¡Buen provecho!

It's mushroom season in the woods. And that means it's also slug season. If slugs have a favourite food (besides the fresh lettuce you just brought in from the garden for your supper salad), it's a big mushroom. A fresh, spicy russula, for example.

Banana slug with a chocolaty donut. With sprinkles.

After a fill of snow-white mushroom cap, a nibble on the stalk.

A few bites in passing.

These mushrooms, I think, are all Russula species; good big mushrooms, providing full meals for hungry slugs. They can grow up to 25 cm. across the cap (depending on the species), but most have been eaten long before they reach that size. Some, not all, are said to have a peppery taste. I wonder; do slugs have taste preferences?

Russula sp., probably the Short-stemned, or the Cascade Russula.

These all-white russulas develop underground, and push their way to the surface carrying a load of dirt and duff. Messy, but at least they get to grow some before the slugs get them. This one, just emerging, was nearly 10 cm. across. Both the Short-stemmed and the Cascade russula are edible. I've only eaten the Short-stemmed, the non-peppery one. Edible, but blah; may as well have been eating rubber.

The Blackening Russula starts out a creamy white all over, cap, gills, and stalk. But after any damage it starts to change colour, gradually turning completely black.

Russula nigricans, with nibbled cap and stalk.

More mushrooms from the same trail, next. The ones the slugs ignored.

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Es la temporada de hongos en los bosques. Y con esto, también es la temporada de las babosas. Si las babosas tienen un manjar favorito (además de la lechuga que acabas de cosechar en tu jardín para hacerte una ensalada), será un buen hongo. Una russula, por ejemplo.

Fotos:

#1: Una babosa "plátano", Ariolimax columbianus, comiéndose un pastelito de chocolate (o así parece).

#2: Después de llenar la barriga con el sombrero y las laminillas del hongo, una mordidita del tallo viene bien.

#3: Este hongo, lo mordieron y siguieron adelante.

Todos estos hongos, creo, son del género de russulas; hongos grandes que pueden proveer comidas enteras para la babosa más hambrienta. Pueden crecer hasta que tengan un sombrero de 25 cm. de diámetro, aunque los hongos se habrán comido la mayoría antes de llegar a ese tamaño. Algunos, pero no todos, se dice que tienen un sabor algo picante. Me pregunto: ¿tendrán preferencias las babosas por ciertos sabores?

#4: Russula sp., probablemente el R. brevipes o el R. cascadensis. Estas russulas blancas se desarrollan bajo el suelo, subiendo al aire ya grandecitas, trayendo una carga de tierra y hojarasca. No muy decorativo, pero les permite alcanzar un buen tamaño protegidas del ataque de las babosas. Esta mide poco menos de 10 cm. Tanto el R. brevipes como el R. cascadensis son comestibles; el segundo es picante, el primero no. He comido el R. brevipes; una sola vez. No tiene sabor alguno, es como masticar hule.

#5: La Russula nigricans empieza la vida totalmente blanco, el sombrero, las laminillas, y el estipe inclusive. Pero después de sufrir un daño cualquiera, empieza a cambiar de color, llegando finalmente a estar completamente negra.

Siguiente: más hongos del mismo sitio, estos olvidados por las babosas.

Springtail feast

I always look for slug bites on the mushrooms. It's one of a slug's favourite foods. I didn't think to look for springtail nibbles until I blew up these photos.

Amanita. No good for humans, but the springtails love it. There are 16 on this cap.

Boletus. Only one springtail here, but he seems to have eaten out a small cavity.

Flattish beige mushroom, with 3 springtails.

On a driftwood log

Three links in a food chain:

Clump of mushrooms growing out of a driftwood log.

Maybe four links: people felled the tree, possibly. Then the ocean carried it to Salmon Point and threw it onto the shore. Here, mushrooms are eating the wood. And something is enthusiastically eating the mushrooms; the bites look like those of slugs or snails.

I looked for the slugs, but they are usually night feeders, especially out in the open. I couldn't see any, nor any sleeping snails. The logs make good, sturdy roofs for slug bedrooms, down in the dark and damp.

The competition. And a banana slug recipe

I went looking for mushrooms and found slugs looking for dinner. Chef's special: mushrooms on the stalk, with fresh rain dressing.

