Desk-top building project

Laurie brought me a spider ...

While he waited on my desk in a pill bottle, he decided to make himself comfortable. He got my attention, and a new temporary home:

In the morning, I set him free to find a home of his own.

Wordless

Bedtime thought

I've been doing too much, for too long. I am too tired even to think.

Except that I think these look like old, smushed buns from the bakery.

Mushrooms and strawberry runners, Centennial Beach

And now, I'm going to bed. Goodnight, y'all!

Bee heaven

We went to Centennial Beach without checking the tide tables, and found the beach reduced to a narrow strip of stones. We turned inland and dawdled through the dunes.

This area, just south of the park area, is mostly loose sand, anchored by sea rocket and scratchy dune grasses. Here and there, low-growing purple beach peas find spots sheltered by old logs; escapees from landscaped yards, poppies, euphorbia and huge mounds of evergreen rose bushes, line the inland edge.  The sea rocket is in full bloom now, covered with small, pale flowers, their colours eclipsed by the bright yellow and orange of the bees that feed on them.

Native orange bumblebee, Bombus melanopygus*.

Another bumblebee, in yellow and black. An older bee, probably, going bald.

The flowers are productive; note this bee's full pollen sac on his leg.

A different species, probably. The abdomen is black, with faint stripes. Possibly the Eastern bumblebee?

On euphorbia, a wasp I don't recognize.

In the center of a rose, more yellow and black stripes. Another wasp?

No. This one's a honeybee, Apis mellifera.

*Note: all bee/fly/wasp IDs are tentative. I am often wrong, and appreciate corrections.

Cave canem

Seen in a Strathcona alley:

A sign on the fence says, "Beware of Dog".

Independence? Not yet!

I looked up from supper to see this white crowned sparrow family, three youngsters and a hard-working parent, getting their own meal outside my window.

Waiting his turn

The chicks are as tall as their mother.

When the mother's back was turned, the chicks kept busy picking up seeds and eating them. As soon as she came close, though, they immediately became helpless, and stood waiting to be fed. Little con artists!

How to stop a weevil in its tracks

I discovered a new trick yesterday. I found a very small weevil on my countertop, and tried to get his photo. He kept moving, and turning his back on me, changing direction if I thought I would anticipate him ... hopeless. I tempted him with strawberries, to no avail. I was going for a few grains of sugar, and saw the sugar cubes. I dampened one, just a bit, and gave it to him. Just the thing! He clambered up, checked out the corners, and settled down to load up on carbs.

"This tastes better than your old strawberries!"

Staying put.

I took all the photos I wanted. He never attempted to leave. He stayed there while I went about my business, and was still there half an hour later. And the sugar cube is easy to turn or move into better light. It makes a decent background, too; not too busy, not too white.

I'll have to try this with ants.

Temptations at the farm market.

We went to buy veggies, to eat, and to plant in the garden. We came home with marigolds, too. And photos. Couldn't resist the colours:

Marigolds. Slug deterrents. That's our excuse.

The palest of creamy yellows.

Petunias come in every imaginable colour.

Ran out of pigment

Verbena

More marigolds.

Midnight visitor

I stepped outside at midnight yesterday, to look at the sky and wonder if it were going to rain. Good thing I looked down, too; this big slug was crossing my path.

Big brown beauty, about 6 inches long.

I love the rich colours, and that elegant stripe down the head. On the far left is the breathing pore, the pneumostome. This one is so far open that I can see the inner cavity.

If you look closely, you can see the mite on the lower edge of his mantle. I think there was only one; it won't do him any damage.

A shy, "be nice to me" look in his eyes.

He was so pretty, and yet so dangerous to my garden. What to do? I couldn't murder him in cold blood; I picked him up gently in a garden trowel and tossed him into the cedars on the far side of the lawn. I hope he finds good feasting there. Maybe he can keep the bindweed under control.

How not to be supper

Crabs will eat anything, fresh or old, plant or animal. One of their favourite treats, though, is fresh snail meat, so fresh it's still squirming. My shore crabs spend a good part of their time trying to break through snail shells, not always as successfully as they'd like.

Big male, showing off his snail cracking tool.

Asian mud snails, up on the glass where the crabs can't get them.

These two snails are survivors, and bear their scars proudly. The lower one has had the worst of it; extensive damage near the lip, where the crabs prefer to start work, and a large patch taken out of the upper spiral. Lucky for her that their shells are so thick. Or rather, it's an arms race; if your enemies have humongous shell-cracking pincers, you'd better wear heavy armour and keep it repaired. Climbing walls helps, too.

The snail on the right has patched the big gap in her shell; only the scars remain.

Lips, patched and freshly broken.

The snails won this round.

Just a reminder ...

... to myself.

Sometimes, with all the construction going on around us, the traffic and dust, I forget what a green city this is, really. Here's a view of a busy area of Vancouver, taken from near the top of Vancouver General Hospital: we used to live right in the middle of all that greenery.

Cambie Street, Queen E. Park, Mount Baker

Where we are now, in Delta, the plantings are newer, the open areas larger, but just down the hill we have Burns Bog and the Watershed Park, both under dense stands of trees. And then there is wide, flat farmland down on the true delta, where the winds blow fresh, where gulls and eagles play overhead. No wonder Vancouver (and area, the GVRD) scores high on the lists of the world's most livable cities!

I just needed to remember that; the air was dusty this afternoon from the construction projects next door and down the street, and I was grumbling.

