Monday, May 22, 2023

Walkabout

Here's the last selection of photos from my recent walk around the neighborhood.

The hummingbirds are common but often it's hard to spot them. This one landed where I could see it, but only very briefly. Luckily I already had the telephoto lens on the camera.

Anna's Hummingbird

This time of year the Silver-spotted Tiger Moth caterpillars are common. They feed on Douglas firs but they crawl around on the ground a lot for some reason. They're actually native for a change.

Silver-spotted Tiger Moth

It's a wonderful treasure to have tide pools virtually right outside my door. I should spend more time exploring the abundance of life in them. The Victoria harbor isn't the cleanest, but we're towards the mouth of the harbor, and the tide going in and out keeps the pollution diluted.

Aggregating anemones

The sea anemones are the most common and obvious. I think they're Aggregating Anemones. The white threads you can see at the bottom right below were also alive. They came out of holes in the sand, and were waving around, presumably catching some kind of food. I think they might be the tentacles of Spaghetti worms.

Aggregating sea anemone

I'm not sure why this one was closing up. I like the green/yellow bubbly texture when they close up like this.

Aggregating sea anemone

The barnacles were also feeding. I tried to catch them with their tentacles out, but you had to be quick. The one in the center has it's tentacles out. They sweep out to capture food. I realized afterwards I should have just shot some video. Barnacles are crustaceans, related to crabs and lobsters.

barnacles feeding

This crab was hiding between the barnacles. I actually didn't spot it until I was looking at the photos on the computer.

crab hiding between barnacles

And there's lots of smaller stuff. I only spotted this tiny amphipod because it was moving.

amphipod

Of course, where there's water there are ripples and reflections.

ripples

reflections

reflections

I like it when there's a lot of fine detail in the reflections like this - a result of the background and the shape of the ripples.

See all 45 photos in this batch

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