Party's over

The tide was low again; not the summer-time half-way to the far side of the bay, but maybe about a third of the way. It was a pleasant walk to the edge of the water, splashing through a few ankle-deep streams, but the sand on the bars was barely damp.

Out on the last sandbar before the tide turned again, many hooded nudibranchs were dying on the slopes, a sad sight, but also a reminder of ongoing life.

Melibe leonina, the lion's hood sea slug, about 4 inches long.

Melibe doesn't have many enemies; she exudes a fruity perfume (smells like watermelon) that seems off-putting to most predators in the eelgrass and kelp beds where she lives. Except the kelp crabs, of course; nothing discourages a crab. So, in general, she dies of other causes. Exhaustion, for one.

When spring approaches, they gather in large groups to mate. They're hermaphrodites, so each one inseminates another, and at the same time has her eggs fertilized. Then they all have the job of laying eggs, in long, coiled ribbons, up to 30,000 eggs to a ribbon, which is attached to a blade of eelgrass.

That duty done, the tired nudibranchs let themselves float with the tide until they come to rest on the sand to die.

Most of the ones we found were still living, but extremely lethargic. I brought a few home and let them rest in a bowl of clean sea water. They moved around, sluggishly; one actually tried to capture some amphipods I gave them, but by morning, they had all died.

Look at the photo again: the hood is about half the size of the rest of the body. The sea slug spreads this out like a net, then closes it again on its prey, anything from a copepod to a small fish.

I found a short video on YouTube that shows them feeding. They remind me of the carnivorous Venus flytrap.

Video by Britoca.

The squiggly lines in Melibe's body are branches of her digestive tract. It extends even into the paddles along her back, the cerata. These cerata are easily detached when the critter is stressed; most of the ones I sort of "rescued" had shed half of them by the time they arrived here. The rest fell off overnight.

If the stress is temporary, for example if the slug is fleeing a crab, the lost cerata grow back, the same way crabs' legs and pincers regenerate. The freed cerata may serve as a distraction for the predator, while the nudibranch swims away uneaten.

My hermits and crabs love the taste of these. Evidently they're not bothered by a tiny bit of fruity aroma; they grab the cerata quickly, then fight over them. I froze most of them for later treats.

Insane eagle

These two photos are total duds, but I can't look at them without laughing.  This eagle was on the sand at Boundary Bay beach at low tide and 'way off in the distance. The gull came up behind him, and he started to dance.

"Come on, dance with me!"

"We make a good couple, don't we?'

King of the castle

And the dirty rascals, too.

Amphipod at the top of a pile of his peers, feeding on a messy root.

They breed like cloned rabbits

. . . underwater rabbits, that is. A couple of small anemones arrived in the aquarium towards the end of last November. By the first week of December, one had split iself down the middle twice. A few days later, there were 2 more. These 5 then cloned themselves, making 10. And so it went; at last count, there were about 50.

They started out on the wall of the aquarium, up near the water surface, but now that space is crowded, and they've begun to move to the seaweed and stones in the tank. One group is hanging out on the water pump, making a nuisance of themselves when I need to change the filters.

On eelgrass. The column is less than 1/2 an inch tall.

On a brown seaweed, against a background of Turkish towel.

As far as I can tell, these are the orange-striped anemone, Haliplanella lineata, an import that probably came from the far side of the Pacific. (The stripes may be either orange or white, against a greenish background. Most of the ones in the tank are quite pale, maybe because of the light levels or diet.)

These anemones may breed sexually in their home territory, but elsewhere they clone themselves, either by splitting down the middle, then moving apart, or sometimes by just moving over, leaving a tiny blob of tissue behind. A few days later, the blob is a fully-functioning anemone.

They eat tiny swimming organisms; copepods and baby amphipods, etc. Sometimes I give them a treat of mashed shrimp, or they'll catch a pellet of hermit crab food, swept their way by the current.

White stuff

The weather gods are capricious this year; undecided, wishy-washy. It's spring, no it's winter, no - spring. How about a bit of rain; not too much; or should the sun be shining now? Hey, let's freeze everything again; why not? People are out in shorts and t-shirts already; can't have that! Make it snow!

It's been snowing for the last two days, mostly small, wet flakes, not quite melting as they fall, switching over to big, lazy blobs, then back to frozen Scotch mist again. It's been enough to pile up 6 inches of snow on the bird bath, and bend down the branches of the maples. They're promising us another day of it, before the thermometer takes another flying leap upwards.

We made it a lazy day, only venturing into the back yard to take a handful of photos.

Loaded maple branches

The cedars shed the snow; the maple doesn't

We had to laugh at my heron's hat.

Junco on the suet cake

Sweet William. Never minds the cold.

Tall evergreens across the street.

The way it's going, it's probably time to dig out my summer duds.

Wriggly hitchhiking pincushion

I brought home a few stalks of Turkish towel for my hermits, and this little critter came along for the ride.

Sea urchin, about 1 cm. across

In the aquarium, he burrowed into the sand quickly, but later he was out in the open riding this snail, and carrying pieces of shell and sand grains, possibly as camouflage. It would have worked better if he had ever stopped waving those spines about.

