Lake, trees, invisible birds

There's a short, unofficial trail, cut out by 4-wheelers taking a shortcut, that drops steeply from the west-bound highway to a gated logging road that passes one end of a small lake, Mirror Lake. I followed the trail down, dodging patches of slippery mud, and walked to the lake. The day was cool and cloudy; it had rained recently and all the moss was dripping. Good walking weather.

Mirror Lake, mirroring a cloudy sky.

(Aside: the next lake over is Echo Lake. Mirror Lake mirrors. Does Echo Lake echo? Gotta test that some day.)

Shoreline, with cattails. The reddish stems, bare at this time of year, are hardhack, another wet-foot native plant.

And heading back up the hill, narrowing down my focus:

Snag, bearing lichen instead of needles. A few cones still cling to the branches.

All through this hike, down and up, I was hearing a constant chorus of bird song. A persistent ch-ch-ch-ch ... Here and there a trill or a buzz; twice a towhee called, "twee!" I stood and stared at noisy trees, peered into dark branches; not a bird to be seen. Near the bottom of the hill, a towhee flashed white tail feathers at me and was gone. Finally, I looked far overhead; there, a flock of swallows swirled and dipped, chirping as they went. "Good eating today!" they seemed to be saying.

Good eating here, too. Woodpecker feast tree.

Back at the car, a western white pine cone lay on the grass. It is 22 cm. long.

And from there, I went prowling through the underbrush, looking at lichen and moss. The photos are waiting to be processed.

A Skywatch post.

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Hay un caminito, corto, y muy ad hoc, cortado por cuadriciclos que tomaban un atajo, bajando desde la carretera hacia el oeste a un camino de madereros, al cual el acceso está cerrado para vehículos no oficiales. Este camino pasa por un lago, el Lago Espejo. Yo seguí ese atajo, evitando las secciones donde el lodo estaba resbaloso, y luego caminé hasta el lago. El dia estaba fresco y nublado; recientemente había llovido, y todo el musgo estaba empapado. Un buen dia para una caminata.

1. El Lago Espejo, reflejando un cielo nublado.
2. Totoras (Typha latifolia) en la orilla del lago. Los tallos rojizos, ahora sin hojas, son de Spiraea douglasii, una planta nativa que vive con las raices mojadas.
3. Subiendo de nuevo el cerro, se me presentó este árbol sin hojas, colonizado por líquenes. Todavía retiene algunas de sus piñas.
   
   Durante todo este paseo, subiendo y bajando, oía un coro constante de pájaros. Un persistente ch-ch-ch-ch ... De vez en cuando un trino o un zumbido; dos veces un towhee (pipilo) llamó; ¡twii! Me detenía para observar los árboles donde escuchaba el canto más fuerte, miraba entre ramas oscuras; allí no vi ni un solo pájaro. Cerca del camino de madereros, un towhee me mostró sus plumas blancas de la cola antes de desaparecer. Por fin se me ocurrió mirar al cielo. Allí una bandada de golondrinas daban vueltas, cantando mientras volaban. —¡Buen provecho! — parecía que decían.
   
4. Aquí también el menu es atrayente. Un árbol favorito de pájaros carpinteros.
5. Llegando al coche, descubrí en el suelo esta piña del pino occidental blanco. Mide 22 cm. de largo.

Y de allí, fuí a vagar entre los arbustos, buscando líquenes y musgos. Las fotos están en vias de procesar.

Un poste de Skywatch.

Things that Made me Happy in 2024, Part 3

The birds: Things that made me happy in 2024, Part 3.

I love to take photos of mallards and eagles and turkey vultures. Or herons and Canada geese, when I find them. Birds big enough and close enough for my camera lens and my shaky hands. But there are so many others, far off, diving out of sight, caught just as they disappeared behind a log or into the trees, lost in the mist and rain; birdies bouncing, hopping, swooping, zooming ... And I see them and come home happy. Sometimes I actually get photos.

