Lifeguard on duty

Subbing . . .

Keeping an eye out for drowningstranded clams.

I'm working on a video. It will probably be done tomorrow.

A hint of pink

I think this is the first carpet beetle I've seen since this summer, an unusual state of affairs. He didn't want to stay around for photos, but I tempted him with a slice of cranberry.

Stopping to investigate ...

"Thanks, but I've got places to go."

At least I caught him with his wings half out. Is that pink on his back his true colour, or a reflection of the cranberry?

Not Quite Wordless: Red Kayak

Boundary Bay, January

A Skywatch post.

Deportation proceedings: Part 2 The accusation

There's nothing cuter than a baby crab.

Case in point; "Smiley". 2009 photo.

Trouble is, shore crabs do very well for themselves in an aquarium; steady temperatures, clean water, ample diet, and no predators, to boot! So they grow up large and strong.

And the bigger a crab gets, the more disruptive he becomes. He digs himself a deep burrow, throwing aside carefully-placed landscaping and piling leftovers on top of his neighbours' land. He then goes out to steal food from whoever has any, and retreats to his hole to eat it all in peace. No sharing! When his hole gets untidy, as it does - he's a messy eater - he abandons it and digs himself a new shelter. Again, he tosses his construction trash next door.

In between, he goes a-hunting. Freshly-molted young hermit is tasty; so is a snail that he can crack between his pincers. He can snatch a speeding amphipod out of the water without a miss. And a nice mouthful of green sea lettuce makes a good garnish. Leftovers are tossed into the current.

But even the non-edible, glued-in-place residents come in for their share of harassment. Enter the burrowing anemone.

"Val", from Campbell River. Nicely healed, growing a sturdy, button-studded column.

Hermit crabs crawl all over the anemones, picking up bits of debris, grooming the tentacles. Sometimes the anemone shuts down for a bit; more often it doesn't. They're friends. Big Patch, the crab, tried to imitate them, but was not welcomed, probably with good reason. I watched on several occasions as the crab approached. When he came within reach of a tentacle, he leaped backwards, as if shocked. He tried over and over, always with the same result. The anemone's stinging cells are good protection.

Revenge is sweet, says Patch.

He dug a hole right next door, and buried the anemone with broken shells and gravel. Val shut down; can't feed under all that heavy construction debris. I raked through the stuff with my fingers, removed the gravel, left clean sand around the base of Val's column.

Patch dug another, deeper hole. Val shut down. I cleaned up. Patch pushed a load of sand halfway across the aquarium and piled it on top. I cleaned up.

Burrowing anemone, White Rock beach.

(On the beaches, most of these anemones cling to rocks, sheltered from tidal sand pile-ups. I accidentally dug up the one above that I found in sand instead, by trying to measure its column depth with a finger. It had nothing to hold it, and rolled out of the sand. A wave caught it and hauled it away, probably food for whatever fish got to it first.

The anemones on the beach in Campbell River, where Val originated, usually anchor themselves in sandstone pits, sheltered by seaweeds. There is very little loose sand for the crabs to move about.)

Cluster of anemones in sandstone, Storries Beach, Campbell River.

Val has anchored hirself to the glass bottom of the aquarium, for safety, but that means only a certain depth of stuff will be tolerated around the column.  Patch kept burying hir.

Eventually, I moved Patch's favourite clam and oyster shells to the far end, re-arranged all the landscaping, plants, rocks and all, so as to leave nothing nearby to be piled on top of Val. Overnight, Patch hauled it all back, and re-buried his enemy.

Patch, showing off his Alpha male, XL pincers. Val in the background, shut down. What's the sense of fighting back?

So: it's time. Patch is too big for his britches, too big for a tank he must share. He's been exiled to a quarantine tank, with a couple of other growing crabs. Next trip to the beach, they're going along. They'll do fine there; they're large and healthy, if a bit spoiled.

Val is sitting in an empty plane, in lonely splendour, waving tentacles happily in the current.

Deportation proceedings, part1

On the beach, they live together amicably, the animals and plants that end up in my aquarium. All but one have come from the upper intertidal shores of Boundary Bay, where shore crabs and hermits (hairy, grainy-hand, and greenmark), worms, clams, mud snails and periwinkles, amphipods and burrowing Nassa snails, and the occasional anemone abound. Val, my one import, comes from Campbell River; on hir beach, we found the same crabs and hermits, snails and worms. So they should do well together in the tank, right?

