Speedy woodlouse

A patch of yellow dead nettle is blooming next door, and my neighbour has moved out, so I picked all the flowers to prevent them from going to seed and invading the world. Or at least, my part of the world.

Hidden beneath a flower head, I discovered a sowbug.

Philoscia muscorum, the  Fast woodlouse. Well named.

Moving the stem around to get a better view of him, I knocked him out onto the table, and he took off running, much faster than any sowbug I've seen before. I chased him down, trapped him, and took a batch of photos, then searched BugGuide. He's a European import, and, while he's built like the sowbugs I see every day (aka woodbugs, pill bugs, roly-polies, etc.), he doesn't act at all like one.

First, he runs. Fast. "Our" woodbugs trundle along slowly enough for me to go for a pill bottle and come back, and still find them on their way to shelter.

Second, he "hides" in the first available shadow he finds. He freezes there, and takes quite a bit of nudging before he realizes he can really still be seen. The usual woodbugs here keep on going until they're invisible.

Fast woodlouse "hiding".

Next, if you flip him on his back, he lies there, playing dead. The other woodbugs either roll into a ball (pillbugs, Armadillidium vulgare), or wave their 14 legs frantically in the air until they manage to right themselves again.

Not so fast, any more. Playing dead.

And last, he and his family live in plants, rather than under some shelter at ground level. This one was on yellow dead nettle; one on BugGuide was found in a rosebush.

In one way, he acts like the others; once he's found a safe spot, he tends to stay put. This critter is still in the dying dead nettle flower that I found him in. As soon as I post this, I'll take him out to the nettle patch and set him free.

UPDATE: I've been asked, on Facebook, how I know he's male. I don't. When I don't know, I randomly pick a sex, because I don't like calling critters with a mind of their own (no matter how feeble) an "it".

A female sowbug may have brood sacs at the base of some of her legs, seen when she's belly-up. I don't think I see any in the photo above.

And the first two pleopods of the five on the pleon (that triangular covering at the tail) of a male are elongated. In the photo, only the last three are visible.

Winter quarters

Another few old photos; these are from last October.

Woodbug in rotting pine cone, with snail.

Every fall, I pile some of the current crop of pine cones underneath a potted cedar, to help keep the cold out. In a pot, without the insulation provided by the surrounding soil, a plant is more vulnerable to cold, so even when the plant itself is winter-hardy, I wrap and cover its pot.

Over the winter, the centers of the cones rot, liberating the seeds. Some of these sprout, but that's not the point. The tightly-closed cone becomes a mini-compost pile, its own heat source; even when the ground is frozen hard, the center of the cone stays cool and moist. So it's a winter home for the small animals that don't necessarily go into stasis during these months.

Several times during the cold weather, I bring in a few cones and break them up to see who's living there. There are always a fair number, all wide awake.

In this batch, I found several snails, a family of woodbugs, a few baby slugs, earthworms, two species of springtails, millipedes, and one plant louse. Smaller things scuttled and slithered out of sight as fast as I broke off the scales of the cone; probably more 'pedes, and a spider or three.

Cyanide millipede

Another millipede, sleeping. And the head of a long earthworm, plowing through the composted wood.

Plant louse, exploring a sheet of paper on my desk. Seriously cute.

A pinhead snail, not the same species as the one above. He hid when I moved him to the paper, but a minute later, set out to explore the desk. I put him back in the cone.

When I was done, as usual, I collected the remains of the cones, critters and all, and replaced them under the tree, covered with a layer of duff for warmth.

They made it through the winter; this afternoon, when I moved a couple of pots in the garden, they were all there, with a crowd of their friends and relations.

Testing a new lens

I took my new 85 mm lens (AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G) out for a walk yesterday: around the yard, over to the neighbours' gardens, and across the street to the vacant lot. I came home very happy with it, and am even happier now that I've seen the results on the computer.

First, I took only one shot at some subjects, and almost all of those photos turned out fine. Where I took three photos, I had trouble choosing which worked out better; only a very few were total duds.

Next, I stood at the edge of a garden and took photos of daffodils several meters away, and the flies perched on them turned out in focus. No need to trample a neighbour's flower bed.

The vacant lot was soggy and muddy; I had trouble finding secure places to stand; I didn't dare get down on my knees to get photos of critters, nor even bend over to shoot, for fear of losing my balance. I took photos through several inches of muddy water, and the ground underneath turned out nice and clear.

I turned over a board with my foot, and shot the underside, from a standing position. Here's what I found.

Centipedes, pill bugs, and a tiny blue-headed snail.

The lens is fast, and without the need to crawl in close, I could get the centipedes before they ran off. And get them in focus, too. I took three photos of this group of wood bugs; all three turned out ok.

Large egg case. The shadow turned out a bit noisy.

On the mud where the board had been. The cluster of eggs glowed a true lime-green. I don't know what laid them.

Egg case, in a pale yellow web.

