Wanderin' Weeta (With Waterfowl and Weeds)

The moths who came in from the cold

2009-11-27T01:20:00.001-08:00

BC's Lower Mainlanders will mark this on their calendars; Thursday, November 26th, it stopped raining. The sun shone. Patches of blue sky showed up between the clouds.

How long has it been now? Weeks. A shuttle driver told me the good weather is supposed to last through the weekend. Incredible!

I was out all day, getting the car serviced, then waiting around for the end of rush hour to drive home. The warmth of the day had dissipated by the time I got here; there was a chill wind. On the wall by the front door, a dozen or so moths were sheltering from the cold. I haven't seen moths outside in ages, so I went in and got a few pill bottles.

The moths were almost comatose; I could pick them off the wall like ripe fruit. A touch, and they fell into the bottles. I collected far more than I needed, three or four to a bottle, just because of the strangeness.

They went into the fridge until I was ready to photograph them. When I took them out, they weren't moving, so I removed the lids of the bottles. And they woke up all of a sudden, and exploded! out of there. I had moths on the desk, moths climbing the lamps, moths on my camera, in my hair, on my face ... There were moth feathers on the camera lens.

I gave up all ideas of careful photos, with the lighting just so, and snapped away, whenever one came into range. Here are a few of the results:

On my desk

On a lamp post and wires

Against the light of the second lamp

The antennae on this one remind me of mountain goat horns.

Perky expression

On a lamp base

And then they all flew around and away. I saw one on the curtain a few minutes ago, but now they've all gone undercover.

"Mythic and mundane"; the Eastside crows

2009-11-26T01:35:00.001-08:00

Post #2 on the 2009 Culture Crawl.

The header of the Culture Crawl website features crows. Crows carrying a red-tipped paintbrush perch above the doors of Crawl artists.

A logical choice. Crows are the predominant birds of the Strathcona area. No house, no alley, no post, no green spot is long without its black-clad company.

Strathcona crows, beginning of November

Richard Tetrault, whose studio fills the central part of the Paneficio*, paints crows. He writes,

"Crows activate the urban environment with a presence that is both mythic and mundane. Omnipresent in my part of the city, the crow has a tenacity, adaptability and social quality that demand both respect and space. I have given them a special place in my work, in particular, as communicators and symbols of survivors of displacement and urbanization."

One of Richard Tetrault's many crows. This one is above a door in the very back of his studio.

He does woodcuts, linocuts, murals, and more, in strong, fluid strokes, vibrant colours. My favourites, after the crows (Go see some!), are the urban landscapes. One we saw on this visit is an old house, supported by and supporting flights of rickety wooden steps, almost ladder-like. Clearly Strathcona.

And here's a corner of his studio:

Creativity thrives on a diet of order scrambled with chaos.

The crow, up close, guarding a pile of sketches and books.

*I missed him, two years ago, writing about the Paneficio. I don't know why; I saw and appreciated his work then, too.

Doing the Crawl, 2009

2009-11-25T03:15:00.001-08:00

This last weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the annual Eastside Culture Crawl was underway in Strathcona. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain the first two days, so we stayed home and did a much-abbreviated Crawl on Sunday. Still, we met new artists, old friends, a variety of dogs; we bought a few items and wished we could afford many more; we had a good meal at the Wilder Snail and coffee at my daughter's house after dusk. A great day!

From the Crawl website:

The Eastside Culture Crawl is an annual 3-day November event that involves artists who live in Vancouver's Eastside in an area bounded by Main St., 1st Ave., Commercial Drive, and the Waterfront. Painters, jewelers, sculptors, furniture makers, musicians, weavers, potters, writers, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers; from emerging artists to those of international fame... these are just a sampling of the exciting talents featured during this unique chance to meet local artists in their studios.

Purchase something that strikes your fancy, commission something to be uniquely yours, or just browse through the studios and meet the artists, learning about their specific works of art, materials and tools, approaches and techniques. This is a once a year opportunity to meet many diversely talented artists and view their creations in the studios where they work. Be part of this exciting event, which brings people from all over the Lower Mainland, and share in the imaginations that enrich our neighbourhood and lives.

Where to start, where to start? On the street, of course; every jewel needs a setting. So, here's Strathcona on a grey November day:

At Koo's Corner, Hawks Avenue. Yellow leaves.

