Yay! The spiders are back!

 Looks like spider season has started! I saw these two on beaches this week.

Wolf spider, Pardosa sp. On the shore at Oyster Bay.

And another wolf, at Tyee Spit.

And yesterday one scuttled away as I weeded my flower beds. And a little jumper with blonde face ornaments patrolled the edges of my kitchen window. Nice to see them again!

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Ya comenzó la temporada de arañas. Estas dos las vi en las playas esta semana.

    1. Araña "lobo", Pardosa sp. En Oyster Bay.

    2. Y otra, esta entre piedras en la linea intermareal superior, en Tyee Spit.

Y ayer, mientras desherbaba mi jardín, sorprendí otra. Y una arañita saltarina con cara de color crema andaba buscando presa en mi ventana. ¡Me alegra verlas de nuevo!

Slow search

It pays to slow down.

Seen while sitting in the rain, poking through the duff:

Unidentified tiny mushrooms. Douglas-fir cone shows the size.

Moss and tiny wolf spider. Pardosa sp., probably.

Or inspecting decaying stumps:

Lichen "garden". Cladonia sp. and some moss. And what looks like Freckle Pelt lichen, Peltigera sp.

They look like green nails. More Cladonia sp. lichens.

Or, standing now, with my nose to tree trunks:

A Forked Tube lichen, Hypogymnia sp. Also called Bone lichen.

A coral lichen, probably Tuckerman's Coral lichen, Sphaerophorus tuckermanii.

There's more! I'll post the photos over the next few days. Oh, and Wednesday will be the first day of this year's Arachtober, and have I got a find to start off with! Something I'd never seen before, found in that duff.

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Despacito, despacito; vale la pena "perder el tiempo".

Esto lo vi, sentada en la lluvia, revolviendo la hojarasca:

1. Honguitos. No los pude identificar. Están enfrente de un cono de abeto de Douglas, que da una idea de su tamaño.
2. Una araña correlona en el musgo. Parece ser una araña "lobo", una de las especies del género Pardosa.
3. Y examinando tocones podridos: un "jardín" de líquenes, principalmente Cladonia sp., con un poco de Peltigera sp. Y musgos.
4. Estos líquenes Cladonia sp. parecen clavos verdes.
5. O de pie con la nariz casi tocando la corteza de los árboles: Aquí un liquen "Tubo Bifurcado", Hypogymnia sp. También se pueden llamar líquenes "Hueso".
6. Y un liquen coralino, probablemente el liquen de Tuckerman, Sphaerophorus tuckermanii.

¡Hay más! Subiré las fotos en los próximos dias. Y el miércoles empieza el mes de Arachtober, y ¡tengo algo insólito para empezar la serie! Algo que nunca había visto antes, ni nada parecido; y lo encontré entre esa hojarasca.

On/in the rocks

On the Zeballos road, I stopped to look at rocks. The roadmakers cut through pale orange and grey rocks; weathered, they splinter into sharp fragments.

Rock, moss, and is that an ant?

Yes, it is. An ant with a white band across the gaster.

And there was a racing spider.

One of the wolf spiders. Very active hunters.

Back to looking at the rock itself; it was mostly this blurry orange and grey mix. Except for one patch:

Stripy insertion

The patch included these strange root-like tangles. As far as I could tell, part of the rock itself. Fossil roots? Or holes in the early molten rock?

I picked up several of the sharp-edged pieces fallen into the ditch. Among them, this; must be a fossil, don't you think? An entire dino?

Must be. On the hood of my car.

Well, okay, maybe my imagination is working overtime. I'll be sensible now. Except; look at him at home!

Pet dino in my cactus garden.

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En camino regresando de Zeballos, me detuve para observar unas rocas. Los que construyeron este camino abrieron paso cortando rocas; estas en tonos de gris claro mezclado con anaranjado. Donde los cambios de temperatura, congelándose y luego deshielándose, las han despedazado, los fragmentos tienen bordes agudos, cortantes.

1. Piedra, musgo, y ¿una hormiguita?
2. Sí, es una hormiga con una franja blanca en el abdomen.
3. Y una araña.
4. Es una de las arañas lobo. Estas arañas no hacen telarañas; persiguen su presa activamente.
5. Pero estaba mirando la roca. Casi toda era esta mezcla de gris con anaranjado, algo borrosa. Pero hay una sección algo diferente.
6. Detalle. Este sector en gris y blanco incluye estas marcas que parecen pedazos de raiz. ¿Serán fósiles? ¿O burbujas en la roca primordial?
7. Recogí algunos de los pedazos de piedra que habían caído a la zanja. Entre ellos, este. Tiene que ser un fósil, ¿no crees? Un dinosaurio completo, ¿no?  Aquí reposando en el capó del motor de mi coche.
8. Bueno, puede ser que me estoy imaginando cosas. Ya dejaré de tonterías. (Pero, ¡míralo en casa, en mi jardincito de cactus!)

Next generation, all rolled up.

Another flower garden resident:

Hard-working mother. That's a load of eggs to cart around!

She's a wolf spider, Lycosidae, but I've spent an hour looking at spider photos on BugGuide, (they have 11,500 photos of Lycosidae alone!) and found only one similar, across the channel on the mainland, also unidentified, except as a juvenile. This one. at least; I know she's adult, and female.

Beginnings, and eight-legged sand

On Tuesday, the sun came out from behind the clouds! And it even stayed out for hours! We went to the beach, of course.

The tide at Boundary Bay was high, and still coming in. We walked at the edge for a bit, then crossed the log barrier and meandered over the dunes. The predominant colours are still beige and grey, but a few green sprouts were poking above the sand, especially where the surface is warmed by a layer of log remnants and dead grasses. We got down on our knees to get a closer look.

Carex macrocephala, Large-headed sedge, already a few inches high.

I think this may be a chickweed.

Claytonia exigua, aka Pale Montia, or Spring Beauty. It doesn't get much bigger, and will be producing pinkish flower stalks soon. I'm not sure of the seedlings on the right.

Still in the cotyledon stage; two thick leaflets. They could  be almost anything,.

Another unidentified seedling.

I've marked the spot, and we'll be back often. I want to see what these turn into.

I was holding the camera an inch above the ground*, focusing on the Pale Montia, when the sand near my little finger started to run. Out of the shadow of my hand, it turned into an orange and black spider.

Arctosa perita, one of the Wolf spiders.

On the mixed peach, white and grey sand, she blended in perfectly. I could see her with the naked eye, but not through the lens of the camera. Nor could the camera distinguish her enough to focus, so I took a good dozen photos, hoping for the best.

I found one like this last year around this time, a ways farther up the shore. It was about twice the size of this one, 1/4 inch fangs to spinnerets.

*How to get sand on your lens. Even inside your lens, although I don't know how it gets in. It does.