Hallowe'en preparations

In Tsawwassen, they're ready to greet the trick-or-treaters:

The bride looks a little ... stiff.

Skull in a window. (And I've been playing with Picnik again.)

Save the Southlands or else!

(The Southlands is a large plot of agricultural land near Centennial Beach on Boundary Bay, much used by hawks as a hunting ground. Developers want the property for a housing complex. The locals are fighting it. So far, they've managed to hold it off.)

Mother of thousands

Ma Crab is skinny again!

Two weeks ago, she was carrying a belly-full of eggs. (If you missed it, the video is "In Berry".) I've been watching her closely these days; every day her egg mass grew, until it was at least as large as her body. She looked awkward and uncomfortable, and didn't move around much. She didn't show any interest in feeding; too busy fanning and cleaning her brood of thousands of embyros.

This morning she had climbed into the top of the sea lettuce, and hung there, spread-eagled, with her apron open as wide as it would go, palpitating gently. She looked miserable. (I had kids; I could relate.)

This evening, I caught her as she cleaned her empty brood chamber. The babies were gone, hatched. And she's got her figure (and appetite) back.

Belly flap, up tight against the body. 

She picked at the inside of the flap for a few minutes, expanding and closing her pleopods, the feather-like appendages that the eggs were attached to. Then she closed up shop; the flap sealed itself close against her body, with a gasket of fine hairs. And off she went to find supper.

Empty belly, showing pleopods.

I've been trying to find the gestation period for these crabs. It's difficult. King crabs can carry the eggs for 11 months. For the green shore crab, I've found sites giving lengths from a few weeks to 8 months. In my aquarium, I saw the eggs barely two weeks before she released the zoea.

But she would have been carrying eggs before I saw them. They would be too small to see, at first. And until the embryos have developed eyes, they are transparent; the pinkish red of the mass came from baby crab eyes.

And the times vary; on the east coast of Canada and the northern US, the crabs have one reproductive cycle per year. Here on the Pacific Coast, as they do in Europe, they produce two broods, in spring and winter. (National Shellfisheries Association, Inc., 2008) The time and length of gestation seems to vary with the temperature of the water, which is warmer here.

And the babies, the zoea? They're swimming. They look sort of like amphipods, but they're far too small for me to see. In the wild, they would drift away to join the plankton off-shore, feeding on tiny particles of organic matter until they have undergone several molts. Most of them wouldn't survive, which is a good thing, since there are several thousands of them. I don't think any will make it in my small tank, surrounded as they are by anemones and barnacles. But I'll be watching for them, just in case.

The fashionable hermit

Spirals are in ...

With a wide selection of shells available, a young hairy hermit chooses to wear cutoffs with a pearly lining.

Now you see me

A crane fly, among the weeds near Kwomais Point:

European Crane fly, Tipula sp., female. A recently introduced fly.

I saw this fly from a distance, landing among the grasses. As soon as she stopped moving, she became invisible, except for the two iridescent wings. The body matched the dead stems around it. I got as close as I could without standing in a creek, to take the photo with flash, which made her stand out. Her legs change colour according to the direction of the light, so that they seem to be random pieces, not connected; another aid to camouflage.

She's smaller, and a much lighter shade than the big brown ones that visit me at home.

Light from a quarter way up the sky

This time of year, the sun hangs low in the sky*, creating deep shadows, highlighting patterns and shapes we would have missed otherwise.

Alleyway, Beach Grove, Tsawwassen

Last flowers in the garden, Beach Grove

Drooping sunflower

Maple leaves, with bug holes. Richmond

Wheel and tap, Westham Island Farms

Mushrooms, Reifel Island

Yellow snail on a shady rock. Richmond

Big-leafed exotic. Crescent Beach.

Yes, this is the sun, through dark clouds, with hints of sunset pink. About 4 PM., from Kwomais Point rocks.

If I look at that sun for a half-minute or so, I can see (or so it seems) the clouds moving. Try it yourself; do you see it, too? (You may need to view it full-size; left-click it for a new tab.)

*About 23 degrees above the horizon, at 3 PM these days.

Four ducks and a grebe

All day, the wind has been howling down the stove vent and splatting raindrops against the windows. Outside, it blows right through my fall jacket. (Out on the water beyond the Island, they say, the waves went over 30 feet high.) It was a good day to clean house and sort out hard drives. A good evening to organize photos of calm summer weather.

These photos were among them, taken two weeks ago at Reifel Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary.

American Wigeon, female

I think she's a Mallard cross; the speculum, blue in "pure" Mallards, is brown.

Correction: female pintail. Thanks, Clare and Rebecca!

Grebe. A diver, not a duck.

Pintail.

And Mallard, being friendly.

Since she was so comfortable with me, I took a good look at her feather patterns:

Neck. The layered look.

Flank and belly.

These two really need to be seen full size. Click on them (left click for new tab) and look closely.

The pumpkin seller

One more week ...

Hag, Westham Island Farms.