Misty winter afternoon, with the tide at rest; islets in the estuary, sleepy waterfowl. November.

Dark blue/black bird on a dark afternoon, much lightened. First I'd seen of these here. Brewers blackbird male, I think. Comox, December.

On the far side of the beaver pond, among a mess of dead branches, there was a brief flutter. The camera, zoomed as far as it would go, found this robin. Later, there was a red-winged blackbird in the same spot. May.

A scaup, foraging for floating seaweeds. Oyster Bay, October.

Every year, I look for swallows' nests in Brown's Bay. This one was guarding a nest full of babies. July.

And last, nary a bird to be seen, just the results of determined pecking and pounding. A woodpecker snag, Hwy. 28, July.

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Seguimos con "Cosas que me hicieron feliz en 2024": los pajaritos.

Me encanta sacar fotos de ánades reales, de águilas, de los buitres pavo. Y si acaso los encuentro, las garzas azules o un ganso Canadá; todos pájaros suficientemente grandes, encontradas no tan lejos, al alcance de la lente de mi cámara y de mis manos temblorosas. Pero hay tantos otros, en la distancia, zambulléndose, vistos justo antes de desaparecer tras un tronco, perdidos en la neblina; pajaritos rebotando, saltando, trazando ochos en el aire, persiguiendo insectos a toda velocidad ... Y los veo y regreso a casa muy contenta. A veces hasta logro sacar una que otra foto.

1. Tarde tranquila en el estuario, con neblina. Se ven los arbustos de una de las islitas del estuario, y tras ellos, los pinos de tierra firma. En el agua, descansando mientras la corriente de la marea está a su mínimo, unos pajaritos buceadores. Noviembre.
2. Un pájaro azul, casi negro, visto en una tarde sin luz, y aclarado con Photoshop. Es la primera vez que veo estos pájaros por aquí; creo que es turpial ojiclaro macho, Euphagus cyanocephalus. En Comox, este diciembre.
3. Al lado opuesto de la laguna de los castores, entre una maraña de ramas muertas, vi un movimiento breve. La cámara, con la lente extendida a lo máximo, descubrió este petirrojo. Más tarde vi un sargento alirrojo en el mismos sitio. Este fue en mayo.
4. Pato porrón, hembra, buscando algas marinas flotantes en Oyster Bay. Octubre.
5. Golondrina. Cada año busco sus nidos en Brown's Bay. Esta guardaba un nido lleno de polluelos en julio pasado.
6. Y aquí no se ve ningún pájaro, sino la obra de muchos pájaros carpinteros, buscando comida en la madera muerta. Cerca de la carretera 28, en julio. 

These made me happy, Part 3.

 Again, I'm looking through my "Things that make me Happy" folder. 

I didn't know the title of this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, and just found it now, looking up the quote.

Happy Thought

The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Anyhow, here's today's batch of photos, again in no particular order.

Rotten pilings, Oyster Bay tidal lagoon at low tide.

New pickleweed, Salicornia pacifica, on the Oyster Bay breakwater.

Reflections: a tiny anemone at the corner of my aquarium, reflected doubly in the surface of the water and the adjacent wall.

Just a rock, tumbled down from a cliff beside Buttle Lake, exposing its white "innards".

An old Ford, rusting away.

The baby monkey tree outside my window, under fresh snow.

Woodpecker snag. There are faces in those holes! Trapped dryads?

Cedar bark, branch tips, and cone, and my winter gloved fingers. Tyee Spit.

That's all for now; tomorrow I'll go on to look at lichens and moss. But I'll come back to this folder from time to time, now that it has a proper name and location on my hard drive.

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Otra vez con la carpeta de cosas que me hacen feliz.

El poeta Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) lo dijo en un pequeño poema de dos lineas, al que le dió el título de "Pensamiento Feliz":

"El mundo está tan lleno de tantas cosas,

Yo sé que todos seremos felices como los reyes."

