Testing, testing

Seeing what my new reflector and light blockers will do. A few shots with the old lens, no flash.

Plumose anemone in full feeding mode

Browns and greens

"Missed my exit again!"

Flash used here, with white reflector and black backdrop. One of the small anemones.

I've been working with the new lens. It's more demanding, has a very shallow depth of field, and stringent light requirements, but it brings out details that I'd never seen before. I'll have more test shots tomorrow.

Twinned

I've been working with the new toys today, trying out different flash/camera/reflector setups, reading manuals, wrestling with software. I may have a good-ish photo or two; I still haven't processed any.

And then I put everything away. And went into the bathroom to mop the floor, and found a small pink and orange moth fluttering around the mirror.

I ran for the camera and chased him around the mirror, holding that heavy lens and flash over my head, hoping for a focus.

Resting, for a brief moment.

Hurrying to get away from that horrible light.

And then he scurried behind the mirror and the photo session was over.

I'll send him in to BugGuide for an ID tomorrow.

UPDATE: This just in, from BugGuide: it's an Oak skeletonizer moth, Carcina quercana. And when they gave me the ID, and I looked at BugGuide's other photos of this moth, I saw one I recognized; it's one I sent in, back in 2011. No wonder it looked familiar!

Carcina quercana, August 2011, in Strathcona.

(Trapped like this, it gave me plenty of time to get a photo.)

Doing things backwards

I bought myself some camera goodies today; my belated selfie birthday present. A new lens, a Nikon Micro 60 mm. A flash to replace a good one I had that got lost. And an expensive - 2 whole bucks at the dollar store - reflecting screen/foam poster board.

I got home with it all, dropped the whole works on the kitchen table, unpacked the lens and attached it to the camera, and took a couple dozen sample shots, hand-held.

The instructions, which I read later, said to always use this lens with a tripod, but I was too impatient to take the couple of minutes to set it up. And I wiped down the outside of my tank, first, but left the inside as is; after all, I'd scrubbed it well yesterday. So of course, there's a new algae scum fuzzing up the glass. And all the photos are noisy, as a result.

I'm still happy. Even under those conditions, the lens performed better than the 40 mm on its best behaviour.

A few samples: I've done minimal processing on these; cropping, despeckling, reducing noise. And eliminating a few inconvenient copepods.

"Hail, fellow, well met!"

Hideaways.

This is not a great shot, but it would have been absolutely impossible with the other lens, even with the tripod and the lighting set up just right. This was a dark corner, in the back of the tank, with only a glimpse between waving eelgrass blades. The crab was just barely visible, and I hadn't even noticed the arm of the starfish in the clamshell. The backdrop is a rotting, ancient abalone shell.

Did I say I'm happy?

Happy, or at least hopeful, barnacle and his penis.

Peaches and the eelgrass ghost.

Balancing act. Tiny hermit on the knife edge of an old clamshell.

Apart from the noise, this lens cleans up the backgrounds considerably. Since the depth of field is so small, everything in back is blurred and blended together. In a busy tank, where I can't really control where my critters are going to pose, that's a real benefit.

I haven't unpacked the flash yet. That's tomorrow's treat. And then I'll set up the tripod and "reflector" and clean the glass properly, and take some more sample shots.

And there's a manual to read for the flash; it looks complicated. Every new model has to have more rabbits in hats and pigeons up sleeves, and it takes some doing to find them all and get them to behave. I'll be busy for a while.

Snowy and the Legs

There's another way to work the camouflage trick; be so glaringly white that you look like a sun-bleached piece of broken shell.

Snow-white crab.

This miniature crab was hiding in a shell I brought home on Canada Day. He's about 1/4 inch across, and spends his time hiding under the edge of the clamshell, where he matches the white of the barnacles on top. Only when he ventures out to grab a bite to eat, does he expose those brown and orange legs; they look borrowed, not really his; they don't match.

Pink eyes!

I can't tell what species he is yet. He's too small, and too shy. His colours may change as he grows, too.