There were a few miniature red ants running on one end of the board, so tiny I had to bend over to see them. The camera did get them, but barely.

More test shots tomorrow, maybe the water pics.

Water makes all the difference

Rock Flipping Day 2011, continued...

It was a relief to come back to my own sheltered, well-watered garden after the expedition to the desert-like conditions of the vacant lot. (Between a rock and a dry place).  I recovered my enthusiasm for the search, and decided to turn over some of my own rocks. And here, the moisture lovers thrive.

A few rocks and turtles holding down the base of a wooden heron.

Under the rocks, an orange slug nibbles the heron's toes.

Every rock concealed at least one or two earthworms.

On the bottom of a paving stone, a clump of snail or slug eggs, and a woodbug.

Tiny white springtails. These don't tolerate drying out.

I thought this was a single snail egg until I saw the photo; it is covered with white silk. A spider egg sac, probably.

Millipede. One of many.

The large fake rock (styrofoam) sheltered hundreds of beasties. Slugs and woodbugs clung to the underside of the "rock".  On the ground, rove beetles and millipedes dashed for cover, centipedes and worms burrowed quickly into the soft soil, leaving only many more woodbugs and slugs.

Temporarily tame woodbug.

So my summer schedule of watering every night has paid off; the garden is alive, top and bottom.

T'was brillig in the tulgey wood

*Definitions

The Watershed Park in Delta is a mixed forest, evergreens and deciduous trees, crawling down a steep slope between upper Delta and the low, flat farm lands beneath. It is not over-managed; occasionally, someone cuts up trees that have fallen over the paths. Dozens of trees are dead, providing well-used woodpecker feeding and perching spots. Logs not on paths molder and rot; shelf fungus and turkey tail fungus colonize them end to end.

The space beneath the trees harbours both native and invasive plants. The natives: salal, evergreen ferns, salmonberry, red huckleberry, our trailing blackberry, an abundance of mosses and mushrooms. Along the sunny bottom path, stinging nettles, touch-me-nots, and bog plants such as Labrador tea make a dense green wall. The invaders include Himalayan blackberry and English ivy; this year, I noticed a large patch of spotted dead nettle, which is capable of over-running even the ferns.

Spring and fall, after a few rains, we go mushrooming there.

This time, we found few mushrooms; maybe we're too early. Or too late; the weather has been unseasonably warm. We weren't disappointed, though:

Rotting snag, with frass and slime mold

Perhaps because of the warm, wet weather this winter, we found that a surprising number of the trees and snags were losing great slabs of bark; it was cracked and rotted, separated from the tree itself.

Inner side of a flap of bark: frass and small grey slime molds

Some of the old stumps were so rotten that they fell apart, or even fell over, with a touch of a finger. And behind the crumbled bark, and inside the mushy remains of the stumps, small critters feed on the molds and wood. We explored a few of these stumps and snags.

Innards of a still more or less intact stump

Insect tunnels. Can you find the wood bug?

There were wood bugs everywhere; they fell off every piece of bark we moved, out of every crevice we opened. Climbing over a log, I grabbed a branch to steady myself; it crumbled in my hand. And from its stub, a stream of wood bugs poured, like water from a tipped glass. Most were gone by the time I'd crossed the log and clambered up close to the tree, but the hole was still pretty full:

Woodbug convention centre?

More wood bugs.

Then there were the millipedes:

Millipede on frass on inner side of bark.

A pair of  millipedes. The crumbs are the remains of millipede meals; dead wood.

I saw several woven white egg casings; I assumed they were made by spiders:

These were about 1/2 inch long. But what is that black thing underneath?

Hacklemesh Weaver spider. With egg case; or is it a shelter?

I saw one of these in a pile of sawdusty frass, but it scooted down a hole before I got a decent photo. I hadn't even seen this one; it was on the shady side of the tree, and the photo was too dark until I lightened it 'way up. I've never seen a spider like this before, with blue tints and pink - pink! - joints on the legs. And what seems like far too many legs.

I sent my few lousy photos (this was the best of the lot) to BugGuide. And overnight, Lynette Schimming managed to identify it for me, at least down to the family. Yay, BugGuide! And thanks, Lynette!

It's a Hacklemesh Weaver spider, of the family Amaurobiidae.

Most amaurobiids occur in cryptozoic habitats on the forest floor, in and under decomposing logs, in leaf litter, and under rocks. Some... are found in the bark cavities of standing trees and others have been recorded from rocky grasslands, buildings and caves. From BugGuide.

The "many legs" are really the regular 8, but the spider holds them tightly together over it's back (so did the first one I saw), so that they look as if they crossed over each other. (See this one, from Colorado.)

One other bug; another that we didn't see until we looked over the photos. On a shelf mushroom, one of a crowd on a rotting log, we found this cute globular springtail:

Quite large, for a springtail.

Oh, frabjous day!

*Definitions of title vocabulary, from Jabberwocky, here (Wikipedia).