Picnik on a lazy day

Sometimes I need a totally wasted day, doing nothing, going nowhere, reading, watching the birds outside my window and the bugs in a jar on my desk, napping. If I do any work, it's useless work. I call it "catching up to myself."

Yesterday ... ( I never know whether to call it yesterday or today; I'm not in bed yet, but it's already tomorrow. And the date on this post will be the 24th, "tomorrow", by my reckoning.) ... so, yesterday, Saturday, was one of those days. I finished off a Terry Pratchett book and started a Ruth Rendell. I ate leftovers. Had a good nap.

After supper, I downloaded the upgrade for Picasa (3.8), the program I use for tweaking photos. It came with a link to Picnik built in, so I took another look at it.

I haven't liked Picnik before; it always seemed so slow, and didn't do much more than Picasa does. It's faster now, and it has a few more options, fun stuff. I spent some time putting Hallowe'en fangs on a spider, and changing colours, getting purple water or green, red and blue geese, replacing backgrounds with geometric designs. (Hard work, but pointless; perfect!)

Down at the very bottom of "Effects", I found the Sandbox and played there for a couple of hours. Here are two photos that I worked on:

Coming up the hill from Kwomais Point the other day, I stopped to catch my breath and whiled away a few minutes taking photos of the ravine. It's urban-fringe forest; straggly weeds, blackberries, broken branches, half-grown trees fighting for the light; it's always dark under there, even when the sun shines on the treetops. I have never been able to get a photo that made any sense.

This time, I set the camera on the handrail of the walkway, and set the shutter to 1 whole second. I didn't exactly aim, because I was too weary to crouch down to see the screen; it was just an experiment, after all.

The photos came out more or less OK, except flat and lifeless, without proper colour. I fed one into Picnik.

Here's the photo, as it went in. Under the trees, the walkway crosses the ravine, before it starts up the last half of the ascent.

I added a blue Vignette, and used "Ripple Blocks" from the Sandbox, and got this. I sort of like it; in spite of the wavy lines, it looks more like what I see than the untouched photo. More messy, darker under the trees, with more texture. (Click on it to see it full-size; this little one doesn't really show the effect.)

And there was a spider at the top of the stairs, hanging in front of a No Parking sign:

Another Sandbox tool, "Hypnotic", gave me this:

And with about 2 minutes work, too!

I won't be using the program much; I try to get most of our photos to show what we actually see. But there will be more lazy days ...

Not quite empty

If I hadn't been so out of shape, we would have missed them. The salmon, that is.

Maybe it would be better to begin at the beginning. This summer has been difficult at times, and we have been forced to stick to easy walking spots, no steep hills nor difficult rock scrambles. But we've been hankering for the cliffs, and finally decided, on Wednesday, that we could handle some stairs. A couple of hundred of them, and then a steep, slippery trail ending in a crawl over rip-rap, to the rocky shore at Kwomais Point.

My legs weren't quite ready for it. By the time we were at the bottom, my knees were wobbly, and I stumbled on the loose rocks at water's edge.

It had been sunny when we set out, but by the time we'd parked at the top of the trail, a heavy mist was rolling in over the sea. At the second lookout, a rock just above the lower treetops, all there was to see was a horizon line dividing grey from blue-grey.

Plus a couple of birds in the distance

Below, we were entranced by the light over the water; the islands in the distance had disappeared, and we took photo after photo of nothing at all, trying to catch the subtle changes of wave and sky.

But the sea wasn't quite empty; as we reached the shore, a flock of surf scoters surfaced. A minute later, they all went under again, fishing. They moved further out, but occasionally we saw them, a sprinkling of black dots, sometimes showing a flash of the white on the back of the head before they vanished again.

And on a rock nearby, a couple of harlequin ducks rested. Near them a few more were diving for supper.

Three female harlequins

Pair of harlequins, male and female.

A distant loon, one of three or four.

And here's where being out of shape comes in. We had a long hike ahead of us, straight up that hill. And my knees were still shaky. I found a handy rock and sat down to rest up, to be ready for the climb. (Not my usual style, at all; there's always another rock I want to turn over, another tidepool to examine.) After a while Laurie joined me, and we sat, looking at the almost empty water.

And then a fish jumped. A big salmon. Another. Another, and another, all in the same small area. They kept it up, leaping high into the air, sometimes straight up, then coming straight down, tail first. Others belly-flopped, sending up great splashes of water.

Something must have been fishing under there, something big. A sea lion, probably. We watched closely. A couple of times I saw something roll partway out of the water, and down again, like the coil of a mythical sea-serpent. No heads of sea lions appeared, though.

We had to get a photo of this! We both sat there on the rock until we were chilled, peering through the viewfinders with the cameras focussed, waiting. We took photos of places where the salmon had jumped a second ago. We were waiting when the salmon jumped off to our left or right. Laurie gave up. I waited for one more. And missed, but not completely.

Salmon splash.

Enough; I was rested, and we climbed up the rocks, the trail, the steps again. At least it's easier on old knees going up.

As soon as my legs stop aching, we'll do it again.

A Skywatch post.

Ceci n'est pas un post

I really overdid it today. I'm too tired to blog. I'm looking at our photos with my eyes shut.

