At home on shifting sand.

I'm still sorting photos from the last two weeks, going backwards in time, more or less. These are the remainder from the walk on the Boundary Bay shore dunes last week.

The dunes make up a large part of Boundary Bay Regional Park, and a narrow strip continues south to Beach Grove, separating the fenced residential area from the beach itself. In the park, we find scrubby brush, mosses and grasses, rabbits, wasps and dragonflies, and many birds, from the ever-present sparrows and crows to the osprey, hawks, and eagles that hunt overhead. On the strip along the waterfront, the trees and shrubs mostly disappear, giving way to large-headed sedge, beach pea, sea rocket, pale montia, red sorrel, more moss, and a variety of grasses.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. This early in the year, the heads still show some green; later they will be a dark brown, stiff and scratchy.

Lupins are native to this area.  They like well-drained soil, and lots of sunshine, so they do well on the sandy foreshore. They are another pea, like the little (for now) lathyrus that are starting to bloom around this one's feet.

The climate on this spit of land dangling off the bottom edge of the Fraser delta is warm almost year-round, and most of the residents are enthusiastic gardeners. Most of the plants stay at home, but some find the shore too enticing to resist. They jump their fences and take to living wild.

A patch of irises establishing a beachhead. The whitish flowers in front are sea rocket.

Yellow iris. Going by the water droplets on the petals, a neighbour is encouraging it in its attempted takeover. The tall stem and berries are from an asparagus plant.

Not a welcome invader. Scotch broom, one of several thriving bushes. Another big patch is behind it, on the left.

While I sat on a log, waiting for Laurie to go back to the car to drop off his jacket, this little redhead came along to see if I had any crumbs. I left a bit of bread for him and his tribe.

Ant, sand, and sedge.

And on the sandy path back to civilization, we passed this swarm of tiny, tiny ants.

Part of the swarm

Zooming in. They were so active, and so small, that I could hardly distinguish one from the next. They seem to be quite long-waisted, and have a white stripe across the abdomen Could be Tetramorium, probably an import.

Homies and immigrants, country and city dwellers, working out a life together. Very Canadian.

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Flying jewels

This has been an oddly bug-free spring. A few bumblebees, a lonely spider or two, a stray mosquito, three or four carpet beetles; that's been all we've seen for a long time.

That has changed. The sunlight outside my window is bright with flying things, bees and wasps and a tiny moth. Down on the dunes, the ants are swarming, and cabbage moths led me a merry chase, without any luck, of course. Cleaning up the garden this afternoon, I woke a big, black beetle. The spiders are back in business. Good times are coming!

On the hydrangea, I found this syrphid fly, who obligingly posed for me just beyond where I could reach without danger of falling into the leaves.

In the sunlight, he glowed, especially that golden vest.

And I managed to get close enough to the clematis to catch this bee arriving.

I didn't know their wings bent when they were flying. No wonder they're so agile in the air!

The clematis, sans bee.

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Wordless

Well, sort of . . .

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Fabulous Flying Fairies

Beach peas are among my favourite flowers, and they're especially colorful at this time of year; later blooms are more pink than purple.

These are the first crop, already setting seed. No wonder they're so prolific!

Purple flowers, maroon buds, and red seed pods.

Buds and a curly tendril

These look like the backs of little flying women, each wearing a pink headscarf. Fairies, maybe?

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Between town and shore

To the lonely sea and the sky . . . *

Path to the beach

Escaped from the garden, sharing the dunes with weeds and logs.

Somebody's beach shack, roofless

Motto over the door. Good reminder.

A Skywatch post.

*From Sea Fever, by John Masefield.

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Teeny-tiny hermit crabs!

The tide was almost at its lowest ebb when we went to Boundary Bay Wednesday afternoon. We walked out more than halfway to the border marker before the water came racing back in.

