More than meets the eye

Appearances can be deceiving. Take the rocky shore at Kwomais Point, to the west of White Rock beach, for example. It looks more or less the same as the rest of the waterfront; the railroad tracks, a barrier strip of rocks, then sand and rock mixed. Seaweed and eelgrass, seagulls and squalling crows.

Almost high tide, in a weedy spot.

But this area is not as much used by people as the rest of the shore. Maybe that's because there is no road access, no "official" trail, and no sign at the top of the steps, which, besides, lead only half-way down the bluff face to a lookout point. From here, through a gap in the railing, a narrow path, unimproved, muddy, and treacherous in places, scrambles down to the beach below. This Saturday, fewer than a dozen people were within sight.

And on the first patch of sand, we found a starfish:

The rest of us are over thataway ...

More, many more, were waiting for us among the rocks.

Pink and purple starfish. And purple-black seaweed.

In a two-inch-deep puddle beside a rock, tentacles sprung directly from the sand. An anenome, buried up to its mouth.


At the edge of the puddle, something moved. Something very tiny. It was a black and white striped fish, barely bigger than the shrimp nearby.

See them both?

A large rock was home to a chiton, as well as a mixed colony of anenomes, rich brown and white.


The chiton is that oval grey shell at the bottom of the rock. The white twisty things off to the left are the tubes of some type of marine worm.

Another look at the anenomes, closed up tight against the air.

Each rock and crevice seemed to house different types of creatures. The seaweeds were green (sea lettuce and eelgrass), yellow and brown (rockweed and a knobbly, hair-like growth) red, and dark purple. At a distance, I saw also a bright orange patch on a rock; the tide was coming in, and I couldn't get to it to investigate.

The seagulls had been using some areas as dining rooms, and they were littered with broken clam shells and crab pieces. And starfish clutching at the crabs.

An armful of crab legs.

I started photographing pools of water and sheltered rock sides, whether or not I saw anything of interest in them at the moment. At home, I blew the photos up. See what I found!


Assorted snails, in different shapes and colours. Broken shells, including mussels and barnacles. Limpets, holding tight to the rock. And an wonderfully camouflaged fish, a sculpin. I can find it, but when I look away and look back, it seems to have disappeared; I have to search for it again. Can you see it?

Here's another little pool:


The red "petal" seems to be a piece of broken crab pincher. Most of the area is covered in seaweeds, but look up in the top left corner. What is that?

Here's a close-up.


Tentacles! I haven't seen ones like this before, with white markings on the tentacles themselves. It's probably another kind of anenome.

And Laurie took this photo, of seaweed, he thought. But did you notice the large sculpin?


This piece of shore is like the beaches I grew up on; alive and thriving. We'll be back, at low tide, early in the day, and carrying lunch.
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Taking forever ...

... to communicate with Blogger. There's a glitch in the works somewhere.

I'm going to bed.

Heart-broken and happy about it

A few minutes ago, this pair formed a pretty heart.

Along the bottom of the White Rock bluffs, creeklets trickle into a ditch running along the railroad track and emptying onto the beach. There is never much water in it; the weeds grow almost to the bottom. In wider spots, pondweed and brooklime flourish. This Saturday, the damselflies were providing the sparkles.

I caught this couple in an odd pose.


Lined up, head to tip of tail, the one in the rear curving under ...


... and dipping her tail in the water.

What was going on?

I knew that damselflies mate in a "wheel", although it looks more like a heart to me. The male clasps the female behind the head, using claspers on the end of his long abdomen. She then curls around and under, bringing the tip of her abdomen to his genitalia at the bottom of his middle section. (There's a clear image here, in BugGuide.)

But this was no "wheel" or "heart". Were they confused? Oh, Google!

They're Western Red Damsels, Amphiagrion abbreviatum*, and they're laying eggs. The male retains his hold on the female's upper thorax while they search for a good home for the next generation. Then she dips the ovopositor at the tip of her abdomen into the water and deposits the eggs.

Why he holds her during this process is uncertain. He may just be making sure that no other male gets a chance at her until his contribution is dealt with. My Field Guide mentions that in some damselflies, the male actually lifts her from the water when she is finished laying. A rescue operation, as it were.

*These are the only BC damselflies where both the female and male are red.
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Babes in the woods

It was still raining on the Delta slopes yesterday morning, but off to the west we could see blue sky. We grabbed our cameras and went to the White Rock/Ocean Park bluffs, and down the long stairs and trail to the beach.


At the viewing platform partway down, we stopped to take a photo of the water below.


These were among the trees beside the ramp:


A new Steller's Jay fledgling, still rumpled from the nest, and waiting to be fed.

And perched a mere couple of metres away, a hummingbird, a chick, I think.


Among the bright greens of new leaves in the sunlight, his iridescent back almost, but not quite, served as camouflage. Like the Steller's jay, he sat quietly, occasionally grooming himself, not attempting to fly away.