Tonight, cleaning the tank, I found him back on the Turkish towel. He dropped off onto my fingertip, and attempted to glue himself there. Adventurous little beastie!

A dusting of new snow

The North Shore mountains, seen from the southern end of the lower mainland, on a warm February afternoon:

Front to back: Boundary Bay, Surrey, Vancouver, North Vancouver, North Shore mountains, sky.

Zooming 'way in, to a couple of ski slopes. My landmarks when I'm sort of lost; that way's north.

More new snow, very welcome.

A Skywatch post

Lazy day company

I've been spending these rainy afternoons staring into my aquaria, tracking hermits and clams and anemones, peering behind weeds looking for mating amphipods, watching jellies and worms . . .

Here's a small sampler:

Very small hermit, under an odd-looking seaweed. I've been trying to identify these orange hermits, so far without success.

Eelgrass roots, covered with "gunk", mostly hydroids and detritus, with an amphipod. They love to feed on these messy roots.

Carnivorous snail, Nassa sp., following another up the glass, hoping to mate. When they're done, they'll both drop to the sand and burrow down out of sight again.

Amphipod on rotting seaweed, legs every which way, as usual.

Slipper snails, Crepidula sp., on one of the orange hermits.

The slipper snails are strange critters. Sometimes they sit for months on end in one place; one parked himself on a glass thermometer and stayed there, never moving more than half an inch either way, until I pushed him off to remove the thermometer. Others wander about, now showing up on a rock, now on a shell. They like the hermits, maybe because they are filter feeders, and the hermit is a messy eater.

A slipper snail starts out life as a male. If he finds a handy hermit with no other slippers in residence, he waits until another arrives and climbs on top. Then he undergoes a sex change to become female. All the other snails in a stack are male. They fertilize the eggs of the female on the bottom. When she dies, the male above her becomes female. The female is always the largest one in the stack.*

I have fewer than a dozen slippers (so far), so most of the "stacks" on these hermits are only 2 or 3 deep.

*In contrast, the female hermits are usually smaller; a quite large male will be seen dragging around a mate barely 1/3 his size. Amphipod males are also often much bigger than their mates. Since the other snails in my tanks are hermaphrodites, there is no size difference; each snail is male and female at the same time.

Learning the hard way

A hungry flatworm in my jelly and amphipod aquarium tank approaches a jelly resting on the wall:

"Mmmm . . . This looks tasty! And no hard shell to worry about!"

"Yikes! It's got stingers!"

And he backs off, in a hurry, somewhat rumpled around the edges.

He rested a few inches away the rest of the afternoon before he made another approach, with the same result. Then he hurried off to hunt something safer, even if it does have a hard shell; his boring, everyday diet of barnacles and mussels.

Bed and breakfast fail

Laurie caught this western conifer seed bug, out for a stroll around the house while the weather was warm. I housed him in a gallon jar with a tiny spider I've been watching since she was a pinhead. He liked it there; a comfortable, even temperature, a few dry leaves to hide in when he wanted to sleep, an interesting view out the door. He wandered over there every day to look at me, ask for a drink. He wasn't hungry; eating can wait for summer and running sap in the trees.

The spider wasn't a problem; she hangs out in a miniature web at the top of the jar, rarely moving, waiting for some tiny flying insect. A skinny mosquito is a week's meals for her.

I took the bug out when I cleaned the jar, and he walked tamely along my fingers, then without any fuss ambled back into his leaf litter. A friendly guy; these bugs usually are.

When the light was right, I took a photo of his underside as he walked on the glass.

That long needle-like tube is what he uses to bore into the trees for sap. He's missing one leg.

I planned to bring him out and get some good photos; face shots, back shots; he wouldn't mind posing. But I was busy, and I waited. And yesterday, he turned up all wrapped up in spider web, upside-down and dead.

They do like to come inside for the winter, but they are so vulnerable to spiders! But I never expected his quiet jar companion, no bigger than this guy's head, to have done him in.

So sorry, pal! Next time, when your cousin comes by asking for a warm corner, he'll get a whole jar to himself. No spiders, not even minispiders.

Shelter

It's been a tough winter out on the dunes, too dry for BC, the temperatures too changeable. But some lucky seeds will always find themselves a good microclimate.

Tiny plants in a crack of an old cedar log.

If I were a beetle . . .

. . .  and a blogger, to boot, these would be my Captchas:

Bark mining beetle tunnels in weathered driftwood

Or maybe I'd be a writer of alternate world fantasies, and these could be sketches for my cover art:

Dragons? Wolves? Fossil millipedes? Zorklwifs?

Found at highest tide level, Boundary Bay.

Love bug?

I picked this up in a thrift store, some years ago, and it's been resting quietly on a bottom shelf, keeping out of trouble. Finally, its chance came: it waved at me this morning, shouting, "Hey! It's Valentine's Day! My day to shine!"

Scorpion, 4 1/2 inches long, trapped in acrylic. I don't know where it's from.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Leap into the sky

Heron weathervane, Beach Grove.