Black slug, Arion ater.

Everywhere I went yesterday, there were black slugs, all dressed in blue-black finery, partying in the wet moss and mud.

If you encounter one and are feeling bold, poke it gently. It will tighten into a ball and start wobbling side to side, very slowly. It is one of nature's most inexplicable and strangely mesmerizing performances, worth watching if you have a lot of time to kill. (E-fauna, article by Hugh Griffith)

I didn't know that, or I'd have been poking slugs until dark. Next time.

Banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus. Our native slug.

This was a small specimen, in a hurry to leave while I tromped around him, trying to find firm footing on a wet slope. I like the striped border of his foot.

Another banana slug, in a spotted coat, eating a mushroom.

Banana slugs, like the bananas they're named for, can be any colour from green to yellow to spotty brown to black. They are the most commonly met slugs in this area, and can grow up to 25 cm (10 inches) long, like the big cooking bananas (plantains) in the produce section at the store.  And yes, you can cook and eat a banana slug.

I had the slugs with ketchup and they were oh-so-good. I was very surprised. The texture was like a cross between mushrooms and calamari. It was hard to pick out a specific “slug” flavor; they tasted deep-fried, oily, and subtle. (From a recipe for Deep Fried Banana Slugs.)

Interesting, but I think I'll stick to the plant variety.

The slugs were eating mushrooms at Echo Lake.

Mushrooms tomorrow, some not even chewed yet!

Of pie and slug yummies.

Mom used to make a pie in the summertime; graham cracker crust filled with vanilla custard mixed with an assortment of berries picked that afternoon in the bush; huckle-, salmon- and thimble-berries, red and orange, juicy, seedy and a little tart, nuggets of taste and colour in the blandness of the custard.

I remembered those pies as I walked the Leiner River trail, carrying a huckleberry branch lopped off by the trail maker, picking and eating the ripe berries as we went. The bush provides.

My son asked about some of the mushrooms we passed: could we eat those? I recognized Russulas, which we had eaten up north. They tasted and had the texture of erasers, I told him, and he lost interest. But there were many others, food for slugs and bears, not for us, not without a specialist to pronounce them safe.

Collybia, I think. Possibly edible. With slug bites.

Typical clearing floor: evergreen twigs, needles, and cones, mosses, wild blackberry leaves, a huckleberry branch. And mushrooms. A slug has been eating a couple of them.

The same mushrooms, from ground level.

Something broke this one off.

Two unidentified mushrooms posing as siamese twins, with a wild blackberry twig growing through them.

Slug eye view. Same mushrooms. (Gilled bolete? Edible?)

On a disintegrating log. Unidentified. The cap of the one on the left has been nibbled on.

Strange, blobby polypores. Shelf fungi that forgot how to make shelves. (Maybe when the tree went from vertical to horizontal.)

Pretty yellow slug, a mushroom eater. One of many. This one's on our picnic table.

We're still here on the Leiner River trail.

Creatures of the night

One nice thing about being a night owl is that, when the days get too hot, the nights are perfect, and I'm not wasting them asleep in bed. A whole heap of critters agree with me, too.

I found these in my backyard, this week:

Once the birds are asleep, others get a chance at the birdbath, resting on the "shore", or even going swimming. This weevil is following the edge around and around, looking for the exit.

Slug and springtail on birdbath.

Algae on my bare cement, and snail eating algae.

I checked the new BirdCam's photos, and was amused by this snail. I was fussing around with flashlights and the tripod, and the BirdCam kept taking photos as I moved around. And in all the bustle, in each photo, there was the snail, moving right along, and somehow not getting stepped on.

Long slug, going places.

"Look before you slither."

The mosquitoes have been voracious these past few weeks. Even though I slather myself with repellent, I'm still scratching bites. I tried burning these mosquito coils outside the door to discourage them. I don't know that it helped.

On the plate with the next night's coil set up, I found this small slug. He doesn't seem to mind the chemicals in the coil. Later, I found him on the coil itself.

"Did I hear something behind me?"

The door stays open until late. A few critters followed me inside.

Pretty yellow spider on the wall by my desk Update: Enoplogatha ovata.

Very small moth, ditto. (White-shouldered moth)

And this: what is it? The BirdCam picked this up last night.