Puzzling over colour schemes

Back in May, I brought home four small Sitka shrimp; three tiny transparent slivers of glass with eyes, and one larger one, greenish, with her eggs.

Ma shrimp, in berry, last May. Green, mostly.

With time, and a good diet, she has turned mostly black, with a white, blotchy saddle. It makes for good camouflage, and poor photos; the camera never knows where to focus.

The other three grew, and started to change colour. One now is a pale bluish pink, one sort of greenish, and the third is a bright red, with white polka dots and blue flags.

Big Red, resting on sand.

And this colouring works as camouflage, too; it's rare that I catch this guy against a contrasting background. Here's a photo where I caught him just emerging from his normal hideout:

Not so easily seen, almost invisible if he's deep in the seaweed.

These shrimp can take their colouring from their diet; Big Red has been eating dark red bladed algae, and things he finds in the red filamentous algae. But the other three have been living in the same tank, probably eating the same things, and yet they are black, green, and bluish.

I have studied details of the camouflage coloration, in which several patterns occur, all forms of disruptive coloration, in which stripes and splotches break up the outline of the shrimp, making it difficult to recognize when viewed against a background which is variable in color and tone. The disruptive coloration is a defense against visually-hunting predators such as shorebirds and intertidal fishes. ... 

Color patterns are poorly expressed in juveniles and small males, rendering them transparent, which is another way to appear invisible to predators using vision. This doesn't work in larger individuals, especially females, since the internal organs and incubated embryos destroy the transparency "trick"; camouflage color patterns then come into play. (From Raymond Bauer, Shrimp researcher.)

Questions, questions. Are the shrimp in the tank choosing different food sources? If I took away the red algae and added only greens, like sea lettuce and rockweed, would Big Red turn green? Where is Ma Shrimp getting her black colouring from? If food was scarcer, would she turn transparent again?

Bauer says that Sitka shrimp lose most of their colouration at night; in a tank, where the lighting is either on or off, the shrimp starts off his day transparent, or nearly so, and 15 minutes after the light is turned on, he's back to normal.

I just went back to my tank; Ma S. is still black, now in the middle of the night. I couldn't find any of the others. But there's still a bit of light, from my screen at the far side of the room. If I work somewhere else, will she disappear?

I'll have to try that.

Two very tiny, completely transparent shrimps hitchiked home with me last week. I can only see them if the light happens to hit them at the right angle, against the right background. I wonder what colour they will turn out to be when they grow up.

Possum, Oh Possum!

The possum has been back. And this time, I've got a better picture.

Sort of a big rat with bad hair. And long toes.

I've been confused about the name; is it possum, or opossum?  And is that the same as the Mexican tlacuache?

I Googled it, and now the confusion has doubled.

The American possums are actually called opossums, scientific name, Didelphimorphia. But for some reason, they are more commonly referred to as possums. ... Australian possums are (scientific name) Phalangeridae. Both are marsupials, but that’s about it. Other than that, they are not really related at all.(From BobInOz)

Here's Wikipedia on the American possums:

The opossums, also known by their scientific name Didelphimorphia ..., make up the largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, including 103 or more species in 19 genera. Of South American ancestry, they entered North America following the connection of the two continents.
...
The word "opossum" is borrowed from the Virginia Algonquian (Powhatan) language ... from the Proto-Algonquian word meaning "white dog" or "white beast/animal".
They are also commonly called possums, particularly in the Southern United States and Midwest. However, the term "possum" was borrowed into use to describe distantly related Australian marsupials (specifically those of the suborder Phalangeriformes) when Australia became known to Europeans.

They originated in South America, from where one species spread into the American Southeast, and then west and north to here. And in each country in Latin America, they go by a different name: "tlacuache" (from an Azetc word) in Mexico, which is the name I knew, and ...

en El Salvador como tacuazines ... en Ecuador como guanchacas, en Honduras como guasalos, en el Perú como mucas o canchalucos, en Bolivia como carachupas, en Colombia como faras, chuchas, runchos o raposas, en Venezuela como rabipelados ... (From Wikipedia in Spanish)

And the Latin name, Didelphimorphia, means "double womb", referring to the split reproductive system; baby possums are born very early in their development, and crawl up the mother's belly to a pouch where they attach themselves to a teat and grow until they're ready to face the world. They are marsupials, like the better-known kangaroo.