Keefer Street. Great flocks of Cedar Waxwings filled all the trees. This old magnolia is so covered with creamy buds for next spring's flowers that it looks snowy.

Cedar Waxwings in a tangle of bare branches

More waxwings

Sometimes, when a photo is too far away, too monotone, I play around with colour saturation and the sharpening tool. I liked this result.

Smiling squirrel

One rosebud, still planning to bloom

Berry bush. I have no idea what kind it is. I don't think it's native.

The fruits come in beautiful candy colours; cherry red, tangerine, lime green. They're about the size of a huckleberry.

And they're spotted.

Veggie garden along the walk to a front door

Trees like candles to light a dull day

Poor Snowflake!

2009-11-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

He just doesn't get that he's not the world's toughest fighter. He's lost another pincer.

Still has all eight legs, though. That's something.

Four and twenty mussels ...

2009-11-24T02:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was asking, "Do flatworms eat barnacles?" I've been searching for an answer, without much success. The websites I visited mention mollusks, especially oysters, other worms, and dead organisms, but don't differentiate between different flatworm species.

I wanted more info. The real question I was asking was, "What specific animals does this species of flatworm eat? And how did mine grow so fast?" And I kept remembering the giant worm that was destroying coral in a UK aquarium. Could my little tank support a "voracious predator"? Would it attack my clams? Or my one big thatched acorn barnacle?

Laurie suggested I remove the flatworm from the aquarium. So, for the third time running, I emptied the tank. This time, I sifted the sand, counted all the live critters I found, removed empty shells. I found only one flatworm. Whether the other died, or is hidden too well (remembering how it disappeared inside the shell of a live barnacle), I don't know. At least I captured one.

And I think I might have found out what he has been eating. I counted 24 empty mussel shells.

Corpora delicti

That's a lot of mussel meat in 40 days!

But maybe I'm jumping to a conclusion too soon; it's possible that something else killed them and then the hermits and crabs emptied the shells. So I've confined the flatworm to a canning jar, added clean sand, sea water and, reluctantly, one healthy mussel. Give him enough rope ...

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out ...

2009-11-23T03:29:00.001-08:00

I never would have imagined that one day I would be handing out treats for worms.

I have at least three fair-sized polychaetes, probably sea nymphs, living in the sand at the bottom of the aquarium. I don't usually see them, unless I empty the tank and comb through their hiding places. In the last couple of weeks, I've done that twice; once in a periodic cleanup, and once because Big Green, the crab, made such a mess of the place. Each time, the nymphs have had to make themselves new burrows, and, as luck would have it, a couple ended up right beside the glass.

I caught the biggest sticking his nose out of the sand, stretching and waving around, as if sniffing for food. When I moved, and my shadow fell on him, he shrunk back into cover instantly. I polished off the glass and waited; after a bit, the cirri (long tentacle-like face decorations) poked through the sand, then the face followed. Slither, slither, left, right, straight ahead, over a rock, always leaving the bulk of his length securely inside the tunnel. When a hermit crab came near, he reacted even faster than he had before; a quick convulsion and he was gone.

Face of the sea nymph.

Worming his way across the bottom.

This was when I decided to break out the goodies. I have some tiny dried minnows I bought at a Chinese food store. (For myself, but I don't mind sharing.) I broke off a little head, crumbled it, and dropped it near the place where the worm had emerged. The crabs and hermits dashed over to collect, but after a bit, here came Mr. Worm, reaching, retreating, stretching out again. He found a piece of fish. I didn't see exactly how he did it; he was far too fast, but back he went into the hole, the fish trailing along in his wake.

He was greedy, and came back for more several times, enough for me to get these photos.

Friday, when I re-organized the tank again, three much smaller worms ended up near the glass. These are ones I had not seen before, except maybe as tiny red hairs. Now they are about as thick as a pencil lead. And they are out looking for food.

The biggest of the three

These look green, unless they come out into full light; then they are as pink, shot with blue, as the big ones. And the one face that I got a good look at is the same; long, hooked jaws in front, and those eight waving cirri.

I was wondering, earlier, what they eat. Kozloff says they are algae eaters, but other researchers call them predators. These ones, at least, are meat eaters, whether as scavengers or predators on live animals, I can't tell.

These aren't the only worms in the tank; doing the last tidying up, I removed a shell where one of the flatworms was hiding. After I refilled the aquarium and all was at peace, he was wandering around on the glass.