Bueno, aquí están las fotos de hoy, desorganizadas como siempre.

1. Pilotes viejísimos de un muelle ya bien desaparecido en la laguna mareal de Oyster Bay.
2. Brotes nuevos de Salicornia pacifica, planta que crece donde le llega a cubrir agua salada de vez en cuando. En el rompeolas de Oyster Bay.
3. Reflejos. Una anémona en mi acuario, reflejada en la superficie del agua, y también en la pared que se une a la suya.
4. Una roca cualquiera, caída del precipicio al lado de Buttle Lake, rota y mostrando su relleno blanco.
5. Un Ford antiguo, oxidándose lentamente al lado del bosque.
6. Mi pequeño piñonero (pehuén, Araucaria araucana, árbol nativo a Chile) bajo nieve recién caída.
7. Un tronco excavado por los pájaros carpinteros. Dentro de las excavaciones se ven caras. ¿Serán dríades?
8. Cedro: corteza, ramitas y cono. Y mis dedos en guantes por el frio.

Y eso es todo por ahora: mañana vuelvo a mirar líquenes y musgos. Pero volveré a esta carpeta de vez en vez, ya que ahora tiene su nombre y su sitio en mi computadora.

 

Housing development and grocery store

"It is important to remember that, under natural conditions, a tree remains part of the forest ecosystem long after its death." (Wildlife & Trees in British Columbia, p13)

So I scramble through the bush to look at old woodpecker trees. This one stands near the Ridge trail, high above the Campbell River.

Long past its sell-by date. Or is it?

Loose bark, rectangular excavations, drilled holes.

The rectangular cuttings identify the carver as a woodpecker, probably the pileated woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus, which I have seen in these woods.

The lowest cut was just above my head. I moved in closer for a good look.

Two, or maybe three, types of holes.

Pileated Woodpeckers forage in large, dead wood—standing dead trees, stumps, or logs lying on the forest floor. They make impressive rectangular excavations that can be a foot or more long and go deep inside the wood. These holes pursue the tunnels of carpenter ants, the woodpecker’s primary food. The birds also use their long, barbed tongues to extract woodboring beetle larvae (which can be more than an inch long) or termites lying deep in the wood. (Cornell: All About Birds)

Nose to the tree now:

Chipping goes deep into the sapwood; drill holes go deeper still.

Sapsuckers drill a series of holes into the bark, where the sap runs freely. Beavers go a bit deeper, and eat the cambium layer of deciduous trees. Beetles and ants tunnel through the newer, live layers of the inner tree, where the woodpeckers chase them down.

This snag still has a solid centre, at least at the bottom; as this rots, probably with the help of shelf fungi, inner space opens, creating opportunities for snag nesters, from chickadees to woodpeckers to owls and ducks, squirrels and mice. The holes at the top (see the first photo) may be nest sites. And where the bark hangs loose, bats may shelter.

I found this diagram helpful:

Borrowed from MyWoodshop.

The outer layers are clearly visible in the woodpeckers' carving; they slowed down when they reached the denser heartwood.

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"Es importante recordar que bajo condiciones normales, un árbol permanece como parte integral del ecosistema del bosque por largo tiempo después de su muerte." (De "Wildlife & Trees in British Columbia")

Así que yo me hago camino entre el bosque para mirar viejos árboles usados por los pájaros carpinteros. Este se alza en el bosque en el cerro arriba del rio Campbell.

Fotos 1 a 4: el árbol muerto, visto cada vez más de cerca.

Los cortes rectangulares identifican al creador como pájaro carpintero, probablemente el picamaderos norteamericano, Dryocopus pileatus; los he visto en este bosque.

