Can you identify these trees?

Laurie is a WWII veteran, British army, stationed mostly in S.E. Asia. With this snowy weather, we've been staying inside, puttering around, and he's been cleaning out old files; he found a stack of currency he had brought home as souvenirs.

These ones had interesting artwork. Can you name these fruits?






Or this tree?


Front of the one rupee note:


These date from around 1940 to 1947, when Laurie came home. More, with a bit of history, tomorrow.

Let it Snow...

... As long as there are black oil sunflower seeds, life is good.*


*Translated from the Chickadee, Fraser Delta dialect.

Not Quite So "Weekly" Five

And not exactly "Five", either. A bunch of links, anyhow. Mostly intriguing photos, ones that made me think, this time.

• Creek Running North; on nature photography. Down at the bottom, interesting shots of a coyote who has learned the rules of the road.


• This, you must see! The Science of Bubble Rings. Dolphins make and play with the underwater equivalent of smoke rings. I watched the video 5 times. Via Zooillogix.


• Also from Zooillogix, Parasites turn Ants into Berries. One of those amazing "inventions" that either elicit a "Wow!" or an "Ewwww!" Or both.


• From Deep Sea News, a bi-coloured lobster. I thought, at first, that this was fake. A plastic lobster. But no, it's real; it grew that way. As McClain explains,

  "Because the two sides of lobster develop independently of each other an error can occur on one side and not the other."

• Let's get involved! Here's a fun way; the Annual GBBC (Great Backyard Bird Count). Count the birds you see at any place of your choosing (N. America only; sorry.) for 15 minutes, and post your results. Here are their instructions:
  

  1. Plan to count birds for at least 15 minutes during February 15–18, 2008. Count birds at as many places and on as many days as you like—just keep a separate list of counts for each day and/or location.
  
  2. Count the greatest number of individuals of each species that you see together at any one time, and write it down. (You can get regional bird checklists here.)
  
  3. Enter your results through our web page.
  
  That's it! We'll look forward to receiving your counts.

  
  And there is a photo contest, as well. If you end up getting a great shot, consider entering it here.

A couple more, moving away from the photo albums:

• This one is an entire blog; every post I've seen so far has been worth reading. Dot Earth. Today's entry is Earth is Us, introducing the term, "the Anthropocene epoch". Some other recent topics are wolves, whales, alternate energy, climate change, the Nano car, and those new fluorescent light bulbs.


• And a book report: A germ's eye view of history. From Gene Expression, a review of "Plagues and Peoples". I have this book, and it's on my "To Be Read ASAP" list. I think I'll move it to the top.
  Long, long ago, I read Hans Zinsser's classic, "Rats, Lice, and History", which deals with the same topic; it gave me a whole new perspective on our heritage, one less focussed on VIPs, battles, and dates, and more on the real people whose joys and sorrows are ours. "Plagues and Peoples" will be a good reminder.

Double heron. An old photo, scanned. Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver.

Snow Day

It snowed most of the day, starting with tiny, almost dust-size flakes, ending with a fast dump of 4 or 5 inches of heavy clumps.

1:55 PM

Then it stopped, and the sun came out and melted everything it reached.

3:05 PM.

Dormant hydrangea.

Looks like January is Moth Month

Back in October, as some of you may remember, I photographed a Cabbage White butterfly caterpillar turning into a chrysalis, and blogged about it here.

The adult butterfly should hatch sometime in the spring. One site I found suggested it may be as early as February. So it is time I started monitoring more closely.

I have had it outside, in a semi-sheltered location, still in the big salad bowl where it anchored itself on the lid, and with a couple of layers of open-weave cloth over it to keep out predators, but allow air circulation.


Here it is, as I last photographed it, at the end of September. It is anchored at the tail end (where the discarded skin is) and with a thread around the middle, and hanging upside down (judging by the position of the caterpillar when the transformation started).

I brought it inside tonight. Fingers crossed: hoping I would find it still alive and growing. I photographed it quickly, not wanting to expose it to a warm lamp any more than was necessary, bundled it up again, and put it back outside.

Here's what I found.