Flatworm and orange-striped anemone.

This is the underside, seen through the glass. The worm's head is to the left. Its mouth is towards the front of that long central tube. There is a simple eyespot on top that discerns changes in the light, but does not capture images. It travels on thousands of tiny cilia. And, fragile though it seems, it is a voracious predator.

When I brought these home, six weeks ago, they were about 6 or 7 mm., just over 1/4 inch, long. Now this one is as long as the first joint of my thumb, almost 3 cm, or over an inch. It must be getting enough to eat. I wonder what that is.

He slip-slid all the way around the tank, roaming from the top to the bottom, then back again. Eventually, he came across this big black-tailed barnacle. I watched as he left the glass and flowed over the rough shell. ( I wondered how that felt; didn't it scratch his tender flesh? Guess not.) He came to the lip, flowed over it, covering the mouth, then slid farther down between the plates and completely disappeared.

Very scratchy barnacle

Later on, I saw the flatworm on the glass again. It was heading down, towards the sand. When it got there, it flowed down between the sand grains and disappeared without leaving a trail or hole. A few seconds later, a green polychaete burst out of the sand an inch away, squirmed across a pile of shells and went to earth again.

Do these flatworms eat polychaetes? Do they eat barnacles?

Hermit Rex, out of harm's way, on eelgrass.

Some interesting flatworm sites: MuseumVictoria (Australia), Wikipedia. And see "penis fencing".

Organic glass sculpture

2009-11-22T01:27:00.000-08:00

I'm working late tonight, so today's planned post will have to wait a day.

But here's a tiny sample:

1/4 inch "glass" moss animal.

An unidentified bryozoan I found in the aquarium. It may be the same as this one that I picked up on the beach in the spring, or this one, from last June, both equally unidentified.

Now, for a well-deserved sleep! 'Night, all.

The hidden life of crabs

2009-11-21T01:28:00.003-08:00

Crabs are amazing critters! I am continually being surprised by the three (that I know of) in my aquarium. Let me introduce them; there's "Big Green", a green shore crab about an inch across, then "Snowflake", and "Babe".

Babe was a stowaway. The first time I saw her*, she was barely visible, maybe a couple of millimetres wide. Now, a few months later, she is about a quarter inch across the carapace. And she can bench-press dozens of times her own weight.

Babe and clam

In this photo, she had just come out from underneath the clam behind her, lifting the clam out of the sand on her way. There is a larger clam, fatter and heavier; she can pick that one up, too. The other two crabs move rocks twice their length toe to toe and many times their height, covered with barnacles and seaweed.

And then, there's Snowflake. He's** a white crab, probably a juvenile shore crab. He was about 1 cm. (less than 1/2 inch) across the carapace when I brought him home. One day, he turned up maimed; he must have been fighting with Big Green. He was missing both pinchers and one front leg.

Snowflake's molted seven-legged shell.

Crabs eat with their pincers, delicately picking off fragments of meat or veggies, and bringing them up to their mouths. They dig with them, through shells and sand, looking for food, or use them to snatch floating foodstuffs out of the current. How was Snowflake to eat without pincers?

Quite well, I found. He used the tiny mouthparts as he would normal pincers. I was surprised to see him walking around carrying chunks of algae with them, and nibbling away. It was slow going, but every time I looked, he was eating, so he was probably getting enough.

Drawing from Museum Victoria.

For grabbing food, and for self-defense, he used his remaining legs. And he kept his distance from Big Green.

Crabs regenerate broken limbs; often we see a crab with one large pincer, and one small one, a replacement still not full grown. Would Snowflake regenerate three all at once? I watched carefully; it looked, last week, as though the stub of her leg was a tiny bit bigger, but that was all. Then this morning ...

Big Green was in a funny mood last night. He was roaming around and around, trying to climb the walls, jumping off high seaweed, burrowing in the sand. This morning, I checked to see how he was doing. He'd been busy; he had torn up my carefully planted seaweed and eelgrass; they were floating loose. Rocks had been rolled away, three big clams dug out of the sand. And the sand had been mounded up on one end of the aquarium, leaving a bare half-inch at the other end.

I was straightening up, carefully so as not to damage tiny residents, when I came across Snowflake's molted shell. (Photos above and below.) I didn't see any sign of him, even in the sand as I raked it into an even field. He turned up, finally, around supper time. And he now has pincers!