Of bugs, flowers, and muddy lenses

I came home from hours of driving in the hot sun, in the front door and straight out the back to the shady garden. So cool! So green! So easy on the eyes! So buggy! I went back in for the camera and macro lens.

Fly on London Pride flowers

Delicate bloom of London Pride. Taken with macro lens.

American House spider. One of Fat Momma's great-greats.

While I was up on a ladder taking this photo, I dropped the camera. It was on a cord around my neck, so no harm done, but the macro lens fell off, landed in the damp mud of the garden, and split in half. This isn't as bad as it sounds; it's a home-made stack, which cost me nothing but work. I can fix it, given a slow, rainy day.

But I needed it for bugs. Or maybe not; I went in and brought out my old Olympus (SP55OUZ), which I had almost stopped using, because it got dust inside the lens. (At London Drugs, where I bought it, they told me the repair would cost more than the camera.) Sometimes, especially if I use the flash, the spots show up on the photo. But it takes good macro photos, as long as I remove the spots later.

I decided to experiment; take the same photo with the little Sony (Cybershot) and with the Olympus, then compare them.

Petunia. With the Sony. The Olympus needs more light.

Dutchman's Breeches. With the Sony.

Harvestman on hydrangea leaf. Sony

Harvestman under hydrangea leaf. With the Olympus. Almost enough light.

Tiny Cross spider. With the Olympus and flash. I couldn't get close enough to focus with the Sony without scaring the spider away.

Rhododendron buds. Sony. The Olympus doesn't like extreme lighting.

Ant in center of rhododendron. Sony. Not enough light for the Olympus. It doesn't allow flash with Super-Macro.

Bee on rhodo bud. Note the yellow pollen sac on his leg. Sony. The Olympus was 'way too slow.

Rhododendrons in the shade with sunlit trees behind. Almost looks artificial. Sony, again.

The upshot of all this is that I am still happy with the little Sony; it's fast, it's light, and it handles contrasts well. I can take photos one-handed, which helps when I'm up ladders. On the downside, it doesn't focus if the surroundings are too busy, and the flash is unpredictable. When it all works, it's great. But I need to keep using the Olympus; given enough light and time, it does much better on tiny bugs, as long as they're sitting still.

And maybe, when I rebuild the macro lens, I can adjust it more carefully to the Sony. I think I'll put it on a strap, too.

"I'm outta here!" (Says worm.)

I have been far too busy these last few weeks. My stack of unsorted photos grows every day; I may never catch up.

Here's a green worm I promised to post:

Unidentified; unidentifiable?

This was in the filter where I found the baby hermit crabs. It was barely a couple of mm. long, very green. It attracted my attention because it didn't move like most worms do, twisting and coiling and reversing direction every few seconds. This little guy went straight ahead, purposefully, to the edge of the drop of water, then along the side. Eventually, he began to push at the rim, distending it, stretching the drop out in the direction he wanted to go. I've seen flatworms do this, never other worms.

He had two distinct eyespots, and what looked like two smaller eyespots behind them. I think he has dark freckles along the sides, too.

All I can think of is a green ribbon worm, Emplectonema gracile, except that they grow to about 4 inches long; could this be a youngster? They have a lighter underside, which I couldn't see in this worm, as he was too small to be flipped over. They do have 10 to 20 eyespots on the head, fewer when they are tiny. (Description and photos, in Spanish.) They don't like the light; if this guy is E. gracile, I can see why he tried to push his way out of the drop of water under my lamp.

I put him in the tank; if he survives, I may see him again, grown up enough to identify properly.

Orange polka-dots

Shore crab molt, sun-dried:

White Rock beach, on log.

Too late, too slow, too dark

I had left the back door wide open to catch a bit of fresh air. Shutting it, I startled a young raccoon under the fence; he ran out, stopped to look at me for a second, then left, stage right. Luckily, the camera was on my desk, barely a step away. Not so happily, it took its time powering on. I took a photo, without even waiting to focus, but missed:

Too late!

I ran out to the lawn; I found the raccoon out in the open behind a neighbour's place, but he scuttled into a hedge, then back onto the lawn. He hesitated, watching me warily, then detoured around me and dashed into the cedars. I was too slow, again.

I like this photo; unfocused, cut off, blurred, and burnt out as it is, it captures the raccoon's hurry and panic.

At least I got three legs this time.

Through the branches, I saw him climbing a tree. He stopped half-way, peering down at me from the shelter of the trunk.

This time, I got his face. Part of it. See the white nose, the black "bandit" mask? And the ear?

This was a fairly small raccoon, scruffy and skinny. I got the idea that he is out alone in the world for the first time, and not making too good a go of it. He seemed very uncertain as to how to deal with me; older, fatter raccoons usually look at me, then go about their business, unfazed.

I hope he finds his way back to the vacant lot across the street, where there is abundant cover and food under the blackberry vines and alders.

Today's new thing

On a dry, burnt log on the White Rock beach, I found these two little packets:

Mushrooms, maybe?

They were each just under an inch long, a bit sticky to the touch, fringed and connected with white tendrils; the surface looked papery. There were no others anywhere on the logs around.

One looked as if it had been damaged. I prodded the other one with a stick, and it split apart.

Innards

There was nothing inside but this brown, doughy mass. The skin surrounded the whole thing; there was no stalk.

I don't know what they are. They remind me of a puffball, in the skin and the internal lack of features, but the shape and attachment to the log don't fit. They're not in my mushroom books.

The never-ending variety of living things always amazes me.