Wildlife

Skippers aren't big flashy butterflies and often go unnoticed, but they are quite attractive if you get a close look.

Grass spiders are easy to spot - find their funnel webs on grass or bushes and look for the spider near the the tunnel. But don't make any sudden moves or it will disappear down that tunnel.

I had forgotten there were lizards around Victoria. These Common Wall Lizards are from Europe and were introduced to the Victoria area in the 1960's. There is a native Northern Alligator Lizard but I didn't spot any of them.

The American Bullfrog is another immigrant. They were brought in to be raised for food. That didn't work out, but the bullfrogs have stayed and multiplied. We saw lots at Swan Lake.

We saw this Harbor Seal mother and baby a few times. The baby seemed to be growing by the day.

Since childhood summer vacations on Vancouver Island, I've enjoyed turning over rocks on the beach to find the hiding crabs.

Of course, there are lots of gulls around. It was nice to see one finding its own food instead of scrounging human garbage.

Similarly, this crow had found a small fish, but it must have been quite tough since it was pecking away at it and not just swallowing it whole.

Great Blue Herons are much more common than in Saskatchewan.

I saw river otters a few times in the water. This one was out of the water by a busy path, in the middle of the afternoon.

A handsome black slug:

and a squadron of pelicans: (both at the Creston Wildlife Area on the drive home)

Abstracts

I'm falling behind posting photos so I thought I'd group some of the more abstract ones together.

This was on the Juan De Fuca trail near Mystic Beach. I had the vague idea of running this trail, but I'm not so sure after seeing all the roots. It would be slow going.

A random plant at the Gardens at Horticulture Centre of the Pacific. We also had a nice lunch at the restaurant there - Charlotte and the Quail.

The rest are various reflections. That's what happens when I'm around the water :-)

2600

The last five months I've managed to maintain a good (for me) volume of running, bringing my yearly total to just over 2600 km (1600 miles), which equates to 50 km (30 miles) per week. I'm pretty happy with that. Amazingly (touch wood) I haven't had any major issues - my knees and feet and IT bands have been quiet. There's nothing magical about 2600, it's just a nice round number, as is 50. Of course, competitive runners will do a lot more than that. It's possible I could do more but I'm a little nervous about pushing too hard and ending up having problems. The increase over the last year or two has come quite naturally, without really pushing. If I end up increasing because it feels good, that's great. If not, that's fine too.

When we left on a road trip to BC at the end of July I still had 36 km to go to make 2600. But by getting up early, I managed to run every day. I ran along the Bow river in Cochrane, on a vague track in Merritt, along the Boundary Bay Dyke in Tsawwassen, and along the Songhees Walkway and Galloping Goose Trail in Victoria.

Fatal Collision

I enjoy seeing the hummingbirds in British Columbia, but I was sad to find this one dead in a pool of water, food for water striders. It was a place where you might expect to see a hummingbird - the native plant garden at the Royal BC Museum. However, the garden is next to the archives building with large windows reflecting the garden. It's not surprising that a bird would mistakenly (and fatally) fly into them.

Recent Photos

Being back working at the office at Innovation Place has the benefit that I get lots of chances to take photos in the gardens and around the pond.

I always look for fishing spiders but I haven't spotted as many this year. I'm not sure if that's because there are less around, or if I'm just not spotting them. It doesn't help that the water hyacinth that I usually spot them on has been drifting around the pond a lot.

I thought this fly was being rather foolish, but looking at the images closer the fishing spider already had a mouthful of something, I think a dragonfly. Perhaps the fly was hoping for crumbs?

The 12-200mm lens does a decent job at macro photography, but the 60mm macro lens produces much better results.

It's taken me many years to start to identify even a few native plants. This Blazing Star was at Innovation Place, but they've been flowering wild lately as well. I see them in similar locations as the spring Prairie Crocuses, probably because those areas are the least disturbed.