I was collecting veggies for my hermits and crab, and out that far, the harvest was good; a varied menu, fresh and green. I brought home two varieties of sea lettuce, a handful of eelgrass with its roots, eelgrass with diatom fuzz, a bit of green tuft, a complete rockweed attached to a shell, and a "head" of sea hair. And for the three whelks that have grown up in the tank, I collected several clamshells hosting colonies of barnacles.

I washed everything at home, and planted the greens in the aquarium. There were too many clamshells, but I put the best in the tank and left a couple in the washing water while I decided what to do with them.

A while later, I saw movement in the sand and shreds of seaweed in the bowl. It was odd; not the curving, speedy swimming style of an amphipod, nor the jittery dance of a copepod. Not the frantic waving of a worm;  not a snail dragging its shell along; something walking. The animal was too small to see clearly, in the muck and underwater. When I tried to collect it with my eyedropper, it scuttled away. Definitely not a swimmer.

With the lens, I could see a hint of transparent legs. And it ran backwards, like a hermit.

I eventually trapped it, and examined it with the microscope. It is a hermit crab, less than 1 mm. long. And it was nude; a precarious state, making him a tasty morsel for any passing critter, even a barnacle.

I can't resist the collector's bug. I have boxes and bottles of little shells. And one small box holds pinhead shells. I went through them with a tiny paintbrush, collected all the snail shells and gave them to the hermit. Within a few minutes, he had moved into one, and was examining a second. Hooray!

I found a second hermit, a bit bigger. He joined the first, and chose the largest of my pinhead snail shells.

Two hermits, with extra shells. The larger one is checking out an alternate shell. He didn't like it, and has kept the one he's wearing here. Shell and all, he's just over 2 mm. pincers to tip.

I'm keeping them for now in a half-cup of water, with a few fragments of sea lettuce and hair. They seem contented enough, so I'll give them a chance to grow up a bit before they join their cousins in the tank.

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Not a purple spider

It was a purple day. We found purple irises in the sand at Boundary Bay, small, very purple irises in a driveway in Beach Grove, purple pansies in roadside gardens, and acres of purple lathyrus on the dunes. Add in a couple of purple shore crabs and a tall lilac bush. Purple!

Irises swaying in the wind.

I didn't even see the spider right in front of my nose until I looked at the photos. Here she is:

Laying in wait.

She's a crab spider, not camouflaged. But in the rainbow of colours all around, who's to notice? I'm sure she'll get a meal.

There's a second spider, if you look carefully at the top photo. Can you find it?

Besides purple, there was much more to be seen. We came home with hundreds of photos, and I was already behind with my sorting and processing. I need a rainy week!

And I've got baby, as in infant, barely here, hermit crabs! More later.

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Pollen carrier

Apis mellifera, the western honey bee, with her* bags full of pollen (not honey):

Zoom

Zoom, zoom

Quite a load she was carrying; she seemed to be flying clumsily, but she was still busy collecting more.

A honey bee moistens the forelegs with a protruding tongue and brushes the pollen that has collected on head, body and forward appendages to the hind legs. The pollen is transferred to the pollen comb on the hind legs and then combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the corbicula on the outside surface of the tibia of the hind legs.[3] A single hair functions as a pin that secures the middle of the pollen load. (From Wikipedia/Pollen Basket)

*Worker bees are infertile females. The males are drones; they do not fight, they do not gather pollen.

Found in the Secret Garden, Tsawwassen.

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Buttercup mimic

Along the shady banks of a stream at this time of year, we always see the large-leaved avens in flower with its feet in the mud.

Geum macrophyllum var. perincisum, Burns Bog

We found it at the base of the cliff in White Rock, where the trickle of water never fails, and in the ditch by the railroad at Crescent Beach. It reclaimed a mudslide behind my backyard when I lived near Mission. And it lines the path beside the creek in Burns Bog.

In many ways, it looks sort of buttercuppish. It likes the same conditions; wet ground, some shade. The avens flowers, 5 petalled and bright yellow, look like a skimpy buttercup; the leaves are similar to some buttercup leaves. But the buttercup bears its flowers on individual, leafless stems, where the avens flowers cluster at the tip of hairy, leafy stems. Most buttercups (definitely not all) grow close to the ground. In deep shade, though, they may be quite tall, but not as bushy as the avens.