"Los picamaderos norteamericanos buscan su comida en madera muerta y grande — árboles muertos que se mantienen en pie, troncos cortados, o caídos al suelo del bosque. Hacen excavaciones rectangulares impresionantes que pueden medir 30cm. o más de largo, y extenderse profundamente en la madera. Estas excavaciones siguen los túneles de hormigas carpinteras, que son la comida principal de los picamaderos. Los pájaros también utilizan sus lenguas largas y espinosas para sacar los larvas de escarabajos que taladran la madera (estos pueden medir más de 2 cm.) o termitas que viven en el interior de la madera." (De Cornell: All About Birds)

Los chupasavias hacen una serie de agujeros en la corteza, donde fluye la savia. Los castores pasan por la corteza para comerse el cambium de los árboles de hojas caducas. Los escarabajos y las hormigas penetran más, entre la madera viva del interior del árbol; aquí les persiguen los pájaros carpinteros.

Este árbol muerto todavía tiene el corazón entero, por lo menos en la parte inferior; cuando este se pudre, con la ayudad de los hongos políporos, abre espacio para los que ahí hacen sus nidos, desde los pequeños chickadees hasta los picamaderos, los buhos y algunos patos, las ardillas y los ratones silvestres. Los huecos allá arriba (véase la primera foto) pueden contener nidos. Y donde la corteza se cuelga flojamente, se pueden acobijar los murciélagos.

Quinta foto: Esta esquema me parecía útil.

Las capas exteriores se ven claramente en la excavación de los picamaderos; cuando llegaron al duramen se detuvieron, aparte de hacer pequeños hoyos.

Mushroom in a tree

I left the shore at Miracle Beach and wandered through the woods, finding wide trails I hadn't visited before. The ground was still wet from the morning's rain, and there were mushrooms everywhere.

This one was up a tree.

Hooded false morel, aka Elfin saddle, Gyromitra infula.

This is another of the poisonous mushrooms to be aware of. It sort of looks like a morel, which is edible and delicious. But the false morel contains gyromitrin (named after the mushroom), which is converted in the body to MMH, a component of rocket fuels. Unfortunately, it doesn't make humans speedy.

Some of the morels must be cooked to become edible. It doesn't work for this one; even the fumes as it is cooked are toxic.

The cap of a real morel mushroom attaches directly to the stem, while the cap of a false morel grows around the stem. Real morel mushrooms are also hollow from top to bottom when cut in half, which varies from the filled nature of false morels. Finally, based on outward appearance, real morels are rather uniformly shaped and covered in pits that seem to fall inwards, whereas false morels are often considered more irregularly shaped with wavy ridges that seem to form outwards. (Wikipedia)

The mushroom grows on rotting or burnt wood. The forest in Miracle Beach is rich in both; many of the trees are blackened by the 1938 fire. The one sheltering the mushroom is a snag, burnt at the bottom, and rotting as it stands.

 

The mushroom's tree. Flash photo; it was dark down there in the woods.

The large holes have been dug by woodpeckers, searching for grubs.

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Me alejé de la playa en Miracle Beach, y vagué por los senderos en el bosque, donde no había visitado antes. El suelo estaba mojado por la lluvia mañanera, y había hongos en gran número por dondequiera.

Este crecía en un árbol.

Es la colmenilla falsa, o el hongo de silla de hadas, Gyromitra infula. Es un hongo venenoso, que se parece a otros hongos buenos para comer y delicioso. ¡Hay que tener cuidado! Este hongo contiene Gyromitrin (nombrado así por el hongo), que en el cuerpo humano se convierte in el compuesto tóxico monometilhidrazina, que se usa en combustibles para cohetes espaciales. A nosotros, no nos imparte velocidad, desafortunadamente.

Algunas de las colmenillas necesitan cocerse para hacerlos comestibles. Este método no sirve con la colmenilla falsa; aún los gases que emite mientras se cocina son tóxicos.

