Good eats, human, beetle, and moose

Continuing with the day trip and random hikes on the way to Gold River:

We were half starved by the time we arrived at Strathcona Park Lodge, on Upper Campbell Lake. Next food source, Gold River, 47 kilometres away on a slow, curvy highway. Lunch is served from 12 to 1 in the lodge; we arrived at 1:05. There was a brief moment of panic, then a girl came out, clearing away dishes, and told us to go ahead; the buffet was still laid out. Good food, friendly people, wonderful view over the lake.

Afterwards, we dawdled on the deck, watching birds and bugs. I looked at the red osier dogwood, reaching up from the ground below.

First, the flowers. White, slightly greenish in the shade, with pale yellow centres and stamens. And what are those brown things?

Red Soldier Beetles, Rhagonycha fulva

They must really have loved that pollen: mostly when I see soldier beetles, they're busy mating. (In the UK, an alternate name is the Hogweed Bonking Beetle.)

Adults feed on aphids, and also eat pollen and nectar. Larvae prey on ground-dwelling invertebrates, such as slugs and snails, and live at the base of long grasses. The adults, which are active between the months of June and August, spend much of their short lives mating and can often be seen in pairs. (Wikipedia)

Food first, love later, when the food's this good!

On the same shrub, the fruits were ripening. No beetles here.

Ripe red osier dogwood fruit. Not exactly edible.

The fruit is bitter, and is mostly seed. My guide book says it's inedible, but then goes on to mention that the interior aboriginal peoples ate them. Here on the coast, they made tea from the bark.

And in the winter, the moose and the deer will relish them.

Serendipity

I had taken a wrong turn and was tangled in streets that curved away from where I wanted to be, and then dead-ended, when I passed a small sign at an opening into a brushy, weedy, dark ravine. "Al Cleaver Park," the sign said. It didn't look park-like, nor inviting, but I was fed up with driving in circles. I parked and went in.

Well. An old trail led along the edge of the ravine, down a hill, past weeds and trash, and ended up underneath the road I had been looking for. And there, where I never would have seen it in years of hurrying home, was a bright crop of Queen Anne's lace, dancing in the breeze.

With bugs, to boot.

Flower head, opening up. With soldier beetle.

Common aerial yellowjacket, Dolichovespula arenaria, I think.

Harmless Syrphid fly, pretending to be a big, bad yellowjacket.

Pair of soldier beetles doing what soldier beetles do.

"Hi, friends! Mind if I join you?"

The busy pair ignored him, and he wandered off alone.

I took too many photos, and I still haven't sorted them. I've still got a bunch of critters from the Serpentine Fens, etc. And I'm due a visit to the beach to collect hermit treats. I'll catch up one of these days!

Scat, berries, and bugs. And a rat.

The Serpentine River lives up to its name. It winds across the flat Fraser Delta farmland, spreading out into wetlands where it finds opportunity, dawdling on its way down to the flats of Mud Bay. In the Fen, a wide, gravelled path winds with it, Northwest, then South again, almost meeting itself as the river carves out a bulbous finger of marsh.

I took a side path, leading across a small bridge, through a thicket, and past tall stands of cattails bordering a former lagoon, now mostly dry, cracked mud, in spite of the previous day's rain.

No wonder the birds are elsewhere! Two stubborn Canada geese waiting for the water to come back.

From here, the path turned west, ducked through a narrow tunnel of bush - I'm short, and the branches brushed my head - and then along a straight path, hawthorns and baneberry on the left, great mounds of the invasive Himalayan blackberry on the right, sometimes three times or more my height, and loaded with purple-black berries. I passed people with buckets, picking. I tried a few; ripe and sweet. Even after I had left them behind, when the breeze picked up, I could smell their perfume.

Hard at work, pollinating. More berries on the way!

He's carrying big bags of pollen to take home to the nest.

A common red soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva.

Another turn, a short, noisy walk alongside the highway, and then the path came out onto the river bank again. Beautiful silence!

This end of the fen is old farmland, with remains of fences and groves of hawthorn and crabapple, all showing their dismay at this dry summer.

Hawthorn, needing water.

Here the path is bordered on the inner side with weedy grass, all brown and dead. I poked along, chasing grasshoppers and big blue dragonflies, with no luck, and dodging coyote scat.

This one has some sort of fungus.

Besides the coyote scat, every few steps, (one with a hawthorn berry on top, like the cherry on a cupcake), the grass was full of rabbit pellets. Predator and prey, but the rabbits seem to be doing ok.