Not so fast! On the beach, they do tend to separate into zones; there's a wormy patch, with snails on the surface; there's a clean sand patch, with clams underneath and crabs on the surface; there's a snail and hermit area, with worms underground. On our Campbell River beach, there were patches of mostly anemones where the tide pools were full of hermits and snails.

The combinations may be due to water current variations, to the size of the sand grains, to the number of rocks, or the varying salinities and temperatures of any intertidal zone. But personalites may enter into the equation, too.

Hermit crabs get along with each other nicely, even across species lines. They're fine with anemones; they clean up the shells of snails and clams without disturbing their owners. They eat barnacles or worms, but only when they find them already broken. They have no fight with "true" crabs.

Mud snails, periwinkles, and the little Nassas go about their business eating algae and detritus, ignoring anything else. They stay away from anemones, though; the anemones do sting when they're pestered.

But the crabs! A different story altogether. A crab is the top dog on the totem pole, in his own eyes. He'll get along with anything else, as long as it keeps out of his way, gives up its choice tidbits of food, doesn't invade his current hole. Or doesn't look too tasty, like, for example, a newly-molted hermit or a snail small enough to crack like a nut.

Unfortunate hermit, looking for a shell, with a crab waiting below him. Crab dinner.

And a mature male shore crab is the top-doggiest top dog of them all.

Patch, recently molted, grown to his full size, ready for action.

Next: the case against Patch.

Banished!

For disturbing the peace:

Patch, hiding his face. But not in shame, as he should be.

The whys and wherefores of his deportation tomorrow; tonight, my eyes keep closing of their own accord. Too sleepy!

Rambling post, with lost monkey

It's been a bookish couple of days. I finished the Terry Pratchett book my grand-daughter brought me, got a few hours sleep, and then we went to one of our favourite second-hand book stores, Renaissance Books, where I bought another DiscWorld book. Thief of Time. I had forgotten reading it, until I was half-way through the first chapter, but these are always re-readable and thought-provoking; I finished it last night.

On that same outing, we dropped into Black Bond Books at the mall, where I picked up a good Rocks and Minerals guide; the one we had here was so old that the price on the cover was 60 cents (1955). Today's version cost me 15 times that.

And then I spent the better part of my so-called "sleeping" hours reading that. I learned a few things I should have realized years ago; I'll be writing about them soon.

And now, where was I before I got side-tracked?

Boundary Bay, while it wasn't actually raining. Besides fog and peeps, there were also (back on shore) mushrooms and other delights:

Cladonia lichen on rotting fence.

Same fence, same species, but in a different stage. Leafy cladonia.

On a wet driftwood log, there were three pink mushrooms. I can't remember seeing these before.

Next log over. Orange jelly balls. I haven't noticed those little greyish buttons on the lights streak just above them. I wonder if they're another stage in the orange jelly life, or something else altogether. So many mysteries in the 'shroom families!

Not a mushroom. This little guy was sitting damply on a blackened stump by the roadside. I hope his owner found him before he turned moldy.

And another mystery: about Blogger and photos. I resize all the photos to the same size and pixels per inch before I load them to Blogspot. Sometimes when I click on the photo, it takes me to a copy the same size as the blog post display. Sometimes, it gives me a humongous pixel-by-pixel photo, and sometimes about three-quarters of a screen. Deleting the photo and re-loading sometimes helps, but not always. In this post, I get all three sizes out of identically-sized photos, even though I re-loaded two of the smaller samples. Why? Does anyone understand this?

Or maybe it only happens on my computer. Does it work that way on yours?

The trouble with books of short stories ...

. . . is that at the end of each, you turn the page and there's another tantalizing title. And it's a short piece, so you may as well read it, too.

A granddaughter dropped in this afternoon with a Christmas present; Terry Pratchett's latest book, A Blink of the Screen. It's a collection of his short fiction, starting with a story written (and published) when he was 13, and continuing to the present time.

The topics range from sci-fi (virtual reality and time travel) to evolving chickens, to the national anthem of the city of Ankh-Morpork, and include another Granny Weatherwax story (Granny wearing pink?). Plus three sections of art by Josh Kirby, who did many of the covers for the DiscWorld series.

I've been reading all evening. Even did my cooking and dishes with the book propped on the counter.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there are still 42 pages left to read. See you tomorrow!

Sandpiper mnemonics

Joey Slinger, in Down and Dirty Birding, classifies the Sandpiper clan into three categories: Great Big Sandpipers*, Middle-sized Sandpipers**, and "Peeps"***. Ours, on the Boundary Bay flats, are middle-sized.

When I get a decent photo or two, I try to identify them, and then memorize the clues for each one.  I'm not all that good at it.