They're not native (from the Amazon) and can be a bad invasive species, but I always enjoy the water hyacinths flowers. They're probably not a risk here with our cold winters.

It never ceases to amaze me how many kinds of insects are around. In comparison, there are only a small number of mammals or birds here, we know them all, and they're mostly easy to identify. But I constantly come across insects or spiders that I've never seen before and quite likely will never see again. This was my first Elm Spanworm Moth:

My first Lupine Bug:

I always look for flower crab spiders, but I didn't realize there were also Ground Crab Spiders. I spotted this one when I was taking photos of the Grass Spiders on their funnel webs.

These are carpenter ants (New York maybe?), presumably farming aphids.

The bright red of this Lily Leaf Beetle was easy to spot. There are lots of lilies around, but it wasn't on one.

I'm not sure why this predaceous diving beetle was crawling around out of the water, but it was a good chance to photograph it.

There were quite a few of these Meadowhawk dragonflies busy mating.

I've seen several of these Yellow-legged Mud-dauber wasps. They presumably visit the pond to get mud to build their nests. They are solitary so the nests would be small, less than the size of a fist.

These Giant Mayflies (aka fish flies) are much more common. I've seen several around town lately but never had my camera. Finally I came across one on the bridge when I had my camera. The adults tend to emerge in batches and only live for a few days.

And who can pass up a butterfly with a name like Great Spangled Fritillary:

This Killdeer was sitting on the railway tracks chirping away. For a change it didn't seem to mind having it's picture taken. This was one of our smoky days from the forest fires and thus the hazy background.

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Native Flowers

As much as I love nature and living things, I've never been attracted to gardening. But over the years we've accumulated a few native plants around the house and I always enjoy seeing them flower.

 Prairie Coneflower:

 

Purple Prairie Clover (I love the gaudy purple and orange)

 

Anise Hyssop (not really anise or hyssop, but good for pollinators)

Wild Bergamot flowers develop in an interesting way.

I printed them as a group:

Around the Pond

On a day off from running I biked over to Innovation Place with my camera to see what I could find around the pond. I enjoyed about 10 minutes of peace and quiet before several large family groups arrived to have family photos taken. Of course, they were complete with screaming babies and hyperactive kids. Not the kind of wildlife I wanted to photograph! Despite that, I managed a few photos. I didn't find any fishing or crab spiders but there were lots of dragonflies and damselflies. Most of the dragonflies were (I think) Four-spotted skimmers.

The damselflies were mostly Bluets:

and there were also some suitably named Pond Spreadwings:

The Linden trees were blooming and the bees were taking advantage.

The water lilies were flowering:

and even where they weren't, the leaves made interesting patterns among the reflections:

A lot of the border of the pond is these plants. I'd never bothered figuring out what they were, but Seek identified this inflorescence as Sweet-flag. The good part of identifying something is that you can then find out interesting facts about it. Like that it only flowers if it grows in water. And that it contains psychoactive chemicals. It was used in traditional medicine, but it can also be toxic.

I stopped by the office to check for mail (just junk) and found outside there was a different kind of green wall this year.

These were my favorite of the little flowers. Seek says they are Moss-rose Purslane, from South America.

As I was leaving, I was checking some lilies for crab spiders and I spotted this distinctive Leconte's Haploa moth. I don't think I've seen one of these before, but coincidentally, the next day when I was out running I spotted a dead one on the sidewalk. Interestingly, they make and hear sounds for courtship, and they can also hear bat sonar and respond with clicks warning the bat they are unpalatable due to chemicals ingested by the caterpillars.

On the way I spotted a small raptor. I thought maybe it was the American Kestrels I saw in the area last year. But when I enlarged the photos on the computer it turned out to be a Merlin. Humorously, I thought the ones last year were Merlins and they turned out to be Kestrels. I think the blue wing coloring makes it the Taiga variant. It was quite far away so it's not a great photo.

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