Looking up names, I learned that some of the things I "knew" about possums were wrong.

• "Possum" has been used in the phrase, "playing possum," referring to the habit of a threatened oppossum of keeling over and pretending to be dead. Except that they don't, really, all that often; only about 10% of possums play dead.


• They are also supposed to have prehensile tails, but this only shows up in the young; an adult is too heavy for his own tail.

UPDATE: Christopher Taylor adds, in the comments,

The "double womb" is actually a bit more literal than that. Unlike the situation in humans, where the Fallopian tubes lead from the ovaries on each side to a common central uterus, marsupials have an entirely separate uterus for each ovary, with a separate vagina for each (though only a single cervix, so I think there would still be only a single visible opening externally). I believe many male marsupials have a divided head to the penis, so that they are able to fertilise both sides of the female's reproductive system at once. Even though this feature is (I think) common to all marsupials, I suspect that Didelphis was the animal that got tagged with it because, of course, the American opossum was discovered by Europeans long before the Australian forms.

Two uteri, and a pouch, to boot! And then the mother carries her babies on her back for weeks after they're out of the pouch. The burden of motherhood is a heavy one for an opossum!

Yes, that's the moon

(Update and correction: No, that's the sun. Wrong time of day for the moon, wrong shape, too.*)

BC is on fire again. CBC News reports that there are more than 180 wildfires active in the province today, and more are expected every day until it rains. The one small fire that started in Vancouver is out, but we are getting smoke from other nearby fires, some quite large. Our skies are grey, an orangey, greeny, sickly grey, not the cool blue-grey of a rainy day. The air stings the back of my throat; a day ago, I stayed inside with everything shut tight, to keep the smoke at bay. Yesterday, I went to IKEA, where it was cool and the air is filtered.

On the way home, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the moon shining through that grey sky. I stopped the car and took a couple of photos.

Yes, that's the moon. (No. The sun.)

I took a photo with the tops of the trees, just to show it wasn't a kid's balloon.

I'm inside again, with everything shut tight. I can still smell the smoke.

*Thanks, Jen.

Pink hair

Occasionally, wading in the eelgrass beds, I see what looks like a swirl of delicate pink lace floating by; finery that, bought in a store, would have a label saying, "Handwash only, with care."

They're remarkably resilient; I caught a double handful, tossed it in my bag, threw a couple of heavy clamshells and a tangle of eelgrass on top, and hauled it from pillar to post around the beach. It made the trip home intact, with not a shred torn off.

Filamentous red algae, with mussels, snail, and at least one skeleton shrimp. Can you find it?

Collected fresh like this, before they've been tossed up on the beach and sun-dried, they're home to hundreds of small critters. Skeleton shrimp are usually the first I see, mostly because they keep dancing. Then there are tiny black dots that under the microscope turn out to be baby snails and mussels. And each thread of the lace is surrounded with fine hairs, and a swarm of zippy copepods, and in season, jiggling crab or hermit zoea, trying to dodge the skeleton shrimp.

And then there's the seaweed itself:

Dotted-line branches. With passengers.

Zooming in.

My Encyclopedia tells me that there are maybe 60 or more species of these filamentous red algae along our coast, usually under 6 inches long.

Most are difficult to identify without the aid of a microscope.

Filamentous algae are made up of rows of single cells, in some species forming long threads, in others, branching. Each cell has a double wall; the outer ring contains the pigment that gives it the red colouring, phycoerithrin, masking the clorophyll that converts sunlight to sugars.

These are large cells; think of those snails crawling up and down the threads; multi-celled critters, with a complex anatomy, each total smaller than one cell of the algae.

Ride 'em, cowshrimp!

And here's yesterday's skeleton shrimp, riding the currents and hoping to catch a juicy copepod.