Two small pincers. And eight legs, as he should have.

They must have been forming inside the old carapace, and liberated when he crawled out of it. And, I counted the legs; there are eight again!

Discarded shell, showing stubs of leg and pincers.

The pincers are still undersized. I'll be interested in finding out how long they take to grow.

What else I found, doing the clean-up work, I'll leave till tomorrow. And I hope Big Green doesn't go on the rampage again tonight.

*"She", just because I hate calling something with personality "it". If I turn out to be wrong, I'll apologize and switch.

**Snowflake is a male; the abdomen curled under the shell is sharply triangular, and flat. Female crabs have rounder, fatter abdomens.

Bella the huntress

2009-11-20T03:01:00.001-08:00

This is Bella.

She doesn't live with me; she's a neighbour who comes to visit when it's raining and her people are at work. I let her stay a while, then send her off into the wet again. She likes to sit by the back door ...

... or at a window, watching the chickadees at the feeder ...

... occasionally licking her lips.

Better inside than out, chasing my birds and squirrels.

A flight of redwings

2009-11-19T02:29:00.002-08:00

After too much rain, with more on the way, I needed to remember this, from a summery day, barely two weeks back:

In a field of tall grasses, redwing blackbirds were harvesting seeds. I parked and took photos through the windshield, while Laurie crept up to them, one cautious step at a time. From my vantage point, just about level with the tops of the grass, they reminded me of a boiling pot, with black bubbles constantly popping up and falling back into the stew.

Only a small part of the flock was visible at any one time; the rest were at the roots of the grass. And still, I counted over 150 in this "bubble".

An overflow in the road across the field.

Laurie got one step too close, and the entire boiling rose up ...

swarmed around his head ...

sped across the fields ...

and disappeared into the distant trees.

We weren't sure whether they were starlings or redwings until I blew up the photos. Most are in drab; females, or youngsters with a bit of patterning on the wings. Only a few are adult males; on these, the flash of red is barely visible against the sky.

A Skywatch post.

Eyes and not-eyes: macros

2009-11-18T02:54:00.001-08:00

I'm still experimenting with that new microscope. Such fun!

Optex 200x Digital Magnifier

This is the 'scope. There's more info in the London Drugs flyer. I found that it is very unsteady, tending to tip over from its own weight. The focus knob is in the middle of the barrel; when I remove my hand once the focus is right, the whole thing shakes and the focus is lost. I made a wood base for it and attached it firmly. That helps a lot, but the clamp on the barrel doesn't stay put, so I'll have to figure something out to fix that.

If the object is positioned right, and small enough, I can get up to 200x magnification. For larger objects, the distance has to be increased, and so far, I've only managed to focus up to 40 or 60x.

The lighting system works fine, except that at 40x or so, if the target is reflective, I get flare-outs around the edge.

Otherwise, I'm still trying to get the right settings for exposure and colour balance, etc. I'll get there, eventually.

These are a couple of today's test subjects:

A few days ago, on a fallen leaf, I found a tiny green leafhopper.

It was barely 4 mm. long (about 3/8 inch), including that extra length of wings. It was alive, but barely. Under the hand microscope (40x), the eyes were a beautiful, shimmery pale blue. I left it in a bottle to warm up, but it died soon after.

With the new microscope (200x), I looked at the eyes again. The pale blue light is gone. The eyes are deep blue-green now.

And I've put it back in its bottle. I'll try it again, later; maybe I can get a better shot.

The hopper lies still, at least. I put the little maggot from last week on the slide. It's still very much alive and busy; what a job it was to get a head shot!

The black lines are internal mouth parts. They are in continual movement, even when the maggot is otherwise still.

And here's a silly grin:

"Hi, there!"

No, I did not highlight these with blue marker. They are not eyes; this is the tail end of the maggot, and the circles are the spiracles, breathing holes.

More tomorrow.

Yay! A new toy!

2009-11-17T03:14:00.002-08:00

Rain, rain, and more rain. No beach outing today. I went out in the afternoon and bought a cheap digital microscope from London Drugs, one that downloads photos directly to the computer, and I've spent the night (and a good part of the early morning) setting it up and learning how to use it. It's slow going; the manual is standard-issue, describing software that doesn't match what they gave me, missing out important steps, telling me I can edit the photos, and not giving me editing tools ...

So I'm learning by trial and error, as usual. Good thing I like tinkering.

