué del tanque, manteniéndolo siempre en el agua, y le saqué una foto.

Foto # 6: Un quitón "de madera", Mopalia lignosa, creo. Con dos anémonas.

Parece que si es un quitón de madera. Si es así, puede crecer hasta los 8 cm.; por ahora mide 1.7 cm.

No estaba contento con su viaje. En cuanto lo regresé al tanque se fue a esconder bajo la concha de ostión de nuevo. Estos son animales tímidos que se esconden en la parte inferior de las piedras y las conchas de mar. Allí, no se mueve mucho; se mantiene allí tranquilamente comiendo algas y diátomos. Le gusta la lechuga de mar, Ulva spp.; mañana, que va a ser un dia con marea muy baja, si el tiempo lo permite, voy a la playa a buscarle un poco de lechuga marina para "Woody", y algo de hierba Zostera para los ermitaños, kelp para los cangrejos, y unos bálanos para los caracoles carnívoros. Y ...

Y quien sabe que otra criatura se subirá de pilón.

Speckly baby

Crabs and hermit crabs eat snails. They crack them open using their big pincers like nutcrackers to get at the juicy meat inside. One had been really hungry, and was not taking a chance on missing any of the goodies. He cracked open each segment of the snail.

I collected the empty shell and put it under the microscope to look at the inner structure.

Mudflat snail, Batillaria attramentaria, about 1 cm. long.

And then I got side-tracked. There was something moving about inside. I persuaded it to come out and run around in a few drops of water.

A mini-isopod, all speckly, about 2 or 3 mm. long.

Head, 7 segments, one telson 14 legs.

As far as I can tell, it's a baby rockweed isopod. Immature isopods have the same body plan as the adults. (Could be a different species, though; let's see if any grow up.)

Side view, running.

I examined a few other shells. Several of them were hosting these babies.

For comparison: an adult, 2016. Idotea wosnesenskii. The colours vary from green to brown to blackish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Los cangrejos y los cangrejos ermitaños comen caracoles marinos. Los abren con sus pinzas como quien rompe una nuez con un cascanueces, para comerse el animal adentro. Uno parece que tenía mucha hambre, y no quiso perderse ni un poquitito de la carne deliciosa. Rompió cada segmento a lo largo del caracol.

Saqué el caracol para mirar su estructura interna bajo el microscopio. (Medía apenas 1 cm.)

Y me distraje con algo que se movía adentro. Lo convencí a salir y corría alrededor de la concha en un poco de agua.

Es un isópodo, un crustáceo con 14 patas, más o menos de unos 2 mm. de largo.

Parece ser, creo, un isópodo juvenil de alga rockweed, Idotea wosnesenskii. La cría de estos animales se parecen en forma a los adultos. Aunque podría igualmente pertencer a otra especie; veremos si alguno llega a la madurez.

Examiné varias otras conchas. Algunas (no todas) llevaban estos mini-isópodos.

La última foto es de un adulto, tomada en el tanque en 2016. Los colores de esta especie varían entre verde, café, hasta casi negro.

Muddy buddies

For a few minutes, I looked at the mud between and under yesterday's rocks. It's busy down there:

From a distance, it just looks like brownish mud. Looking down at your feet, it's home to millions of pink-tipped green anemones. When the tide comes in, they'll all wake up and wave their pink tentacles above the surface of the mud.

I flipped a stone and found this iridescent polychaete worm. Also present: stubby isopods, mussels, barnacles, and a few crabs that scuttled away quickly. One didn't quite make it out of range. See it?

More stubby isopods, Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis, and one large rockweed isopod, Idotea wosnesenskii. Names larger than the animals themselves.

That mud is slippery! I went down on my back, had to roll over in the mud to find something to grab and pull myself up. No harm done (a bit of a bruised tailbone is all), but this next photo was taken quickly while I hurried, dripping mud, back to the car. I should have, will later, stopped to look more closely.

Little black, sharp protrusions on the surface of the mud turned out to be the tips of an under-mud colony of mussels.

Watching it all, impassive:

Gull on a weedy rock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Por algunos minutos, me detuve a mirar el lodo entre y debajo de las rocas que mostré ayer.

El lodo, a primera vista, parece sin interés, pero mirando directamente para abajo, se nota que está densamente poblado con millones de anémonas "Anthopleura elegantissima". Cuando sube la marea otra vez, cada una extenderá sus tentáculos color de rosa por encima de la superficie del lodo.

Volteé una piedra y encontré debajo este anélido poliqueto de colores iridiscentes. También presentes: isopodos "chaparros", mejillones, bálanos, y unos cangrejos que se apuraron a esconderse. Uno no logró desaparecer completamente. ¿Lo ves?

Más isopodos "chaparros' y un gran isopodo "Wosnesenski". Los pequeños isopodos llevan el nombre científico, "Gnorimosphaeroma oregonensis", un nombre mucho más largo que el animal.