A hawk was patrolling this dry land, swooping low over the grass, looking for small birds and mice, and maybe a juicy rabbit, too.

Tiny fly, unidentified. About half an inch long. Update: Sand wasp. Thanks, Christopher!

White feather. What bird would this be from? About three inches long.

And a final surprise; swimming along the shore, going downstream at a good clip, I saw this big rat:

Not a house rat.

And over the river, a pair of swallows were catching mosquitoes. Good!

Lonely beetle

At our usual entry point to Crescent Beach, where the lane emerges from deep shade to the sunlight, we always have to pause to look at the flowers, wild and cultivated, that bloom there. This time, we found purple irises, a towering mass of small white flowers I can't quite identify, the brilliant evergreen roses, and beside them, the quieter wild Nootka rose.

On one of them a golden soldier beetle longhorn beetle caught my eye.

Golden back, black pronotum and head.

Pidonia scripta, a flower longhorn

This looks similar to the soldier beetle I usually see, the Common Red Soldier Beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, often in large groups, usually mating. It has the long golden body, but with black tips on the tail, and a red head. I only saw the one beetle here, although I looked at other flowers nearby.

Common Red Soldier Beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, on daisy, June 2010

When we came back to the shore an hour and a half later, this same beetle, as far as I could tell, was still on the same flower. And still alone.

UPDATE: BugGuide has identified it as Pidonia scripta, a flower longhorn beetle. Post corrected accordingly.

In a prickly situation

a common red soldier beetle

whiles away the day with a soft-chitined companion.

Some seek quiet, private corners for their trysts;

Others proclaim their love from the highest peaks.

Soldier beetles, Ragonycha fulva, on thistles, White Rock beach.

A last nibble of pollen before bed

At dusk in a shady passageway, a few tall daisies still held some of the daylight:

Miniature sun, standing in for old Sol, who had gone into hiding.

On the tallest of them all, so that I had to stand on tiptoe, a lone soldier beetle was gathering a bedtime snack.

Rhagonycha fulva, Common Red Soldier Beetle. Covered with pollen; he's a messy eater.

A cleaner soldier, earlier, near Centennial Park, Boundary Bay. On Astrantia major, pincushion flower.

Excursion to Serendip

"So, what do we call the place we went yesterday?" Laurie asks. Well, it was part of Tsawwassen, on Boundary Bay, just south of Boundary Bay Regional Park, a few blocks north of the US border. The school in the area is called Boundary Beach. "South Boundary Bay Beach?" Not really good enough, and too long for a file name. After going over my memories of the afternoon and the photos we brought back, I've decided to file them under "Serendip".

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing; we were already in the car, going -- somewhere, anywhere -- when we decided to go to Boundary Bay Beach. But when we were almost there, I felt like driving just a bit farther, to new (for us) territory. We found a walkway to the beach in a quiet residential zone and parked.

And there the discoveries began, still on the street. And they ended, at tea-time, with a middle-of-the-road garden on a dead-end street, as we tried to find our way home.

For tonight, I'll start there, at the end.

The last flowers we saw were Astrantia major. A new flower to both of us, small and papery, in a tangle of stems and leaves, the flowers in all stages of growth and decay, and beautiful.

The 12 bracts on the outside are deeply veined, tipped either with green or pink or brown, and badly insect-bitten. The true flowers are tiny, and arranged in an umbel, like a cow parsnip or Queen Anne's lace. I loved those tiny "barrels" that some of them (not all) rest on. I read that they are often called the "pincushion flower"; I can see where the name comes from.

Here, one flower head has pincushions; the other one pins (delicate stalks).

Bending close to try for a close-up of the flowerets, I saw a flash of orange-red; some sort of insect. An ant, I thought at the time. I followed him around for a bit, trying to get him on camera. He didn't make it easy, and I clicked wildly every time I saw a flash of red on my screen. Mostly, I missed.

So I was pleased with two of my photos. I had more than one red insect. And they were more like beetles than ants.

Three of them. And there soon will be more. Here's a closer view.

Ah! Young love!

(Now comes the hard part: I'll be spending some time on BugGuide trying to identify these beetles. I'll update this when I do.)

Update: Boris Buche at BugGuide ID'd them for me: they are Common red soldier beetles, Rhagonycha fulva. They eat the aphids and other small insects from umbelliferous flowers, like these pincushion flowers. And UBC Botanical Garden has a photo (on fennel) and more links. Follow their link to the flying beetle -- amazing!