The just published, The State of Canada’s Bird, 2012, tells us that for Canada’s West Coast and Mountains, the Great Blue Heron is a “strongly decreasing species”.
If this is true, it is a shame; the heron is a beautiful aspect of Kootenay Lake. Here is yesterday’s picture of one flying along the lakeshore.
Common is a part of the name of many species: Common Carp (fish), Common Loon (bird), Common Pika (mammal), Common Whitetail (insect), Common Harebell (plant), Common Orange Lichen (lichen). Vastly more examples could be offered.
There are perils in incorporating the often misleading Common in a name. The species may have been common when named but uncommon now, or it may have been common in one region but uncommon in another. (We never see the Common Kingfisher around here, only the Belted Kingfisher.)
Last Thursday, when butterfly hunting with Janice Arndt (butterfly symposium), I watched a distinctly uncommon Common. Indeed, it is sufficiently rare that it is on the provincial Blue List—it is a species at risk.
Below are four pictures of this oddly named rare butterfly: the Common Checkered Skipper.
This loon, taken five years ago, wouldn’t pass muster today.
When I look back at my earlier pictures of loons, I find that a surprisingly large number of them were taken in late June during the freshet.
Yesterday’s loon visited at sunset.
Maybe its approach was encouraged by the inordinately high water, but the loon came much closer to me than had any previous one.
The resulting shots also represent the high-water mark for my loon photography.
I enjoy polysemes—words with plural meanings. One might think that my title, butterfly symposium, must refer to a seminar of lepidopterists. It doesn’t. The root meaning of symposium is drinking party (sym: together; posium: to drink). Certainly, it is clear how the impression of reflective discourse arose from such a bibulous activity.
I typically see butterflies in ones and twos, but on this occasion I tagged along with Janice Arndt on her rare-butterfly project for the Waneta Terrestrial Compensation Program. There will be more postings from this jaunt as various butterflies are identified.
So, these butterflies are holding a symposium: they are drinking together. Chuckle.
Indeed, butterflies often gather at moist areas to sip water laden with salt and nutrients (as distinct from alcohol). These are things they don’t get from nectar.
The butterflies in these pictures are Tiger Swallowtails. The white and black ones are Pale Tiger Swallowtails, while the yellow and black ones are Western Tiger Swallowtails. These are rather large, impressive, and fairly common butterflies.
Pale Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies hold a symposium.
This Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies is drinking on its own.
As is this one. You can see the butterfly’s proboscis (its tongue) extending to the moist surface.
Two Pales drink together. There is yellow pollen stuck to an abdomen and to the left, a Western Spring Azure.
The two species regularly go drinking together.
“I’m arriving a bit late; may I join you?”
Within a couple of days, I watched two mammals eating forbs. The striking thing about this pair is that they differed in mass by perhaps a factor of a hundred: The black bear was of modest size and may have weighed about 100 kg; A typical weight for a muskrat is only about 1 kg.
Reputations to the contrary, the diet of each of these animals is primarily herbaceous. Nevertheless, I admit to being unwilling to approach the bear as closely as the muskrat. Neither animal has particularly good eyesight, but the muskrat’s vision seems to be the poorer. I was able to (slowly) approach the muskrat within about 3 meters without it showing any awareness.
A black bear patrols a grassy field for comestibles.
It found what it sought: flower buds.
A muskrat has just climbed out of the Lake and has started to forage.
It soon found what it wants. (Here, it reminds me of a koala.)
A pond skater goes by an amazingly large number of common names. Wikipedia lists some—water strider, water bug, magic bug, pond skater, skater, skimmer, water scooter, water skater, water skeeter, water skimmer, water skipper, water spider, Jesus bug—but, there are even more that those. Such a proliferation implies that the bug, itself, must be remarkable. And it is: it walks on water.
The skater makes use of the surface tension of water for support by distributing its weight across long hydrophobic legs. From its maneuverable position on the surface of the water, it can detect, hunt down, and consume less fortunate invertebrates that have fallen onto the water and have become trapped by that same surface tension.
I watched a pond skater (Limnoporus notabilis) that initially seemed to be aimlessly standing on the water’s surface. Yet, it was busy. Its two front legs were feeling the water for ripples produced by anything trapped by, and struggling against, the surface tension. The ripples carry information about the bug’s direction, distance and size. The skater sensed something and abruptly headed straight towards another bug about four meters away and undoubtedly beyond its visual acuity.
The skater quickly closed in on a female robber fly (Nicocles sp.). After all, the skater is highly mobile on the water’s surface and the fly is not.
The skater punctured the robber fly’s abdomen and began to suck its juices. The fly now struggled against both the water’s surface tension and the actions of the skater. It thrashed about vigorously, but the outcome was foregone. There was no escape; this is how the skater makes its living and it is good at it.
The Northern Alligator Lizard is secretive and normally found under rocks or logs. Now and then it will sun itself in the open. Maybe that is what this one was doing when I spotted it yesterday afternoon.
The Lake level is as high now as I have seen it in recent decades: above the beach and onto local lawns. The spring freshet has consequences for many animals and plants, but until this morning, I would not have guessed that a robin would care about it one way or another.
Normally, a robin seems to hunt over a wide area of grass where it is occasionally rewarded by capturing a worm or grub. Now that the Lake has risen onto the adjacent grass, robins have shifted to foraging within a meter or so of the water’s edge (almost in the manner of a sandpiper). Further, their capture rate has climbed considerably: it is one worm after another in quick succession.
The clue to this behaviour, I suppose, is the water-soaked ground. Worms respond to sodden earth by moving to the surface where robins pick them off with ease.
A robin uses sight (not sound) when patrolling soggy ground. Driftwood is seen along the edge of the high water.
As all the worms are now near the surface, rewards are frequent.
Once the Lake has risen onto the lawn, the adjacent grass becomes the robin’s favourite hunting ground.
The first thing that caught my eye was a fin sticking above the water. The fish seemed to be circling erratically in the shallows—a behaviour I had never before witnessed.
Joe Thorley of Poisson Consulting looked at this picture and said that it is either a Brook Trout or a Rainbow Trout. The white patches, he said, are fungus, which accounts for its odd behaviour—it is dying.
One should never underestimate the importance of regular ear maintenance.