While we watched, another hummingbird arrived. This one did not perch, but buzzed around the chick until he abandoned his branch. The pair flew away behind the honeysuckle vines.

And that's just for starters; more later. Much more.
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Beach Grove in the Sunshine

Just so I won't forget: this is what sunshine looks like. And it was barely a week ago!

(It seems as though it's been raining for much longer than that.)

"Oh, what a beautiful morning!"


Sweetly scented.


Red wagon.


Pink and white.


Brown butterfly with frayed wings.


Tidy yellow cottage.


Sundress at an alley-way sale.

Rosebush with reflecting window as background.

And maybe, just maybe, the sun will come out tomorrow. It's overdue.
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First flight

Drip, drip

Sog.

Another drizzly day. In the afternoon, a tiny sparrow sat huddled and miserable on the wet cement of my patio.


I watched him for a long while. He wasn't moving, wasn't eating. Just sitting, puffed up and looking cold. I was considering whether to go out and see if he was injured, when the mother appeared. I'd seen her around; a jittery white-crowned sparrow, always in a great hurry. She looked the fledgling over and left. A moment later, another chick fluttered down to land beside the first.

Wishing they were back in the warm nest, maybe.

They perked up when Mommy joined them and started picking up seeds; they opened hungry beaks when she was near. She worked diligently, cracking seeds and feeding one baby, then the other.

A lot easier than ferrying seeds up to the nest one billfull at a time.

For about an hour, the chicks sat in the rain and ate. They grew more confident, more interested in their surroundings; they held their heads higher, they started to explore.

Bright eyes!

A bit later, they were hopping. And soon they had managed to hop up into the shrubbery, about 18 inches above the ground. And out of the rain. Mommy fed them there until bedtime.
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Horsehair!

This is a follow-up to my post, Wednesday morning, Down came the rain and ....

I wrote about a mysterious (to me) long worm that I found dancing in the rain. (The worm was dancing, not me. Just clarifying.)


I labelled it a roundworm, or nematode. Hugh, in the comments, suggested that it might be a horsehair worm. So I've been Googling again.

He's right. And I was wrong. It has all the characteristics of a horsehair worm. It is not a Nematode, but a Nematomorph. Which means "shaped like a nematode", so I wasn't that far out.

Wikipedia has a description of the phylum and a basic description of their life cycle. And at the NH Department of Environmental Services, I found a useful fact sheet, including:

Adult worms may be found in flowing or standing water including rivers, streams, vernal pools, ponds, and even pets’ water bowls. They are long (can grow up to two feet), thin (1/16th of an inch), and round, with inter- and intra- species color variation ranging from tan to black. Besides having a long and slender appearance, Gordian worms are unlike earth worms, in that they are not segmented. The body diameter is the same throughout most of the body’s length, with a slight taper at both extremities. The Gordian worm does not have a distinct head. Adults do not feed as their stomachs are degenerate (do not function) and their mouths are useless. They can be found either singularly or in masses, often wrapped around rocks, branches and each other.

• Found in (or near) water? Yes, in the rain.
• Not segmented? Check.
• Body diameter equal along length? Yes.
• No distinct head. Oh, yes. I spent a good part of my watching time trying to decide which end was the head.
• Add to that, from Wikipedia, no cilia. Uh-huh.
• ... longitudinal muscle and a non-functional gut, with no excretory, respiratory or circulatory systems. As far as I could see.

The adult worms don't need a functioning gut; they don't eat. They find a mate and start work on the next generation.

Wednesday evening, my worm was still alive, so I put him back in the planter where I found him. Today it was raining again, and he was back on his post at the top of the bird's head, swaying to some unheard beat.

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PS. In the comments, Christopher links to a video of a horsehair worm emerging from its previous cricket host. Warning: it's not for the squeamish.
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Gray day at Steveston pier.

It looked like rain, but the sky was blue to the east. We dressed for rain and went to Steveston to look at fishboats.

The historic cannery, under a steely sky.


Tug coming in for a landing.


Paulina. Very tidy, freshly painted.


Brenda; the feminine touch.


Empty spool, usually holding nets.


Smaller spool, with assorted nets.


All it takes is a crack with a smidgen of mud ...


Chugging upriver.


Rope ends.

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Down came the rain and ...

It all started with the robins. Or with the rain. Anyhow, with the robins in the rain.

It rained steadily all day, and we stayed home, busying ourselves with "catch-up" chores. But I kept an eye on the windows, watching for birds and soggy squirrels. In the afternoon, a pair of robins showed up, hunting for worms in the wet grass.

Yes, I'm dripping wet. And not happy about it. But I've got a family to feed.

She chopped up each worm in several pieces, and carried it off, uneaten. In a few minutes she, or her mate, was back hunting again. Responsible parents, hard at work.