Here's a sample of what it might offer me:

A piece of dried ribbed kelp from Boundary Bay beach is spotted with patches of an encrusting bryozoan. I soaked it to soften it, and took a few photos with the camera:

The bryozoan colonies are not circular, nor orderly like the kelp-encrusting bryozoans I found earlier; these individuals are clumped together higgledy-piggledy. And they are like none I have found in my books.

This is what the microscope produced:

Unidentified bryozoans.

The other bryozoans were box-like, but these look like some sort of breakfast cereal, or maybe an enameled colander. The open end is the lophophore, where the tentacles of the live animal would be extended, waving food towards the mouth.

As I figure out the best way to set up the microscope, the photos should get better. For now, I'm happy. And I'm going to bed before it's time to get up again. G'night!

Another reason to be glad the earth is not flat

2009-11-16T03:08:00.003-08:00

Moths!

Plume moth

What a dreary world it would be if we all had winter at the same time! Except for the Indian meal moths that come with my bird feed (and they don't count), I haven't seen a moth for two weeks. It's too cold, too wet. It's not going to get any better until spring. Moth season is over for BC. And this is the final "The Moth and Me" of the year.

Seabrooke, at The Marvelous in Nature, over in Ontario, still had moths three weeks ago, plenty of them: Late fall moths. She doesn't expect many more this year.

Across the water in the UK, they're more or less at the same latitude; mothers there are shutting down, too.

Martin, at Martin's Moths, in Yorkshire, UK, is giving up mothing for the winter. But he has a cheering newspaper clipping to "sugar the pill", in Goodbye to all that.
Mark Skevington, at Skev's B. L. O. G., UK, in the absence of fresh moths, turns to Mothing Memories The Palpita vitrealis is my favourite.
Mark, in Views from the Bike Shed, UK has a Collection of Moths to share. Moths from years gone by.

All is not lost, however:

From Bluedamsel Discovery, Ireland, we have Autumn Moths.
Also in Ireland, Stuart, at Donegal Wildlife, features a moth that doesn't mind the cold, in Autumnal Moths.
Charlie, at 10,000 Birds, not to be outdone in titling originality, posts Some Autumn moths from the UK There's no repetition in the moth selection; that's what counts.
And from Northumberland, Stewart, the Winter Birder, comes home from a party to find Hallowe'en Moths.
Steve, at Bedfordshire Wild; Chandos Road, Ampthill A moth trap in a small, mostly paved garden records 173 species.
Essex Moths This blog has a revolving header photo; click and refresh to get a new and beautiful moth each time.

Bold-feathered grass moth

Across our southern border, in the US, the warm weather will hang on for a while; the mothers still hang out their sheets at night.

Here's Ted, at Beetles In The Bush; a White-tipped Black Moth demonstrates that he's as human and blind as the rest of us.
Marvin, at Nature in the Ozarks, gives us Io Moth (Automeris io) Life Cycle and Melonworm Moth - Diaphania hyalinata (Tasselled like a tuque. I wouldn't have believed this one without a photo!)
John, from A DC Birding Blog sent in A Salt Marsh, a Tussock, and a Black-bordered Lemon, Salloween: A Late October Moth, and Celery Leaftier
Laura, at Natural Notes, has a nice photo of a Clymene Moth. She's moved; to follow her blog, go to the new link for Natural Notes
Oh, Behave! A student biologist's reports on animal behaviour. For example; Bat vs Moth. The arms race.
Another Steve, at Blue Jay Barrens in Ohio; Buck Moth
Emily in Texas, posting at What I learned today, has a series. Start here: Finding the caterpillars, and follow through to the end, here: They're Moths!
Bill Murphy blogs on Fertanish Chatter. This is probably his favourite photo from this summer; "Flying Guys"

But the cold is catching up to them down there, too. Snowstorms are in the offing. Will there be moths to see in December? Of course there will! Spring is just beginning on the far side of the globe:

Looks like peacock feathers. Montana Six-plume moth.

Here's Mike, straddling the equator, from Hacienda San Joaquin, Ecuador; Amazing moths in Vilcacamba
Duncan, at Ben Cruachan, Australia, is Mothing again, and Mothing by the river.
MaryAnn at Yarn Anomalies, in Australia, Heralds the Moths of November. And follow her link to the Bogong Moth. Love the name!
William, at Esperance Fauna, Australia; a Bag-shelter moth
Joan, at Photographs from South Africa has Another Lovely Moth
Mark Jason goes Birding in the Philippines; Alien moths in Dalton Pass
10 Amazing Moths with Multiple Personalities, on Environmental Graffiti. Just look at that last one, from Thailand. Amazing is right!