There are a few changes. It is no longer attached by the tail, but is swinging free on the thread around the waist, right side up. The old skin is still there, but no longer tied to the chrysalis.

It seems to me that the markings along the wings are more pronounced, and the bulges that I still think may be eyes are rounder and have a rim on one side.

Floating free as it is, I got a first look at the belly.


Some kind of apparatus there. Legs? Antennae? Mouth parts? Time will tell. The belly was tight against the lid in the fall, so I don't know whether it has changed since then.

And back to waiting again. I hope I have done it no damage; I figure the disturbance was no more than what would have been normal on the underside of a leaf in a bit of a wind.

We'll see.

Kindred Spirit

It's amazing, sometimes, to watch the unfolding of children's personalities, and especially to trace family resemblances there. It's more understandable that they have Mommy's eyes, an aunt's long fingers and Grandpa's curly hair, etcetera, even recognizable family temperaments; but likes and dislikes? Or ways of interacting with their world? How is that inherited? And yet it seems to be. It boggles the mind!

Today my five-year-old granddaughter was laughing at the way her sister had positioned a rubber grasshopper, and it occurred to me to show her a real (albeit dead and a bit dilapidated) grasshopper from my son's collection.


She was fascinated.

She looked at it from all angles, and moved on to the butterflies. She asked questions; "Where are the eyes?" "What's that?" She was so interested that I got out a lens and my bright desk lamp. And for the next half hour or more, she pored over my insect collection, with her head bent low over the lens. She moved the insects around to see them top and bottom, always very carefully; she didn't break even one of the tiniest or most delicate. And she insisted on double-checking to make sure she hadn't missed even one.

She even noticed a tiny broken bit of butterfly in the case; "What's that thing?" The coiled proboscis, or siphoning tube, barely 2 mm. across.


And I remembered my early years, how I spent hours watching flies and crabs, investigating the "innards" of fish and sea urchins, permitting mosquitoes to bite me so that I could see how they looked up close. And my delight at my first microscope (at about 11), when Dad had to tell me to calm down and stand with my hands behind my back to tell him about the fly wings I had spent the afternoon looking at.

I had to promise Snookums that I would have more beasties to show her next time she comes so that she would allow me to put these ones away at lunch time.

Astounding! All the more, to me, because most of my other grandkids would be saying, "Ewwww!"

Almost a fish face.

Early night.

I'm babysitting tomorrow, early till late. I've child-proofed the house, defrosted goodies for them, tidied the toy box, set the alarms. (Three of them; I'll never manage to get up at the first one, and maybe not even the second.)

And now, I'm off to bed. See you tomorrow!

Bored in the Mall

I was left holding the bags while Laurie finished off his list. Sitting on the stairs, because all the seating was occupied. So I had to entertain myself somehow.

A metal ball, painted black, decorating the bannisters. Not in the least transparent, even if it does seem to show the mall behind it.

Skylight over my head. It works as an optical illusion for me, one minute I see it as convex, the next moment concave.

Veggies in a bag.

Good thing Laurie was quick; I would have been reduced to shooting the tile floor next.

Photos I wanted to take the other day ...

... but didn't. Because I was driving.

Anyhow, Hugh, over at Rock, Paper, Lizard, took them. And posted them on his blog. Here. (Down at the bottom, below his tales of woe. Ouch!)

These are the mountains that hedge the northern border of the Lower Mainland. The range continues on to the east; looking south, we have Mount Baker, and west, the ocean. Appropriate envy is permitted.

"Mrs. T" gets ID'd

Can't be a real moth, says Laurie. Wyldthang calls it " pretty freaky". "Spooky", someone on another site called it.

That's this visitor, that I photographed on my garden wall, last August, and posted to the blog a few days ago:

Well, yes, it is strange.

I hadn't gotten around to IDing it, nor even finding where it fitted. I've been doing that all this evening (and early morning).

It is, as far as I can figure out, a Morning Glory Plume Moth, Emmelina monodactyla, and is fairly common across the US and Canada, and in the UK. It turns up on a database of species in the Lulu Island bog, just across the river from us. Some people have called it the "T" moth, which is the name I gave it for my own use. Logical, I guess.