So here's my latest attempt at hammering something into my hard skull.

Last Tuesday, the tide was part-way out in the Centennial Beach area. Recent storms and high tides had scoured the upper beach clean. Most of the driftwood was 'way up there in front of the houses. The few rolls of drying eelgrass were just below that, far above their usual resting place. And most of the sand was covered with about an inch of loose sea-bottom scum.

There were no snails to be seen, but many small clams were lying loose on the sand, washed out of their hiding places. The gulls were dropping them out on the sandbars, and squabbling noisily over who got there first. A pair of eagles sat on the farthest sandbar, watching the gulls.

Along the line of wavelets at the shore, hundreds of peeps were dancing and bobbing. Further out, flocks of bigger ones stood, belly-deep, head down, bills probing. The water out there was ankle-deep to a gull; this is a very flat beach.

A dunlin.

The dunlins are the larger of the two. My latest bird book gives a length of 21.5 cm. In breeding season, (for the two weeks of breeding season they hang around), they are distinctive, with a black belly and reddish back, but most of the time, they're just another peep. But looking closely, if they don't have their bills buried up to the hilt in mud, I can see that the bill is fairly long, and turns slightly down at the tip.

Bill above water, and bill in normal pose.

These are the pipers that forage a bit further out. They move about slowly, digging deep into the mud as they go. Occasionally, they all rise at once and move on down the shore, where they settle and up-end themselves looking for sand dwellers, probably worms.

Dunlins doing their thing.

We often see flocks of these, out over the water, looking like a speeding grey cloud that briefly flashes white as it turns for the return trip.

The sanderlings are the little ones that race along at the very edge of the water, pecking quickly and moving on. Run, run, run, peck, run, peck, run, run, peck, peck . . . Their legs move, says my book, "like (a) windup toy." A perfect description.

They fatten themselves on those little amphipods, Americorophium salmonis, catching them as they wait at the mouth of their burrows, just before the tide drops and they move deep into the sand.

Smaller than the dunlin; 19 cm. long, and with a shorter, straight bill. Extremely cute.

They're a lighter shade of brown than the dunlins now, but will darken up for breeding season.

Sanderlings or dunlins flying. Both species have a white wing stripe that shows up in flight. (Click to see full size.) The ones flying upside-down are reflections.

So: sanderlings run, sanderlingsanderlingsanderlingsanderling, legs pumping away constantly. Dunlins are more serious; they get the work dun, not giving up until they've dug out their worm. And their bills point and turn dowun. Think I can remember that?

*Great Big Sandpipers I've seen around here: Whimbrels, at Iona Beach.
**Middle-sized Sandpipers, ditto: Yellowlegs, greater and lesser. Boundary Bay, Crescent Beach. Dowitchers, Reifel Island, Dunlins and Sandpipers, Boundary Bay and Semiahmoo Beach.
***Peeps: Least Sandpiper, Oyster Bay, south of Campbell River. Least is a good word for it; these are tiny!

Minimalist peeps

I am somewhat of a fan of minimalist home design and decor. I find the clean lines attractive; something in me responds to an almost empty room with a bench and a couple of stones, or a white on white kitchen.

(I've collected a few on Pinterest, as a sample.)

But I could never live with the style. I'd be tiptoeing about, afraid to put a coffee cup down in the wrong place, or to leave my current stack of books (mismatched sizes and colours, some propped open) and the scraps of paper that I use as placemarks on a table designed to hold one flower in a vase, or to forget to shut that cupboard door. I'd feel as if I were an unwelcome visitor in my own space. There'd be no home for the latest grandkid's artwork, or a spider in a jar, no forgiveness of small anomalies. I'm an incurable pack-rat.

Still, an empty scene charms me. And what shape of nothing beats a foggy sea and sky?

Here's what met us at Boundary Bay on Tuesday:

Sandpipers, gulls, and a hint of the opposite shore.

And a drowned branch.

We did get close to some of the peeps. Photos tomorrow.

A Skywatch post.

Wet, cold, and bejewelled

The Fraser Delta is prone to thick fogs in winter and spring, sometimes so murky that I drive following the shoulder of the road, which is about all I can see. (I once followed the lights of a car a few metres ahead. He seemed to know where he was going, until he drove, without hesitation, into a deep ditch.)

Today's fog wasn't quite that bad. The fields alongside the highway faded out into a grey nothingness, and those inevitable fog-grey Vancouver cars were visible only as a pair of lights. But the traffic was light, and there was no ice - yet - so we zipped ourselves into down and wool, and went to look at birds on Boundary Bay.