I set out the camera handy to my reach, and we drank our afternoon tea facing the window. Laurie saw the towhee first.

Don't you have any dry sunflower seeds?

Hey, they're not so bad wet, after all!

A while later, I thought I saw movement in the shrubbery, and sat down by the window to wait. Nothing came out, though; it was probably heavy raindrops shaking the lilies-of-the-valley. But out in the open, where there was nothing but a few rocks and a planter of tiny mosses, something was alive. Something tiny and elusive, here now, gone a moment later. Eventually, I realized what it was.


A snake-like creature was climbing on a metal bird on the rim of the moss planter. And searching; lifting its head and weaving from side to side. I set the camera on macro and went out in the rain.


It's giving up, and heading back down. I measured later; this section of the bird is a bit over 3 inches long. The worm must be about 4 inches, and almost hair-thin.

I captured the worm, set it on a piece of washed moss and clamped it into a double-sided picture frame. It immediately coiled into a tight circle. But when nothing more happened, it gradually unwound itself and went about exploring the moss. I watched for a long time; it described such slow, graceful loops and swirls that I was almost hypnotised. Finally, I set it outside, away from inside light and heat.

A nematode, or roundworm. Probably free-living.

Tonight, I brought it inside again. It wasn't moving; I thought it was dead, and gently pried it free of the moss. But when I laid it out on the glass under the light, it woke and began its dance again.


Watching it under the hand microscope (only 60x), I could see the individual cells. Along the central, dark section, they look like tiny brown balls or grains of sand. The rest of them are transparent, but the same size and shape. The head end (top in this photo) is pointier than the tail, but otherwise, they look the same; clear, with a more transparent tip.

I don't know what kind of roundworm this is; there are over 15,000 species of the beasties. Most of our soil residents are smaller than this, though.

And its gone outside again, to spend the night. In a damp and cold bed, just the way it likes it.
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Bzzzzzzz!

Sunday morning, I posted this photo:


And commented:

I'll have to do a bit of Googling to identify the facial structures: is that four eyes, or two? And if two, which two? (The forward ones, I think.)

So I've done my homework, and here's what I've found out:

Bumblebees have 5 eyes. Or light-sensors, anyhow. They have 2 large compound eyes (which could be considered to be hundreds of eyes, I guess) and 3 ocelli, or primitive eyes that detect changes in light intensity.

Here's the photo again, cropped and labelled: (Click on it for a full-size view.)


The top two eye-like knobs on the thorax that confused me are the connecting points for the wings, which are almost invisible in this photo. The knobs that look like two smaller eyes are really the tops of the large, water-drop-shaped compound eyes. The antenna is attached part way down the length, in the space between the eyes, and crosses in front of the eye, which makes it hard to distinguish the shape of the eye in this photo.

The ocelli are the little bumps in the centre of the forehead. It looks to me, from the photo, that there are more than 3, but maybe this bumblebee just has a warty forehead.

I found this site, Bumblebee.org, packed full of useful information. Going down their menu, I found the mouth parts page, and identified the tongue on another of my photos. You can see it here, delving into the centre of the flower:


Bumblebee.org has a handy page on North American species of bumblebee, which I will be referring to often this summer, I think.

And while we're looking at bees, the latest Circus of the Spineless is up, and includes two great bee posts: Bees Knees, and Cellophane Bees. Good photos; go on over and look!
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Truck Stop

Seen in Beach Grove, yesterday.

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Smile for the camera!

Bumblebees are among the most frustrating insects to photograph; they are so big, comparatively speaking, so numerous, so vibrantly coloured, that I am obliged to try to "get" them. But I aim, press the shutter button half-way, wait the split second it takes the camera to decide what I want, and ... try again. The main character has exited, stage left.

Try and follow one around, through all its dizzying changes of direction, until it lands on a flower, and it invariably (or so it seems) lands on the one flower that you can't reach without falling into the rosebush or stepping on the gardener's prize petunias.

Get a good chance at one on a daisy right under your nose, and it is vibrating so rapidly, so ecstatically, that all your camera records is a yellow blur.

So I was amazed to find this one on an allium yesterday; it stayed in the same position, on the same flower, for so long that I thought it was dead until I saw the antennae moving.




I wanted a face shot, since he was being so co-operative, but this was a bit harder; the tiny allium petals were always in between, and the camera liked them better.


Got it, though. Just before the bumblebee decided to leave; this was becoming altogether too, too public.

I'll have to do a bit of Googling to identify the facial structures: is that four eyes, or two? And if two, which two? (The forward ones, I think.)


This one presented no anatomical conundrums. And no buzzing wings; he was nicely subdued by his choice of flower. A second later, and he was backing out, legs and wings flailing. He spun and left, to land next on the topmost rose on the bush, well over my head.

Of course.
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