(De Wikipedia) El sombrerillo de una colmenilla verdadera se fija directamente al estipe, mientras que el sombrero de la colmenilla falsa crece alrededor del estipe. Las colmenillas verdaderas están completamente llenas, cortadas desde arriba para abajo; las colmenillas falsas están huecas. Finalmente, en su aparencia exterior, las colmenillas verdaderas tienen una forma más o menos regular, y están cubiertas de hoyos o pozuelos que caen para adentro, mientras que las falsas son irregulares y sus ondas parecen abultarse para afuera.

Este hongo crece en madera quemada o podrida. Aquí en el bosque de Miracle Beach, muchos de los árboles tienen la corteza quemada, a raiz del incendio del año 1938. El árbol donde crece este hongo está quemado y también bien podrido. Se ha convertido en "vela", un árbol muerto que se mantiene de pie. Las excavaciones a lo largo del tronco las han hecho los pájaros carpinteros, buscando insectos.

Vertical dinner

There's always something else to wonder about.

I always stop to look at woodpecker trees. This one was unusual.

Holes on one side only, go from roots to top branches.

The holes, closely spaced, went from the ground up to the top of the tree, all on one side. Far above, the tree was still green.

Smaller section, 2 m. above ground

On that one side, most of the bark had been chipped off. None of the holes were more than an inch deep. They are placed randomly. (Sapsuckers make small holes, but they line up in orderly rows.)

Signed with a "G"

The ground under the tree was covered with chips of bark and red cambium.

I wonder: what kind of critter winters in the bark, but only on one side of the tree? And what persistent bird did this?

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Siempre me detengo para mirar los árboles donde han estado comiendo los pájaros carpinteros. Este era algo diferente.

Desde el suelo hasta la corona del árbol, estaba cubierto de miles de hoyitos, pero solo en un lado del tronco. Ninguno de los agujeros medían más de un par de centímetros de hondo; la mayor parte de la corteza había caído al suelo.

Me pregunto: ¿Qué tipo de insecto pasa el invierno bajo la corteza pero solamente en un lado del árbol? Y ¿Qué pájaro tan trabajador se dedicó a minar a todo el largo del árbol?

Spider, fly, woodpecker holes

Every now and then I decide to make trouble for myself. Instead of the usual lenses I use on the camera - the kit lens, because it can handle small crabs and distant islands reasonably well (and it's lightweight; that counts when your bones are wearing out), or the 40 mm because it can focus and take a photo from an inch away; handy when I'm flipping stones with the camera in one hand, the stone in another. - sometimes I fit the camera out with the 85 mm. lens. It does better in the shade than the others, and lets me take photos of things like yesterday's butterfly without getting so close that I scare them away.

But it has its disadvantages: it has no zoom. It won't focus at all at short distances. It won't open up to take in a whole stump unless I'm so far away that there are a dozen other trees between me and it. It's almost hopeless on scenery. It doesn't like extremes of light and dark; it haloes branches in pink and blue.

But it challenges me to look at things in a different way. Helps me to notice things I might otherwise have missed. Allows me to take photos of small things that I can't quite get close enough to because of the terrain. And, as cameras do, it sees things that I could not.

I was hiking up the Ridge Trail, taking random shots at anything out of normal reach; a scrap of moss, a woodpecker hole, a distant shelf fungus, an oddly-shaped log. On the way up, there wasn't much else to see. I was following a bear's track, which the camera didn't think was as obvious as I did, and the patches of scraped-away duff and the moist sawdust under a log, fallen as the bear checked it for ants, weren't really photogenic. So: bits of moss on distant trunks. And the butterflies.

A tuft of moss on a tree a few metres away. And what I couldn't see: cladonia lichen and a spotted fly.

I have to use automatic focus away from home; without my glasses, I can't read the screen any more. So what I want and what the camera thinks is important sometimes conflict, and the camera wins. I found a small patch of periwinkles, already in bloom. I thought they were worth a photo; the camera saw, instead, a tiny spider beside one of them.