Something in a hurry.

Not a 'coon, not a skunk, not a cat, nor a fox, rat, or dog. It looks to me like a possum. I hadn't realized that we have possums here in the Lower Mainland.

And take a look at those toes!

Headless prowler.

I'm still sorting the ten-lined June beetle photos; I took 'way too many.

Dinner on the lawn

My lawn is half native weeds, half moss, half invasives, and a sprinkling of grass*. And, in season, mushrooms.

Reddish brown, glossy 'shroom. But what's that on the stalk?

A hungry slug. There are slug holes in the cap, too.

*Three halves and a sprinkling add up to one whole. The categories overlap.

Different strokes

This was disappointing. I've seen videos and read descriptions of mating slugs, stories of couples dangling on a rope of their own slime, twisting and intertwining in a slow aerial dance.

So when I came across two slugs in the shade of a flowerpot, obviously mating, I expected something of the same sort.

No. And who am I to decree what counts as fun for someone else, slug or whatever?

They maintained this position, almost without moving, for 20 minutes.

I moved the pot away, to get better light, and kept an eye on them. For all of those 20 minutes, they lay quietly. The only motion was a mite that kept running around at high speed, over one, then the other, then back again. The only other change that I could see was the slow drying of the cement they lay on. I thought that would be uncomfortable, since they had chosen a dark, wet spot, so I brought some water to moisten the cement, and spilled a bit too much. Then there was a response:
 .

Shrinking slugs

The large slug contracted and curled up, and then the lump of connected tissue separated into two translucent balls, still touching. They lay like this for another 10 minutes before they finally retracted their innards and separated.

I'm sure they enjoyed it, anyhow.

Dem dry stones

Cougar Creek drains from the clay soils near our house, seeps under a couple of malls, meanders over to Cougar Creek Park with its lagoons and beaver dams, and plunges into a steep canyon. At the bottom end, it tunnels under the road into Sunshine Hills, and out into the Burns Bog flats.

We started our rock flipping excursion from that road, heading upstream, at first, into the canyon.

Reflections of the trees at the top of the Canyon. This year, the creek is shallow and slow.

Dying alder leaves and shadows of horsetails on the stones along the river bank.

We turned over many stones, both on the banks, and in the dry areas of the creek bed. Under a few, we found pillbugs, and one earthworm. Nothing more; the ground was dry, the creek bed scoured clean, and barely damp.

Where the creek was slightly deeper, held back by sticks and leaves caught on a few rocks, I turned over a rock, saw something flashing in the current, and caught it. I spread it out on the next rock to examine it.

A gruesome find. A red dragonfly, minus most of the head and abdomen, probably eaten by fish. The wings are intact. Nothing there to interest a hungry trout.

We crossed the road into Burns Bog. This part of the bog was once extensively mined for peat, and is criss-crossed by walls and railway tracks. A large part of it was paved over, but the pavement is cracked and mossy, buckling as the ground has heaved under it. Alders and maples grow in the gaps.

Moss breaking pavement, making soil for larger plants.

Cracked pavement. I looked in the cracks; nothing was moving.

It's been a dry summer; even in the shade, the moss was dry and scratchy. The ground underneath was no damper. We turned over many rocks and chunks of broken concrete, finding mostly dry soil, baked hard.

Under one slab of concrete, a few reddish ants had dug tunnels. They have something damp and bluish in the upper centre here; some sort of dead critter.

The underside of a paving stone. Ant trails, hot and crispy. No ants in sight.

Pillbugs

And a small, sleeping slug. I have never seen one before with a spotted white face; I didn't know there were such critters.

And this I will never understand: Burns Bog is supposed to be an ecological preserve, even this once-mined area. Access is mostly on foot, and the trails are long. Why, then, do people haul garbage deep into the woods here? On foot, carrying heavy trash, when we have door-to-door pickup or easily available bins?

Every time, we find something. Bottles and buckets, bicycle parts, grocery store trolleys, old cabinet TVs, rotting mattresses, shoes . . . This time, it was electronics. Underneath the chunks of concrete.

TV? Or what?

And what is this? It's plastic, backed with cardboard.

This I do understand. There's a graffiti'd wall just beyond.