I found eleventy-two photographs of Emmelina, but very little information. I read, over and over, that the Plume Moths have unusual wings. (As if I hadn't noticed.) They are like long "spars", or shafts, two in the front wings, three in the back. Long feathery "plumes" trail out from these shafts when they are open, but at rest, the moth rolls up the front wing and hides the back wings underneath. Wikipedia says,

"Often they resemble a piece of dried grass, and may pass unnoticed by potential predators even when resting in exposed situations in daylight."

On BugGuide, I found a photo of this moth with the feathers exposed:

Photo by Dick Wilson, under a Creative Commons license.

The caterpillars of this moth eat morning glories, I would infer from the name, but the only site I found that mentioned their diet named field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis. Of which we have far too much around here; I hope all her eggs hatch. And have big appetites.

But I could find no photos of her caterpillars. I guess I'll just have to keep an eye out for them this summer.

Spaced

No photo today**; instead, I'll try to paint a picture with halting words.

Today we went across the river to shop in New Westminster. It was a clear, sunny day; even though everything froze hard overnight, by noon the ice had melted wherever the sun reached.

We were done shopping by 4:30 and headed home. The setting sun was mostly straight ahead, almost at road level. The sky, even through sunglasses, was a light orange, the sun a blinding orange-yellow circle, dimmed by haze just enough to let us see its shape. And big; as big as the harvest moon of last November.

I tried my best not to look directly at the sun, especially because I was driving. But it kept leaping out at us as we crested a small rise or as the road turned under us. Luckily, it was partially screened by trees, leafless but still providing some cover. Maybe that was why it looked so huge; the trees barely covered half its diameter.

The road home crosses three bridges. On the second one, the sun was to our right, haloing the trees of the bog*, touching up the bridge railings with orange highlighter, ricocheting off the river, off windows and tin roofs. I turned away, to the left, to rest my eyes.

And there was the moon. A full moon, fully as big, today, as the sun, but gleaming white, whiter even than the snowy mountains below.

Round white moon, round orange sun, and us in the centre in our little white car on the rounded slope of the bridge.

Beautiful!

At moments like these, I get an inkling -- a sensation, an intuition, maybe -- of our planet as part of a much larger world. Bodies, large and small, whirling in a rhythmic space dance, and ourselves as mere dots crawling on the surface of this blue-green ball. Insignificant, even in our cities, freckles on the skin of the world. Yet important, because we are part of that larger whole. And because what we do can affect the dance, even if only by changing the dress of our particular performer.

And, if the presence of an observer has an effect on reality, as some say, we are that observer.

I explain that very badly. I don't know if we have words to do justice to the feeling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*(Either Lulu Island Bog, or Burns Bog, I'm not sure which. Depends on the exact angle.)

**Changed my mind: here's a moon shot. Crescent Beach, last month.

Cougar Creek Park is full of Mallards ...

... at any time of the year. But the first time we were there, in March of last year, we saw buffleheads, wood ducks, and widgeons, as well. By April, they were gone. So when we went for a short walk there, yesterday, I was hoping they'd be back.

Yes and no.

At the bottom end of the pond, where the creek exits, we found new building going on; a fair start on a beaver dam, already raising the water level of the pond. It's an ambitious project. All around the lake, trees have been cut, most of them dropped into the water, a few on land; some of these have already been cut into manageable sections.

Work in progress.

No sign of the busy beavers, though. At the upper end, a mass of sticks and trees may be the beginnings of a lodge. I'll be checking this out later on.


The resident heron allowed himself to be photographed from a distance. One step closer, and he took off. As usual.

The mallards were out in force, a great squawking mass mobbing a man feeding them on the opposite bank, then fanning out into the pond again when his bag was empty. And we saw a foursome of widgeons.

Three of the widgeons.

I was looking for buffleheads, so when I saw this white head, I jumped to the conclusion that I had found them. Until I looked more closely.


No white sides?


They're hooded mergansers, in breeding gear. Tiny, neat ducks, and the females have the cutest "hairdo" ever!

Pair, with reflections.

So: no buffleheads, no wood ducks. Maybe next time. But the hooded merganser females are a first for me. (I had seen males at a distance, I'm pretty sure. Although I thought they were buffleheads.)