So, for us northerners, forget the winter blues and greys, the snows and rains! What is the internet for, if not for celebrating the whole globe? Moping is for flat-earthers.

White-shouldered House moth

This will be the last "The Moth and Me" for 2009. The next one, March, 2010, will be hosted by Jason, at Xenogere. Send your submissions to jason AT xenogere DOT com by March 13th. And we're looking for hosts starting April, 2010; drop Seabrooke a note if you are interested.

(Photos taken in August, at Campbell River, Vancouver Island. Thanks, Seabrooke, for the IDs.)

Among the thorns

2009-11-15T02:58:00.000-08:00

Lbbs find shelter and solid perches in a blackberry patch.

Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary, November

No paraskevidekatriaphobia for us!

2009-11-14T02:27:00.001-08:00

Friday the 13th. This one was Laurie's birthday. We bought Raku ware at a pottery sale in the morning, and a bark carving at a craft fair in the afternoon. In between, ...

The bottom half of the field.

... we passed a mixed field of seagulls, snow geese, and trumpeter swans, with a trio of Canada geese thrown in for contrast. The wind was up, and geese flew slowly overhead, fighting the breeze.

Lunch in our favourite spot in Ladner, then a visit to the harbour:

The Fraser Delta Wetlands

Reflections in the river

Stripy shed and blue boat, reflected

Moody skies, cheerful trees. And a heron posing as a weather vane.

Back to the road again. Along Highway 10, at the Centennial heritage site (1867-1967) ...

Window detail, St. Stephen's United Church

... we found mushrooms in the lawn, with rabbit pellet decorations.

In the north, new snow capped the mountains,

and to the south, masses of clouds pushed and shoved each other around the sky.

Highway 99, just across the field.

Stormclouds hovered, dumped rain, lifted and moved on. The sun came out again.

Just another perfect November day.

A Skywatch post.

Vantage point

2009-11-12T23:59:00.001-08:00

Heron in a tree:

And eagles on a post:

The heron was taking a break from his fishing; the eagles were still hard at work. Twice, we saw the eagle on the left leave the perch and swoop low over a flock of ducks. Both times he came back to his mate empty-handed.

The first time, the ducks took off in a panic. The second time, the flock was larger, and they just sat there. There's safety in numbers. At least the odds favour the individual in a large flock. Whether the ducks know that, or they'd just had it with running, who can tell?

At Boundary Bay, this afternoon.

Self-portrait in a cat's eye

2009-11-12T01:52:00.000-08:00

Sasha:

She's peaceful, she's quiet, she's patient. Even when I disturb her sleep.

She's spoiled rotten.

And she's going on eighteen years old.

Good health and happy days, Sasha! You can go back to sleep now.

The Moth and Me; Call for submissions

2009-11-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

Yikes! I just noticed the date. It's almost the middle of the month!

I am scheduled to host The Moth and Me around the 15th. I only have one submission so far. Please send me your "mothy" posts by this Sunday, the 15th.

My email address is wanderinweeta A T gmail DOT com.

Thanks!

Marine rescue, in miniature

2009-11-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

What to do on another rainy day? Stay in, putter around, water the plants, cut Laurie's hair, look out at the rain and wonder if it will ever stop. I decided to clean out the aquarium; rain suggests watery tasks.

I found this larva on the sea lettuce.

Looks a bit worried, don't you think?

Something wasn't right; it looks like a maggot, not a marine organism. It didn't belong in the aquarium. It seemed a little lost, too; not swimming, but not holding on to the seaweed very carefully, either. I fished it out and looked it over.

As far as I can tell, it's some kind of fly larva, possibly house fly. Those "eyes" are at the tail end; they're spiracles, breathing holes. The front end is pointed, with dark mouth parts (throat structure and mouth hooks) visible through the flesh. It's about 1 cm. long, stretched out.

On the move.

Compare it to the larva of the Indian Meal moth I captured a couple of weeks ago:

Indian Meal moth larva

Same general shape and size, but the fly larva has those tweezer-like mouth parts. I checked the moth larva again; it's gone into the pupal stage in my little bottle.