Blurry periwinkle, not-so-blurry spider, upside-down.

Blotchy brown shelf fungus, Interesting pattern. Moss, lichen, ferns.

Woodpecker snag. As shot. Looks rather spooky to me.

If you zoom into this photo, you can see the pink tips on the huckleberry shrub on the left.

More tomorrow.

Old burn

In the summer of 1938, Vancouver Island sweltered through the longest drought seen for over 50 years. Sparks from logging operations set off dozens of small brush fires. Smoke hung over the hills.

Fire broke out in a log pile on Menzies Bay, just north of Campbell River, and leapt into the forest. A couple of days later, in spite of the 400 firefighters trying to quench it, it was burning over several thousand acres of timber. By the third day, it was threatening Campbell River, and racing up-river, past Elk Falls. The smoke rose two kilometres into the air, and covered almost two-thirds of Vancouver Island.

The fire headed south then, passing Campbell River, racing towards Comox, and east up the mountainsides to Mount Washington. 2000 men fought it, hopelessly. 470 square kilometres of forest were in flames, and the wind was picking up. At times, it reached 150 km/hr.

And then the rain came. The blessed, drenching West Coast rain, pouring down steadily for weeks. In the ancient forest off Elma Bay, these days called the Miracle Beach Provincial Park, the roaring blaze sizzled into damp coals.

Some say that's how Miracle Beach got its name.

Today, many of the older trees in Miracle Beach Provincial Park still wear the scars of that fire.

Survivor, still green up top.

Older Douglas-fir bark is thick and deeply grooved, providing habitat for many insects and nesting sites and groceries for birds and small animals. And old, damaged bark is even more hospitable. This old tree still retains some old scorch marks; it looks like most has been riddled by insects and then birds collecting insects.

The crevices go deep into the tree; I tried to light the bottom of several holes with the camera's flash, but the light didn't reach that far.

Near the centre of the section above, if you look closely, you'll see a white circle. I moved in to get a better look.

"Come into my parlor ..."

A spider hole, wide enough for a chickadee to wander in.

From another angle

I can't be sure; is that a spider lurking deep inside, or just blotchy patches in the bark? I didn't risk sticking a finger in to find out.

For comparison: a pair of unburnt Douglas-fir trunks. Grooved, but much neater.

And the remains of a smaller tree, after the woodpeckers have eaten their fill.

Past their sell-by date?

Hard-working trees:

Woodpecker snack bar. Also ant, beetle, spider hideout and winter quarters. Future nest site (under construction).

Critter bridge, creek dam, flotsam collector. Will likely host huckleberry bushes where the sun can reach them, next year.

In a sad ravine

We had stopped for coffee at a Tim Horton's we rarely visit. Behind the parking lot, separating it from a run-down trailer park and an apartment block, there is a narrow ravine. Yesterday, a sprinkling of new green leaves and catkins attracted my attention, and I looked over the fence.

It's a dark, dingy bit of terrain, cut off at each end by busy roads and high fences, polluted by runoff from a construction site upstream, untended, unvisited, except by people dumping garbage from both sides; coffee cups and old lumber, plastic and styrofoam, scraps of paper, and, of course, an upside-down shopping cart. At the bottom, a trickle of water meanders through oily mud.

Ma Nature is fighting back. Out of the muck have sprung hundreds of skunk cabbages; the floor of the ravine glows!

Clean, bright yellow and green!

Here and there, the first salmonberry flowers invite pollinating insects.

There's more! The ravine lives!

A woodpecker tree crumbling into the salmonberry bushes.

Some of the holes in that tree go deep into the centre.  Something other than woodpeckers has been at work. The largest hole would make a good den:

Is there a face inside that bottom hole?

Hanging high above, a pair of shoes is gathering moss.

We would have liked to scramble down to the bottom, but it was starting to rain. We went on into the Tim Horton's, found the line-up impossibly long, and went home without coffee.