Buttercup

And where they get half a chance, the buttercups go hog-wild, producing a brilliant yellow carpet.

Buttercups, Burnaby Foreshore Park

They're not relatives; the large-leaved avens belong to the Rose family. The buttercup is a Ranunculus.

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Yay! Snail ID!

The little skunk cabbage snail has a name. Go see!

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Promise of goodness to come

The salmon berries are finally flowering; I saw the first barely a week ago, still half open, then these a couple of days ago. It seems a bit late this year for them. I checked back to previous years; last year, they were just starting at the end of March. In 2011, I found some in a shady ravine the 21st of April. In 2008, it was the first week of April.

These were in Burns Bog, good terrain for salmonberry; wet and shady.

Flower and green berry, against the yellow-green of the sunny treetops.

The berries are still hard and green. Ripe, some will be salmon coloured, most deep red.

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Impossibly orange

California poppies in the Secret Garden, Tsawwassen

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Skunk cabbage snail

We found several of these little snails on a skunk cabbage in Burns Bog. I haven't seen any like them before.

This one was on a blade of grass. It's about 1 cm. long.

Isn't it a cutie?

I haven't been able to identify this snail; I hardly know where to start.

Help!

UPDATE:

I wrote Robert Forsyth of mollus.ca, and he identified it as one of the ambersnails. He writes,

This is one of a group of snail that pretty much look all alike. They are the Ambersnails, family Succineidae, and are characterized by a very thin yellowish (usually; hence the name) shell having few (about 3) turns or whorls. The opening is large and while the animal can fully retract, there isn’t a lot of protection afforded by the shell. The main differences between the several genera are anatomical, especially the reproductive system. Genera (and so species) are nearly impossible to identify with shells alone. Our species — the number is uncertain — are further complicated by most being nearly unknown anatomically. Genetics may be the answer to sort out this difficult group. In our area, most succineid snails are inhabitants of somewhat characteristically wet areas, like marshes and edges of waterways, although there are dryland ambersnails (there’s one that lives in the xeric hills around Kamloops for example, in areas with prickly pear cactus even). I should also add that some freshwater snails come very close to looking like ambersnails, further complicating identification at times.

Thanks again, Robert!

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A creek full of light

In Burns Bog, this time of year, the trees are not fully leafed out, and the leaves are still that cheerful springtime yellow-green. Although our path goes through deep shade, we walk under a glowing canopy. Down in the shadowed creek, a trickle of dark water traps and reflects the glory overhead.

Lone mallard in a patch of sky

Davies Creek, running along the outer edge of the bog, between ferny banks.

Stripes and trunks

Green zigzags

Patches

Vibrant greens

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Computer is acting up

I'm having computer problems. I'll be back soon.

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Candles in the bog

On the spur of the moment, on finding the parking lot at the mall crowded with cars lined up waiting for spots, we changed our minds and went down to Burns Bog instead. We weren't prepared, and the only camera we had was the tiny, pocket-sized Sony. And it was so long since I'd used it that I forgot to check its settings, so the flash was set to "Always". In the blazing sun, this doesn't work so well.

No matter; it was an interesting afternoon; I'll have more to say about it later on. For now, this:

We came across an unusual pine tree in an area that had been mostly paved over long, long ago.

Treetop, festooned with "candles".

This may be a variation of the shore pine, Pinus contorta. The needles come in pairs (look closely at the base of the cone below), and are about 3 inches long, slightly curved or twisted. Lodgepole pine needles also come in pairs, but the tree is usually taller and straighter, and not so likely to be found here on the coast.

The trunk and branches are crooked, the bark scaly, brown or grey depending on the light. So far, so good.