Moth pupa, under webbing.

Even in this stage, it's bigger than the maggot.

I gave my rescued critter a choice; salt water, fresh water (in a paper towel), damp paper, or dry land. It chose the damp paper towel; it's wandering about on it now, nibbling here and there.

I don't know how it got in the aquarium, through the lid. It eventually would have drowned and been eaten by the hermit crabs. As it is, if it pupates and hatches out as a house fly, it will feed a spider, instead. I'm not very good with house flies.

Something completely different; Old Scarborough

2009-11-10T03:41:00.001-08:00

We went antiquing last Saturday, to the annual Best of the West show in Abbotsford. Laurie picked up some nice pieces of Japanese porcelain, as usual; I bought a cardboard box.

It's just a book-sized box, nothing fancy, but the cover has a photograph glued under a sheet of glass. It's damaged, the glass is scratched and stained, but I am fascinated by the photo.

Here's the box:

The vendor told us it was Scarborough, in the UK, but Laurie didn't recognize it. We came home and Googled it; I think I found the place. It's changed a bit in the meantime. The photo is probably from around the turn of the 19th century. Before cars, anyhow.

These old photos are amazing. With such limited technology, black and white film (now turned brown and whitish), heavy, awkward tripods and bellows, and exposure times and developing dependent on the skill of the individual photographer, they often produce a sharp, detailed image. In this photo, a 4x6, the average figure is barely 3/8 of an inch high, and yet I can distinguish expressions on some of the faces.

I have had these enlarged before, with good results. Scanning produces the clearest image, but I have no scanner, so I cleaned up the glass as well as I could and photographed the photograph.

It's a crowd scene; probably a special holiday in the summer. People are out in their best finery, walking down the Esplanade. And this is what the well-dressed holidayer was wearing:

Hats! For the women, even the little girls, great mounds of lace and ribbons and decorative geegaws. The men are wearing bowlers, boaters, cloth caps; one man here has a top hat.

Girls wore their hair down; young women pinned it up in an elaborate pile under the hat.

Even the babies wore big bonnets. And girl babies wore layers and layers of clothing, like their mothers. Note the perambulator, pushed by the father. His wife has a smaller hat, with a sharp brim and a pouf in front. My Mom had one very like it in the 1940s.

A couple of solitary young men. The one in front seems to be wearing a uniform hat. Many men and women carry umbrellas, using them as canes.

Detail of the row of houses. Today, the street has been widened to make a parking lot, and the front lawns are cut off at the bottom of the steps. And now the traffic is mostly cars.

Down by the waterside, there is a quay, fenced off from the water, with benches along it. The swimming beach is on the other side of the spit of land ahead; Scarborough Castle occupies the top of the spit.

Time travel, without the dials and gizmos.
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Mushrooming in the park

2009-11-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

Even in a mowed lawn, this time of year, there are mushrooms to be found:

Nicholson Park, Surrey.

The bush has staring red eyes

2009-11-08T01:51:00.000-08:00

Imagine a tangle of half-fallen trees, lichened branches, bedraggled blackberry vines, dead twigs. Like this one:

That's a juvenile black-crowned night heron, out in plain sight. More or less; his feathers blended in with the colour of the branches, and he sat perfectly still. I have upped the contrast, to make him stand out.

We were near the entrance at Reifel Island, when a worker clearing brush pointed these out to us. The young one, and two adults. I couldn't see the adults at first, even when she lined me up to squint down her pointing finger. After a bit of walking back and forth to get different angles, my eyes adjusted and I caught the hint of white feathers behind the screen of branches. It was quite a distance away; I couldn't see the features. The camera did a better job.

Adult black-crowned night heron, Nicticorax nicticorax.

I didn't see the second one until we passed the trees an hour later. Laurie didn't see him at all.

The grey smudges are shadows. Just part of the camouflage.

A closer view of the young one.

This was a first sighting for me. Very exciting!

Characteristics for ID, from USGS;
Adult:

Red eyes, legs yellow
Black bill
Black crown and back
White face, throat, foreneck, chest and belly
Blue-gray wings

Juvenile:

Eyes yellowish to amber, legs dull greyish - check
Yellow base to bill - I didn't see this.
Brown head, neck, chest and belly streaked with buff and white - check.
Wings and back darker brown with large white spots at the tips of the feathers; spots especially large on the greater secondary coverts - check.