It was my birthday today, and I've had company, including a beautiful 6-year-old boy who helped me empty the tank and do inventory. He even managed to catch a shrimp in his hand, without hurting it!

And now I'm tired and feeling every single one of my mumblety years; I'm going to bed.

Pink algae, tomorrow.

Almost a cartoon

I've been working on photos of a delicate pink algae, but it's infested with bouncy skeleton shrimp. This couple made me laugh.

Six-legged bully

I try not to anthropomorphize my critters, to remember that they have their own lives that don't necessarily mesh with ours. But sometimes the temptation is strong. I know the face on that poor victim is just a fluke of camera angles; she* doesn't really have a down-turned mouth and a pug nose. She's not really going to be forced to hand over her lunch money. It just looks that way.

But some things are almost universal, among humans, animals, and even plants: the struggle for place, for food, for sex or its equivalent. And these skeleton shrimp are fighters; they cross paths often, and when they do, they hit and bite at each other. Usually it ends quickly, as the smaller one backs away.

A few seconds later; fight ended, all is forgiven and forgotten.

These tiny beasties are usually standing upright on swaying seaweeds. Nothing seems to dislodge them, even when I pick up a handful of algae and swish it around in the water to shake out any muck or unsuspected hitchhikers. When I drop the algae back in the tank, there are all the skeleton shrimp, standing tall, as if nothing had happened.

When they move from one branch of seaweed to another, or travel down a blade of eelgrass, they bend over, grasp the path ahead with their big, hooked "hands" (gnathopods), then bring up the back legs, the way an inchworm moves. But as soon as they've reached their destination, they stand up again.

Those six prehensile legs explain how they maintain their footing.

*She's carrying young; see her swollen brood pouch? The larger one is probably a male.

Small doings

The new BirdCam has taken dozens of shots of chickadees and white-crowned sparrows taking their baths. A grand display of splashes and wet feathers and dunked heads; they've all been having fun.

This youngster wasn't so sure about the whole procedure.

"Well, I've got my feet wet; now what?"

Here's the mother. She's just given her kid a full demonstration, but he's not ready yet.

And I never expected the camera to pick up this:

Bald-faced hornet, getting a drink. He, or one of his family, came back several times when the birds had finished their baths and dinner.

Beetle sign language

About that ten-lined June beetle: I went out in the night to turn off the hose, which had been soaking the ground under a tree that has been losing leaves in all this heat, and found a big beetle drowning in the drip bucket.

Does he bite? Well, no, he's a June beetle, and they're inoffensive. But then, angry and half drowned; could I trust him? I collected a stiff rhododendron leaf, and slipped it under him. He clutched at it so desperately that I carried him home on the leaf, left it on my desk while I finished with the hose and got out the camera, and found him still holding on for dear life. And he wouldn't let go, even when I pulled at him.

Grappling hook feet. With 6 of these, he's staying put wherever he chooses. They don't work on plastic buckets.

He finally consented to move over to a handful of hydrangea leaves. where I could dry him off more easily.

Sopping wet, and unhappy. He's got bubbles all over his face.

How do you know if a June beetle is happy? He fans out those high-heeled shoe sole antennae.

Happy June beetle. Photo from BugGuide, by Lynette. Creative Commons license.

While he was on my desk, all wet and miserable, he kept the antennae tightly folded; beetle-style fists. Quite expressive fists, even so.

"I can clobber you with these!"

Or panicky; "Get me out of here!"

(Don't you want to just tickle his furry tummy, as if he were a kitten?)

Or just giving up, totally depressed.

I dried him off with a soft, thick paint brush, and carried his leaves outside, with him holding on tight again.

In the morning, he was gone. He probably fanned out those antennae as he flew away.

Hope your Canada Day ...

... was as good as mine!

The tide was low near noon again, and the sun was scorching. I joined the streams of people heading out to the border marker in the middle of Boundary Bay. I didn't quite make it; the water was still a bit out of my depth, carrying a dry-land camera. But I plowed through eelgrass beds, thigh-deep, until the tide was at its lowest, then returned to the marker.

