Good-looking, well-dressed single male

... with hair on his pedipalps, looking for a date ...

Philodromus dispar, male

... or a good meal, whichever comes first. He can have all of my mosquitoes. In fact, I hope he does.

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Dropping in, dropping out

A big brown moth dropped in to say hello:

Large yellow underwing, Noctua pronuba

Double reflection, on the two panes of the window.

For the next week or so, posting will be light and possibly irregular. We're busy packing this weekend, and are going on vacation up the Sunshine Coast and over to Vancouver Island next week. We have no fixed schedule or route, and will come back when we get tired of travelling or run out of money, whichever comes first. If we have an internet connection where we end up each day, I'll check in.

We're carrying four cameras, the new laptop, piles of batteries and battery chargers, tangles of wires, and my trusty mouse. It's the first time I've really travelled with so much machinery; my usual packing includes only clothes, a bit of food, and a sleeping bag. I guess I'm getting "civilized". Or something.

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Yes, I've got my head on backwards.

Is there a problem with that?

Swivel-top gull, White Rock beach.

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A small patch of wet sand

Kids on the White Rock beach:

Castle builders

Joint project

Get that ball!

Bucket of crabs

Not so sure of the concept

After all, look at that face! (Cool eyebrows, though.)

Learning to pop rockweed. Better than bubble wrap!

Hairy rope.

Laurie is a kid, too, some days.

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Roadside attraction

On the road to Crescent Beach today, we passed this little deer, grazing just a few feet from busy traffic. When we stopped and Laurie got out, it kept on eating, no more worried than a cow would be.

This is the skinniest deer I have ever seen. Look at the shoulder blades and the sharp haunches. We can count the ribs. I wonder why. There's plenty to eat; around the corner, beside the river, the grass grows belly-deep, the hills above are bushy and green.


By the large ears and the black-tipped tail, I would think it's a young mule deer. I could very well be wrong.

I hope the summer is kind to it, and puts some meat on those ribs.

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Roses after their bath

In my daughter's garden, Strathcona:

They were beautifully perfumed, too.

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Underwater kitten and wandering anemones

When is a crab like a kitten?

When you tempt it with a chopstick.

Let me explain: every day I tend to my salt-water beasties (now moved from the dishpan to a regular aquarium). I clean the filter, settle any seaweed that has come loose, and check to see if all the visible critters are alive. I keep a chopstick handy; with this, I gently tap any open clam or mussel; if they close, they're alive.

Yesterday, one of the clams had moved over beside a sand dollar shell tipped up against a rock. When the chopstick passed the gap underneath, something slashed out at it, much as a kitten under the bed attacks your toes. I waved the stick again; same result.

It turned out to be a crab. After a few attempts at the chopstick from shelter, he came out and tangled with it in the open, chasing it here and there, grabbing and pinching.

Laying in wait.

Later on, I watched him wander about, eating. He uses those pincers much like a knife and fork, and surprisingly quickly, picking up tiny morsels of food and bringing them to his mouth. The "jaws" chomp away, and the pincers go back for the next bite.

The two white strips (maxillipeds) at the mouth move like sideways lips and teeth.

It was interesting to watch him find a meal. For the appetizer, he scraped at the back of the clam, picking up invisible (to me) specks and eating them. (The clam ignored him, except when he got too near the lip. Then it closed down for a few seconds.)

Then the main dish: he moved out into the open and grabbed a piece of dead barnacle. This he broke in little pieces, chewed on them, and spit out the crumbs.

Occasionally, the current brought a fragment of seaweed past his face. He slashed out at these, the same way he had attacked my chopstick. When he caught one, he held it up to his mouth and chewed away.

Picking some salad greens.

And for dessert: more salad. He went to the back of the aquarium, where a forest of sea lettuce waved above him, raised the pincers and picked himself a few good-sized pieces. Yum!

On to the wandering anemones.

I had always thought that anemones were sessile: once they had settled onto a rock, they were there for life. I was mistaken.

Several of my anemones were anchored on pieces of kelp. With time, the kelp started to rot away.

Small brownish anemones on kelp. The edges are disintegrating.

Plumed anemone on disappearing kelp.

When the kelp was almost gone, the anemones moved to anything solid in the vicinity; the glass, a mussel, a rock. And moved again, and again. Almost every morning I find them in a different location.

White plumed anemone now on stone. Brown one on barnacle shell.

Another on a white stone.

And a baby white on another stone. Oregon pillbug (5 mm.) behind it, for size comparison.

Bonus: a small hermit crab, in an Amphissa shell.

Grainy-hand hermit, Pagurus granosimanus.

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Lazy afternoon, with busy dragonflies

In midafternoon, on a summer day, the birds and beasts lie low. Walking through the bush, we hear an occasional sleepy peep from deep in a shrub; maybe a squirrel chitters at us from far above. On the shore, even the gulls are napping.

We found benches with a hint of shade along the Maplewood Flats path, and sat to watch the birds off-shore.

Burrard Inlet and Maplewood tide flats.

Far across the water, a raft of Canada geese.

On a sandbar, a couple of families of cormorants. Caspian terns beside the gulls, and a pair of unidentifiable ducks.

Swallow nest boxes. "Keep Out!" the sign says. That means us, not the swallows.

We saw no bears. But a big doe crossed our path and bounded off into the water meadow.

We ended up sitting on a log on the beach. A pair of dragonflies teased us by circling right in front of our noses. We tried to time them and get a photo; they varied their speed and route, but made sure it always included buzzing us. They kept it up until we'd taken dozens of useless photos and put the cameras away.

Here's our best shot:

Nasty critters, they are.

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