Immature:

First year; similar to juvenile, but with less extensive spotting on upperwings and a dark cap
Second year; resemble the adult, but have a brown neck and wings contrasting with darker brown cap and back
Third year; full adult plumage

So this young one is either this year's nestling, or one year old.

And a "Cool Fact" from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

Adult Black-crowned Night-Herons apparently do not distinguish between their own young and those from other nests, and will brood chicks not their own.

They nest in colonies, so there may have been several other herons in the same trees. And the adults we saw may not be the parents of Junior, here.

Grey flames, a possible elephant, and mare's tails

2009-11-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

With this iffy weather, rain one minute, sunshine the next, wild winds overhead pushing the clouds around, more rain looming on the horizon, we've been keeping our eyes on the sky this week. When it wasn't socked in, and/or raining, we took photos:

High cirrus clouds over Reifel Island Bird Sanctuary. With snow geese.

A touch of pink along the horizon.

As good as a signpost; wind's up, weather's changing.

Mass of swirling cloud.

Laurie says it looks like grey flames.

Mare's tails over Delta farmland.

Is that an elephant I see?

The moon through thick clouds.

They look green to me, like some of the storm clouds I used to watch in Oklahoma. Tornado clouds. Good thing we don't have tornados here.

A Skywatch post.

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A relapse of spring fever

2009-11-06T03:39:00.003-08:00

It's November already. Winter. This isn't supposed to be growing out in the open:

Young green pepper, unprotected, and doing fine.

I was expecting, when I walked into the Strathcona Community Gardens this week, to find desolate plots of dead vegetable remains, rotting leaves, and silence. Instead, I found gardeners setting out new plants, bird song, and fresh flowers.

White dahlia

There must be a pocket of warmth, some quirk of the air currents, maybe, that postpones winter in this corner of the city. There were still some raspberries on the canes, even. A gardener gave me a chayote, a mid-summer squash, to take home for supper. I met another, on his knees in a freshly-planted bed of garlic; he was squeezing the last few lettuce seedlings around the edge. He expects to be harvesting until the snow comes.

Salad fixings; arugula, I think.

Fennel. A hand-written sign says, "90 days to maturity".

The brassicas will last right through the winter. I saw chard, kale, winter cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choi, and more.

Some kind of brassica. I don't recognize it.

Borage flower. A nice addition to a salad. It tastes somewhat like cucumber.

A willow-branch fence around a plot grows as happily as the veggies.

Yellow squash, waiting to be taken home for supper.

An allium head, tied to a stake for the seeds to dry.

The gardeners were busy, some planting, some cleaning. One man had tied up his bare grape vines, and was busy taking down the dried bean vines, leaving the stakes for the next season. A woman trundled a wheelbarrow of stalks for the compost along the path.

Each plot has its own style of fence (or no fence); some are tangles of sticks, others recycled metal grids. Rocks, bricks, logs, boards, even broken pots do the job. This neat rose garden has a new front.

At the back, beside the chain-link fence, a shiny new plastic compost bin is hard at work. I noticed many of these, all through the gardens. Several of the plots, the ones cleaned off for the season, have been dug over and covered with a fresh, black layer of compost.

The people aren't the only workers:

Dozens of crows picked over the recently-turned soil, breaking apart lumps to get at seeds and bugs.

The sentinel.

Following a spate of birdsong, I took the trail on the south-east corner, leading to the main composting area. It skirted a small remainder of the wetlands that formerly covered the whole lot.

Behind a tangle of vines and weeds, a small flock of birds were bathing. There were a pair of robins, at least one junco, and several others.

I think these two are juvenile redwing blackbirds. The little white lines on the photo (full size) are bathwater spray.

And the bees, wasps, and bee mimics are buzzing around the marigolds.

It's a hive of activity, even in November.

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Gardening flicker.

2009-11-05T01:15:00.000-08:00

I had a quick errand at the Strathcona Community Gardens yesterday. I was stopped at the entrance by this flicker. It was digging holes in the loose dirt alongside the path, using its beak as a shovel.

Thigh-deep, surrounded by the still-moist dirt it has thrown out of the hole. It eventually got down deep enough for its back to line up at ground level.

A blurry photo, but I liked it because of the detail of the upper tail feathers.

I changed my plans and spent an hour or more in the gardens, wandering about and following birds. More on this tomorrow.
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