Where it seems not to match up, is in the large cones. The erect cones at the tips of the branches are the short-lived male cones. They are about as long as the needles, 3 inches tall or more. Each one, at the tip, wears a clump of shorter needles.

As we moved about the tree, we could see a cloud of pollen being released. I shook a cone on purpose; yellow pollen sprayed everywhere. The cone was sticky and mildly scented.

Male cone, with topknot. Sorry about the glare.

Each pollen grain shields a sperm cell. The grains float on the wind to reach a female cone and fertilize the ovules, deep between the scales. The male cone then disintegrates, while the female matures and becomes woody. Each scale will have a pair of seeds at the base, which, if this is a shore pine, will be released once it matures. (The cones of the Lodgepole pine stay closed for years until a forest fire splits them open.)

Cropped from top photo. Some branches have clusters of "candles". At the base, on two of these branches, are a couple or three fat female cones.

Tangled, rubbery branches, brown, scaly bark.

My guide says, about the shore pine,

"On some peat-bogs*, shore pine forms stunted forests where 100-year-old trees my be less than 5 cm. in diameter."

*Such as Burns Bog, where we found this one.

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Rare glimpse of varied thrush

My old camera sits in a drawer by my desk, just in case something lands in the birdbath. I had forgotten how long it was since I looked to see what it held. This pair of varied thrushes showed up just beyond the garden a month ago. I haven't seen them since.

I think this is the female, with my wooden heron guarding her.

The pair, poking through the soggy moss and buttercup leaves that is supposed to be a lawn.

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South Slope flowers; the shy ones

Sometimes I have to wonder why I spend so much time weeding my garden, cutting back the ground covers, giving each plant its own space. In the wild, sometimes, they seem to enjoy the tangle.

The trees of the White Rock cliffs climb up out of a thick mat of vegetation, mostly low berry producing plants, Nootka roses, bindweed, and honeysuckle (which also has berries, but we don't dare eat them.),  and mounds of Himalayan blackberry. Later on, little brown birds will twitter constantly in the thickets, raising their families on a diet of berries blue, red, and black. They'll leave bucket-loads of the big blackberries to the crows and us, but not much else.

The little trailing blackberry and salal

Our only native blackberry is a weak, trailing vine, usually mingling inconspicuously among other plants. Here it uses the salal as a support, to spread its leaves out in the sunshine. The berries are small and sweet, the smaller, the sweeter.

The salal is just showing the first flower buds. They will eventually hang down in a row of sticky, white lanterns from a curving stalk. As they mature, they turn green, then a deep purple. Ripe, they are sweet and have an intense grape-like flavour. (Not the grapes we get at the supermarket; these days; those taste like sugar water.) They are not "true" berries, but the swollen sepals of the flower.

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Saskatoon, or service berry, Amelanchier alnifolia

These were hiding low in the undergrowth. I hadn't seen them there before, but now I'll look for them in the summer. Service berries are round, single berries like a blueberry, a deep blue colour and highly nutritious. I have found them extremely variable as to taste; I had one in my yard up north that was almost inedible, and I have picked buckets full from a tree at a campsite near Barkerville, digging out every container I could find in the car, because they were so delicious. I think the deciding factors are water and sunlight, which mine were rather short of. This one looks like it's in an ideal situation.

White bluebells, Hyancinthoides hybrids, probably.

Deep below a mass of last year's Himalayan blackberry canes, we saw a bright spot. Laurie cleared away as many of the canes as he could without tearing himself up; those thorns are vicious! And there they were: several small clumps of white bells.

Glowing in the unaccustomed sunlight.

These huge blackberry bushes are still a tangle of sturdy brown canes, A few were starting to leaf out. Within a month, they will have built a large, dark cave where nothing grows, but where birds and rabbits can stay happily invisible. And where we will probably rip our hands reaching for the juiciest berries.

Himalayan blackberries vs. the evergreen blackberry, two delicious invaders. Both well-provided with thorns. Both worth the scratches and punctures they give us. But don't go near them wearing flimsy clothes!

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