Silhouette, facing the sun

Un-heron-like colours. Must be made of copper, with a few iron fittings, all corroded. The two round balls look like recycled toilet-tank floats.

A Skywatch post.

Backyard cat

I love those eyes!

Beach Grove watch cat.

Designer wear for the discriminating hermit

Hermit watching again, I noticed the textures of the shells they use for clothing. And the shabby chic look goes well on their gym equipment, too.

Abalone shell, much pitted, and (I think) turban shell on hairy hermit. This one is eroded, and then, after I'd scrubbed it clean to donate it to the hermits' wardrobes, it's been populated by green algae, and something that fills the pits with chocolate drops.

More shells coming: I'm following a couple of hermits bearing slipper snails.

Interim birds

I am feeling seriously bird-deprived. Except for the sandpipers at Crescent Beach the other day and the mallards at Cougar Creek, all the birds we have seen recently have been far, far away, and mostly on their way to distant shores. We keep making plans to go to Reifel Island, but the weather and our schedules keep getting in the way. Maybe this week, as soon as the sun comes out again.

Meanwhile, I've culled a few shots from Laurie's camera, which does distances better than my prime lens. They'll serve as a temtempié* for now.

*(Temtempié, Mexican idiom for "appetizer, snack". A corruption of "tente en pie" = "keep you standing up".)

Eagle, Crescent Beach. In an unusual pose for this tribe; they tend to be just the other side of that trunk, or see, up at the top, that white spot? or soaring over the top of the hill, heading for White Rock.

The one, lonely wigeon at Cougar Creek park this month. His vibrant colours work as camouflage as long as he stays near the shore of the lake.

"After splashdown, an explorer leaves his still-glowing space capsule, unfolds his beak and legs, and takes stock: 'Let's see, there's a big, black, short-legged bird over there, a few white and grey squealers scattered around. Not much else. But it looks like I've landed in a colony of tunnellers; look at all those chimneys! Could be worth my time to stay here.'"

Okay, I'll be sensible.

Robin hiding on us in a maze of bare branches on a misty afternoon. Cougar Creek Park.

Does a bird see the man in the moon?

Pattern from the root end of a driftwood tree, cast up on Crescent Beach:

How many faces do you see here? How many species?

Our brains do funny things. From earliest infancy, we focussed on any two spots, looking for faces. And still, if there are two remotely similar spots in a pattern like this, they immediately become incorporated into yet another "face". Any markings below them become a mouth or maybe a beak.

I wonder; some butterflies, some caterpillars, and other critters wear two conspicuous spots, which serve as camouflage, making them look like a larger animal, or maybe fooling a predator into grabbing a disposable wing rather than the head. Is this another instance of pareidolia; like us seeing Jesus in our breakfast toast or the face on Mars?

Oh, and the last I looked, I saw 17 faces in that stump. Most were not human; quite a few are not even earthly.  I'm lucky there aren't any collections of 8 spots, or I'd be seeing spider faces, too.

Bug-eyed, horned, masked caterpillar

In the middle of last December, halfway between that sudden cold snap and the first (maybe only) snowfall of the winter, I brought in a few dead, frozen maple leaves to see what had survived the freezing weather. This little caterpillar turned up on one, as energetic as if he had been soaking up the sun and eating green leaves instead of the half-rotted variety available at the time.

Larva of a yellow underwing moth, Noctua pronoba

Face view. Laurie says he looks threatening. He's not, unless you're a leaf.

Back view.

And there was a bonus: a springtail on chilly moss.

Orchesella cincta, possibly. Doesn't mind the cold, either.

Say, "Ahhh!"

Crustaceans have the most confusing mouths of any critter I've seen; jammed full of hairs and grabbers and feelers and assorted crunchers, and always, always, always in motion. Sometimes a crab will face the camera and stop waving assorted appendages for a second or two; hermits almost never. So I was surprised and pleased when one of the big grainy hand hermits decided to show me his "tonsils".

"Aaaahhh!"

 Zooming in:

Thank you, big guy. But I'm glad I'm not your dentist!

Show-off!

One of the most welcome sights in late winter is a Pieris japonica, aka andromeda or Lily-of-the-valley bush, sporting its new, bright red leaves at the tips of the branches. The flowers, small upside-down goblets like huckleberry flowers, come later, in early spring. Usually, the flowers are white, sometimes a pale pink. I can't remember seeing one this red or this early before:

No-one told it to wait until March.

Buds. Looks like the flowers inside will be red or deep pink.

The Pieris is a relative of our native rhododendrons, and though the flowers are much smaller, it is equally showy. And too common around here, so we tend to overlook it. Not this one, though!

Who cares if it's freezing out there?

Not us, not when the peeps are feeding on the beach.

Looking southwest. Silvery sea and the beginnings of a sunset. The black lines on the water in the background are more birds.

Looking north; peeps not minding Laurie. He's just a step away, off camera to the right.

Ankle-deep water (to a dunlin's ankles, that is.)

Sand patterns, with a few dunlin tracks