¡Ese lodo es resbaloso! Terminé cayéndome sobre la espalda en el lodo. No hubo daño, aparte de un moretón en donde no se ve, pero tuve que revolcarme en el lodo para encontrar algo sólido para ayudarme a ponerme otra vez de pie. Así que la foto que sigue fue tomada sin cuidado, aprisa, mientras me apuraba, escurriendo lodo, para regresar al coche. Debería haberme detenido para investigar lo que veía. Otro día será.

Se veía en la superficie del lodo un grupo de lineas agudas, negras. Al mirarlas más de cerca, descubrí que eran mejillones, escondidos bajo el lodo, con solo las puntas al agua. Nunca había notado esto antes.

Y finalmente, una gaviota, mirando todo impasivamente.

Caught in passing

I was watching hermit crabs in the aquarium when a red worm zipped by.

Spiny polychaete. Each "foot" is tipped with a brush, and armed above with a long spine.

He's tiny; on the right, three copepods are playing. They're about a millimetre long. The round dots along the edge of the shell are oyster eyes. And I don't know what that yellow and black striped creature (or tentacle, or foot) is, peeking out from between the folds of the oyster shell.

A large isopod reached out from a seaweed clump to investigate a mass of green-centred bubbles, probably disintegrating algae.

These isopods are plentiful under rocks and clutching rockweed in the intertidal zone. Sometimes they come home with me; they live happily in the tank for a while, until a crab catches them for dinner. As long as there is at least one branch of rockweed, they stay out of reach.

Also present ...

And ... the rest of the animals I found on that one trip to Stories Beach, in no particular order:

A Black prickleback, Xiphister artopurpureus. Look for the thin white lines radiating back from the eye; his pal, the rock prickleback has wide pale lines in a black field instead.

Red rock crab, running for cover.

Bright yellow or greenish yellow eggs, possibly belonging to a clingfish.

A couple of tiny hermits, dwarfed by the dogwinkles and isopods around them.

Rockweed isopods come in a variety of colours, from green to warm browns, to purplish blacks. I hadn't seen one before with that distinctive dark and light green pattern. Could it be a different species? 

Unidentified sculpin.

"Coloration is often virtually useless as a tool for identification. Extreme variation is the norm." (Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest, VB62)

Purple sea star. I saw several dozen, all healthy. Good to see, after the onslaught of Sea Star Wasting Disease that wiped out so many.

Where the worms are.

According to Kozloff, these are probably the tubes of bamboo worms, hiding 6 inches or more below the surface of the sand. Some day I'll manage to dig one out, to be sure.

Pickle bug

I was pleased, last week, to get a recognizable photo of one of my rockweed isopods, on the far side of the tank. They are usually so tightly clasped onto the seaweeds that they become almost invisible, so that I can lift a rockweed out of the water, rinse it off, place it in a bowl, clean the tank, and replant the rockweed without noticing the isopod I've been handling until it decides to swim to a different clump of weed.

Last week, I was surprised to discover that there were two of these in the tank. Yesterday, cleaning the tank again, I found a third; no telling how long the three have been there.

And this time, one decided to explore the orangey algae collar of the big anemone, right up against the glass, where I could get a good look at him.

He's about an inch and a half long, not counting the antennae.

The tail end is rounded outward; the similar eelgrass isopod has a bite taken out of the tail.

These isopods have 7 legs on each side, each ending in a sharp, incurved claw, which they use to hold tightly to seaweeds waving in the current. They prefer rockweed or kelp, but I have found them on mud under rocks, on sea lettuce, and now on the delicate red algae around the neck of the anemone. They eat algae and other detritus.

The colour varies, according to the weeds they've been eating; the smallest of the isopods in my tank is a dark brown; this one is the brightest green.

Males are usually larger, and have fatter legs. The female broods her young; I'm going to be watching the smaller two closely, to see if I can catch one in berry.

Head shot, showing the kidney-shaped eyes, and one of the flat, hairy palps.

These are also known as kelp isopods, Wosnesenski's (or Vosnesenskys) isopod, olive-green isopod. And a name I hadn't seen before; pickle bug, because of the shape and colour of the greenest ones. The scientific name is Idotea wosnesenskii.

While the sun shines

The morning sun is high enough these days to reach my kitchen window and bounce its light off the wall back towards the aquarium for a few minutes; I took advantage of it to get some quick photos with natural light.

First shot. I didn't even bother to turn off the pump; no time to waste. Three anemones, an oyster, red and green seaweeds.

Sun shining through the tentacles of a little pink-tipped anemone.

The second pink-tipped anemone, with barnacles.

The burrowing anemone, reaching towards the light. She always wears this collar of red seaweed these days, and it's usually hiding a fair collection of neighbours; hermits, copepods, sometimes a crab, snails, worms, isopods, and limpets. Can you see the hermit? And the three strands of snail poop?

This rockweed isopod was poking around on the far side of the tank. There are two of them; I don't know how or when they arrived.

Limpet working on new growth on the glass. (I had scrubbed it well the night before, but algae grow quickly.)

And then the sun climbed over the roof and left the tank in dim light again.