We came back with 150 or so peeps photos to sort; I'll post some of them tomorrow.

On the way back to the car, we passed a monkey tree festooned by spider webs,each silken thread heavy with glassy beads.

The central disk is a spider's skating rink. Empty, though.

Detail of another web. These beads look like they're frozen. They could be. The temperature is hovering around 0°C.

Top-heavy web, torn by the weight of the mist.

Gotta wait out 2012 to the last gasp

2013, finally. Except in Hawaii; they've got another 18 minutes left in 2012, as of now**.

The year went out quietly for us. Laurie and I sat and listened to a CD of the Mikado, then I treated myself with a pot of ginger tea, and checked in with my kids on Facebook. All very peaceful.

But 2013; what will it bring? It's a year of 13s; 50 Fridays teamed up with the number, another two doubled: Friday the 13th, 2013, in September and December. Will someone decide that's a good excuse to foretell yet another end of the world?*** There are two good dates there! And when was that 2013 comet arriving?

Well, if you believe in bad luck omens, there are also the good ones. I've got mine; today, in a first for the year, in a short burst of 5 minutes, four starlings, one flicker, and a varied thrush all dropped in to visit. I think that's the first flicker or starling I've seen around here since a year ago. And all at once! It must mean something, surely!*

Here's proof, at least of the first two, photos taken without leaving my desk, which would have chased the flicker far away.

Flicker waiting for a starling to get off the suet feeder.

Still waiting. He eventually gave up; the starlings were not sharing.

Starling and suet feeder. The other three were on the ground underneath, collecting the falling crumbs, and keeping the juncos at bay.

The varied thrush ran past twice, pausing just long enough to be identified. The place was too crowded for him.

*I think it really meant that they were hungry. But sometimes I'd rather be silly than sensible.

**Just checked the time again. It is now officially 14 minutes into 2013 in Hawaii. And that's the very last gasp of 2012.

***Not that I'd worry. I've survived a fair number of world ends already.

2012 critter sampler

December 31st! Already? I'm still doing end-of-summer catch-up!

Alex Wild is curating "Best of 2012" science and nature shots on Scientific American. I was reminded, again, by BugGeek, who posted her collection. Beautiful shots; I've seen them all before, and will review them again tomorrow. Not tonight, because it's hard to blog when you're green with envy.

I looked over my photos, picking out the favourites, not to submit, but just as a year-end summary. And there were too many! I cut them down to just critters; still too many, and I kept remembering more. But I've finally trimmed the list down to a dozen favourite critters, not without difficulty.

Here's the collection: Critters only:

Ant nest uncovered, with the adults rushing to drag the larvae down the holes, out of sight.

Aphid in a moss forest

Caterpillar in morning sunlight

Garden snail, feeding on glass.

Grainy hand hermit, in human hand

Harvestman volunteer

I had trouble choosing my favourite of all the spiders. I have to smile at this fat mama, who does NOT like lime and pepper chips.

Life's an adventure. Hermit crab in aquarium.

Lazy moth in jar lid and morning sunshine.

Spider #2 Long-jawed orb weaver, on hosta leaf.

This was an exciting find; a molting ghost shrimp.

Ok, I give up; I can't choose just one or two spiders! Spider # 3, Ozyptila, the spider-eater's spider eater.

Spider #4, Mother toting her eggs.

Would have been #12, if I hadn't snuck a couple of extra spiders in there. Plume moth on outside wall.

And tomorrow is 2013! I never thought we'd get here. May it be a good year, the best year so far, for all of us!

There's always lichen

With the rain, come the rain lovers. The fungi, the slimes, the lichen.

At Crescent Beach, yesterday, I examined one lichen-encrusted tree.

The common flat-leafed grey-green lichen: flat, loosely attached lobes, tiny fruiting bodies, shiny black lower surface. Above it on the trunk is an acid-green leaf lichen, and a grey crust covered with round, saucer-like apothecia.

Another branch, more leaf lichens, more crust, and a spiky, thin-leafed cluster. And this is a confused tree; look at the base of the branch on the left. See the new pink bud? Thinks it must be spring, given the constant warm(ish) rain.

The same branch, zooming in. And there's a white dusty heart, for Clytie.

I didn't even notice until I was trying to identify that green stuff, that this section of branch has 4 or maybe 5 red mites on it. Do you see them?

While I looked at lichen, Laurie clambered through the bush, dodging blackberry canes, to get close to this big clump of shelf polypore.

On a well-rotted log, pierced by dead blackberry canes, and tinted with bright slime.