Where I met Tim, who blogs at Think Big - No, Even Bigger. He had come out to see how the starfish are doing, and incidentally, to see if I was there. Once he'd made it to the marker and taken a few photos with his underwater camera (see his post on TBNEB, with video), he walked back with me to the shore a kilometre away.

He has sharp eyes; he saw a big anemone in the shadow of the eelgrasses, where all I could see was a dark splotch. It was anchored on an empty clamshell, so I brought it home and settled it in the tank. It seems happy enough.

Plumose anemone, Metridium senile

Standing tall, about three inches. Fully grown, it can reach well over twice that.

These anemones come in a variety of colours, from white to yellow to orange or brown. Wikipedia adds pink, grey and olive green, which I don't remember ever seeing. Tim has photos from the border marker, underwater; the ones there are pure white, pale beige, green, or a deep, reddish brown. (Go look.)

As usual, there were hitchhikers. I'll tell you about these later on. After I've finished with the photos of the drenched ten-lined June beetle.

And thanks, Tim!

Creatures of the night

One nice thing about being a night owl is that, when the days get too hot, the nights are perfect, and I'm not wasting them asleep in bed. A whole heap of critters agree with me, too.

I found these in my backyard, this week:

Once the birds are asleep, others get a chance at the birdbath, resting on the "shore", or even going swimming. This weevil is following the edge around and around, looking for the exit.

Slug and springtail on birdbath.

Algae on my bare cement, and snail eating algae.

I checked the new BirdCam's photos, and was amused by this snail. I was fussing around with flashlights and the tripod, and the BirdCam kept taking photos as I moved around. And in all the bustle, in each photo, there was the snail, moving right along, and somehow not getting stepped on.

Long slug, going places.

"Look before you slither."

The mosquitoes have been voracious these past few weeks. Even though I slather myself with repellent, I'm still scratching bites. I tried burning these mosquito coils outside the door to discourage them. I don't know that it helped.

On the plate with the next night's coil set up, I found this small slug. He doesn't seem to mind the chemicals in the coil. Later, I found him on the coil itself.

"Did I hear something behind me?"

The door stays open until late. A few critters followed me inside.

Pretty yellow spider on the wall by my desk Update: Enoplogatha ovata.

Very small moth, ditto. (White-shouldered moth)

And this: what is it? The BirdCam picked this up last night.

Something in a hurry.

Not a 'coon, not a skunk, not a cat, nor a fox, rat, or dog. It looks to me like a possum. I hadn't realized that we have possums here in the Lower Mainland.

And take a look at those toes!

Headless prowler.

I'm still sorting the ten-lined June beetle photos; I took 'way too many.

Snail at midnight

I've been out in the cool of the night with the camera and a flashlight. This snail was eating the leaves on a hanging flower pot. (How did he get up there?)

Who wants to eat in the daytime when it's so hot? Not this guy.

More later. I just went out again and discovered a ten-striped June beetle floundering in a bucket of water. And, of course, there are slugs. There always are.

Three arms and a half.

A month ago, the 25th of May, I brought home a three-armed starfish and posted his photo here.

3/5 of a star, an inch eye to eye. (The eyes are on the tips of the arms.)

I kept him in a hospital bowl for a week, and he seemed to be doing well, so I transferred him to the tank, where he went into hiding under a shell for another week. Now, he's out most days, eating barnacles and growing a leg.

And just look at him now! Fat and happy, and a little more balanced. An inch and a half eye to eye.

I don't see any buds for a fifth arm. I wonder if he's going to stop at four, or will start on the fifth when #4 is full size.

White knees

I was busy taking photos of a starfish in my tank, when I looked up and saw this harvestman on the lamp base overhead. Good thing I had the camera in hand; one quick shot, and he took off, down a crack and out of reach.

Wide photo, from toe to toe.

Zooming in. I'd never noticed the white knees before. Maybe the blue lamp base brings them out.

And I went back to aiming at the starfish.

(And it looks like I need to dust a bit more often.)