This is not a post.

Here's a stopgap:

And goodnight!

Purple wall

I'm pretty sure this wall was beige and boring the last time we saw it. Now look at it!

Hollyhocks, live and dead.

The wall faces a pass-through from Beach Grove, Tsawwassen to Boundary Bay beach. What little landscaping there is has been swallowed up by weeds and grasses. But a few flowers soldier bravely on.

Unidentified, so far. (Acanthus. Thanks, Earl Cootie!)

This plant looks familiar, but I can't put a name to it. The flowers bloomed along a tall stem, like foxgloves. Now each dried flower holds a seed pod about the size and shape of an acorn, but with the texture and colour of a horse chestnut. I brought two home as an aid to identification, and left them on the kitchen table while I busied myself with supper preparation. I was alone, so I was startled to hear a loud click behind me. One of the seed pods had popped itself open and thrown a seed halfway across the room.

The seed was the same glossy brown, but otherwise like a misshapen, hard, dried pea. A couple of hours later, the second pod went. Pop! and the seed ended up in the living room.

The leaves are long, with many irregular, alternate, sharp lobes.

Back to the purples:

All the remaining hollyhocks were in deep reds and royal purples.

Crayola colours; Cerise to Amethyst to Grape.*

Grove snail with distant purple wall.

*For Clytie; there's a purple heart here.

"In Berry"

Ma Crab was not very cooperative. "But I'm fat!" she says. "And why are you shining lights at my babies?" But she had to come out into the open sometime. Here she is*:

And then she scuttled off to bury herself in the sand.

*Note; on my computer, at least, there is no sound with this set to 360p. Set it to 480p for sound. (Just calm music for a mother-in-waiting.)

We're expecting!

One of my crabs is pregnant. "In berry" is the technical term. I'm working on a video, but it's a slow process. For now, here's the expectant mother, "before":

Green shore crab, female, not pregnant. At least, not "showing".

She was climbing the walls; a perfect position for determining her sex. The white bottom of the abdomen is narrow and triangular in males, wide in females.

I'll have the video ready by tomorrow.

Home invasion

I found these weevils a few days ago, in a bag of bird seed.

They're really tiny, barely 3.5 mm, 1 3/8 in., snout to tail. The bag was swarming with them, which I didn't notice until I had poured out a bowlful for my juncos. By then, many had escaped and were scattering across my kitchen counter.

I got rid of all I could catch (they run pretty fast for such tiny critters), but I was too late. Now, every evening a few come out from some hideout, and head across the kitchen floor.

Two in a plastic lid.

There was a pinhole in the bag. I began to wonder if they made it, and which way they were going; in or out?

I sent their photos in to BugGuide for ID, and heard back within the hour. Yay BugGuide! It's a granary beetle, one of the Sitophilus (grain loving) species. And my question is answered already; they were leaving the bag.

The adults, which are unable to fly, live for 7 to 8 months and during this period each female lays about 150 eggs. In egg-laying, the female drills a small hole in the kernel, deposits an egg in the cavity and seals the hole with a gelatinous secretion. There is only one larva in each infested kernel. The white, legless grub completes its growth, pupates and develops into an adult weevil within the kernel. After reaching the adult stage, it eats its way out of the kernel. (From Canadian Grain Commission)

And after eating their way out of the kernel, they kept on going, out of the bag. So they're somewhere in hiding, and for at least 8 months, I'll have to make sure all grains are in bug-proof containers, not plastic bags. As for the weevil-infested seed, it's now stored in the freezer.

At least the birds will like the extra protein.

Banana belt

Bananas grow and produce fruit in BC. Outside. Who knew?

Banana flower, with clumps of developing green bananas, in a front yard in Tsawwassen.

Front view of flower.

The big bud contains the beginnings of many small flowers, such as the ones under the lifted sepal. Each flower develops into one banana; behind the fresh blooms are a clump of baby bananas with drying flowers at the tip. The next clump up the stem has dropped most of the blooms, except for a few black threads.

They're still a long way from ripening, but now the days are cool, the nights chilly. Even in Tsawwassen. I don't think they'll make it, at least on the tree.

"Fixing" the blog

I have been, and will be, updating the formatting and colours of the blog. If you see anything strange or just plain awful going on, and it stays around longer than it takes me to recover (say, half an hour or so), please let me know.

Everything should settle down again in a day or two.

Clowns in sober black

I think coots are my favourite birds. Ridiculous birds, black-suited and bejewelled as if for a formal occasion, but wearing someone else's floppy bedroom slippers. Contortionists, splay-footed divers, splashing maniacs running on water to get up enough speed to fly, with a voice like a kid learning to play the kazoo, or alternately, like the creak of a ratcheted wrench on a rusty bolt, or sometimes the ploop! of a cork coming out of an old medicine bottle. And, in spite of all that, just plain cute.

Coot and reflection

The reflection looks like a cartoon dolphin.

Wait! Are those my shoes?

They're good for paddling, anyhow.

Cute couple.

Red-eye special.