Such a tiny park this is; a spot on the map surrounded by housing developments. But the birds love it. And so do we.

One good thing about being sick ...

... is that I get a lot of computer housekeeping done. It's just enough effort to keep my mind off my troubles, but doesn't require any real thinking. And I'm not moving about; a big plus when every muscle aches.

So I've been cleaning out my photo files, getting rid of a lot that had been waiting on a decision until I had forgotten they were there. (It's easy to decide to chuck something when your head aches.) And I found quite a few interesting ones, also forgotten. I am going to have to devise a new way of sorting and tagging them so that doesn't happen again.

And I've thrown away old log files and leftover downloads, cookies for places I will never go again, etc. And defragmented the hard drive. All boring, routine chores.

Now I can start fresh. New year, freshened computer, and, I think, returning energy. Yay!

And, in a last bit of tidying up, here are two photos from the Strathcona Culture Crawl that I had somehow missed.

A sculpture by Mary Kathleen Barrett: more of her work at her website.


And, just after dusk, we passed this garbage bin with a warning sign:


"Lunatic cat", in French. Yowl!

Not quite "raring" to go, but ...

I'm feeling a bit better; thank you for your get-well wishes.

Thinking, perhaps, that if this continues, and the weather co-operates, I'll be ready to be on the go again tomorrow.

Just a wee nap before we go, ok?

At least the weather is lousy

I'm down with some sort of a bug. I've been sleeping most of yesterday and today.

So, no post yesterday, just a couple of photos today.

Hammock on Boundary Bay beach, as I found it last summer.

Same hammock on Boundary Bay beach, as we came across it last week.

And no, I haven't switched these photos around.

Now I'm going back to bed. I hope I'm better by the time the sun comes out.

Green, Brown, Yellow and Grey ...

... moths.

I've been cleaning out my hard drive. Tonight, I ran across these photos of a few moths that visited me last summer; good memories.
None of them have been identified, as yet. I'll get that one of these days.

This first one was on my window: I took the photo against the light, and got his silhouette and feather markings. From outside, he was a pale grey, and the markings were almost invisible.

A green moth, very small.


Odd ruffles and camouflage markings. About an inch long.


Very elegant, I think.


Not so elegant. Look at those eyes!


Overhead, on the door frame, lying flat.


Greenish eyes and a flat snout. This moth is shaped more like a geometric study than a flying insect.


Here she is again. I think that little round pink blob is an egg. UPDATE: She's a plume moth.

And today, I noticed the first yellow buds on my perennial primroses. Spring, she's a-comin'!

Sunflower Seed Thief

He looks wary; he should!

Several chickadees were lined up on this table, hopping back and forth, looking through the window at my desk. Unusual behaviour; usually they go from the maple to the feeder to the evergreens, with an occasional side trip to the birdbath. I went to check the feeder. It was empty.

Sorry, guys; I got distracted somehow. I know my job description doesn't include distractions. Really, really sorry.

I filled the feeder, and put an extra handful of sunflower seeds in the dish where I put out small bird seed for the juncos. Atonement.

And five minutes later, Scruffy here was at the dish, stuffing his cheeks. He watched me, at the window, closely, but kept at it. Here he is, with an empty dish.

What's the problem? You spoil those juncos, anyhow. And you don't let me at the chickadee feeder at all. It's not fair. So these are mine. All mine!

Sandbagging

... or is it peanutbagging?

They've had trouble with flooding along the beach area in Boundary Bay a couple of times in recent past, and many of the houses are new, and expensive. So they're building a dike along the property line.

At the core of the new dike are these bags. Farther along, they have already been covered with loose sand, up to about 2 metres high.


I checked; they're full of sand. Not peanuts.

More on this outing, later.

Chair

I've been wasting time, just playing around with the camera, trying out various settings, backgrounds, and lighting arrangements for indoor photography.

So here's a chair that my granddaughter uses to reach the washbasin with.

Two chairs.


Two chairs and a parrot.

I decided not to try your patience with two chairs and two parrots.

I know, I'm a bit bonkers. It's been that kind of a day.