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A bad idea threatens wildlife in our local park

Jul10
Duck with fishing hook, Hastings Park

This poor young Mallard has a hook embedded in the wing, and likely a broken wing from trying to free itself.

Yesterday, I took my dad down to see Hastings Park, one of the very few natural areas in my neighbourhood. After making our way along the shore, we came to the north side of the pond, where we stopped for a while to watch a heron preening. After a time, we noticed a group of young Mallards sitting on the shore. One of them had its left wing drooping, as if it was injured. We thought at first that the raccoon we had seen earlier had attacked it, but closer inspection revealed that the poor duck had a fishing hook stuck into its wing. Evidently, the bird had become snagged on the hook and broken its wing trying to free itself.

How could this come to be? Why was there a discarded fishing hook hanging from one of the branches?

Well, the story behind this actually is more than a bit creepy. Stan Taylor, another nature enthusiast was there when we met this unfortunate duck and  gave us the background. A couple months ago, the administrators of the park (which is a private company!) and the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC decided it would be fun for the public to be able to fish in the pond, and so they plowed a route down to the water (in bird nesting season) and installed a dock for people to fish from. They also released 900 sterilized rainbow trout for people to catch. The rules were supposed to be that the fishing was only to occur at that specific dock, but people began fishing all around the pond in the height of nesting season, trampling down vegetation and leaving waste all around the park.

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Here is a hook hanging in Hastings Park on June 11, ready for a frugivorous bird to grab it.

This is a really ill-thought out idea, that goes in direct opposition to the planning that has been done by the Hastings Park Conservancy and the recommendations of the Friends of Hastings Park. Instead of a quiet urban refuge for wildlife, the powers that be want to make this quiet park into a far different place, where people learn how to kill aquatic animals for sport. I am not against fishing  per se, but this tiny little pond is not the kind of place for it. Here in East Vancouver, we have so little in the way of habitat for wildlife, that every little bit should be carefully managed.

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130 species of bird have been sighted in Hastings Park, and there is an active eagle nest in a large cottonwood.

Anyway, I have sent the pictures and a letter to the Parks Board and put up the video on YouTube. This unfortunate bird is probably only one of many that have been or will be adversely affected by this change in the way the park is used. Hopefully this will help change some minds about having an unaccountable private entity control one of our public parks.

Hastings Park is one of my favourite nearby places to go to see wildlife, and it would be a shame if injuries like this become the norm for the birds nesting and migrating through the park.

For more information about the controversy, see the following links:

Article in Vancouver Courier

Opinion Article from Vancouver Courier

Metro Article

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Who likes robber flies?

Jul4

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Coming in to the lab this morning, I found this beautiful male Laphria robber fly sitting on a window. He was still cool from the night, so he made a very cooperative photographic subject.

These large handsome flies are strikingly marked and are Batesian mimics of bumblebees. Robber flies do not rob banks, they rob life. For a great example of this, see Alex Wild’s wonderful photo of one with a honeybee.

This robber robbed me of about 30 minutes of photography time, but I think it is well worth it!

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If you are interested in how to get these blue sky backgrounds, see this excellent post at Beetles in the Bush.

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Cheapskate Tuesday 22: how to photograph a spider’s privates

Jul2

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Spider identification is difficult at a glance, and even from photographs. Many of the key features for identifying spiders (and other arthropods) to species lie in their genitalia. In spiders, these are rather inconveniently placed underneath the body, so if one is to have a chance at getting an ID from photos, one must be able to photograph the underside in some detail.

Enter the Spi-Pot. This device is simply a tube attached over a clear viewing window, with a padded plunger used to immobilize the spider with the ventral side gently pressed to the viewing window.

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I made such a device simply by taping a pill bottle (with the bottom cut off) onto a microscope slide, and used a cotton ball rolled in a tube of paper as a plunger. This was sufficient to get a decent view of the spider’s epigynum, and with careful placement of a diffused light I was able to get some pictures.  I have submitted these the bugguide.net, and have already received an ID from Kyron Basu, who identified this as a spider in the family Amaurobiidae, genus Callobius. I am hoping that with the epigynum shots I have made, the ID of this spider can be nailed to species.  Buggide is awesome.

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Using a microscope slide allows the Spi-Pot to hang from a glass, exposing the ventral side of the spider.

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OK, the seam holding the tube to the glass could be a bit better…

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The money shot (I hope).

By the way, if you are awaiting the posting of the Weekend Expedition, I have one in the works, and am probably out photographing it as you read this. The actual shooting I got in this weekend was marginal due to the hot dry weather, and I was unable to get out at a decent hour for photography. I am remedying this with a Tuesday morning expedition to the cliffs at the base of Dallas Road in Victoria, where I hope to surprise some insects before they get super active. Wish me luck!

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References

Zschokke, S., & Herberstein, M. E. (2005). Laboratory methods for maintaining and studying web-building spiders. Journal of Arachnology, 33(2), 205-213.

Feed your Syrphid well!

Jun20

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It is still National Pollinator Week in the USA, and I hope they are having a good one. Here in Vancouver, it is rainy and cold. But that is no reason not to engage in some pollinator photography! A couple weeks ago, I found a syrphid larva among the blackberry leaves we feed our stick insects.

I ended up keeping it in the cage, feeding it with bunches of aphids.

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The larva disappeared after a day of eating so well, so I presumed it had dropped to the soil to pupate. Sure enough, today we found him buzzing around the cage. I took the opportunity for some pictures, then sent him out (in a protected location) after a meal of honey.

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Emergence Day!

Jun19

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Remember those black widow egg sacs we collected a few weeks ago? Well, the spiderlings have hatched, moulted once, and are now emerging from their egg sacs!

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Here is what an egg sac looks like when it is ready.

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And here, with light penetrating the silk, you can see the spiderlings inside:

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A spiderling peeking out.

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And squirming free.

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Done!

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Here, the baby spiders socialize at the playground. They are best of friends at this stage…
Just kidding! They cannibalize each other like zombies!

In other baby spider news, at the apartment, the cellar spiders have hatched, and are spending some time adjacent to mom in the same corner where they were brooded.IMG_0010 IMG_0018

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Six months of loud birds, photography and science!

Jun17

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Wow! It has already been 6 months since I have been blogging here at Ibycter! I started this blog on January 17th with three posts, and have kept up a pace of roughly three posts per week since that time, with two regular features, the Weekend Expedition and Cheapskate Tuesday. Midweek, I usually post some find I make during the week, or perhaps a more in-depth article on some aspect of Red-throated Caracara biology or tropical fieldwork. I have plans to expand these in-depth articles, as well as the midweek finds, especially as we are in the full swing of insect season here in Vancouver.

Here at Ibycter, I have the amazing ability to see exactly what works well, by seeing the view counts for each post. Here is a rundown of the top 5 posts by view count, followed by three posts I thought did not get enough attention.

Posts You Liked

5. Cheapskate Tuesday 10: the Monster Macro Rig A full how-to about my regular light setup for use with a 100 mm macro lens.

4. Schrödinger’s Grant: This lighthearted piece was Catherine’s name for the limbo that is waiting on results of a grant proposal.

3. How not to make money off a viral story: A simple and old story of copyright infringement of images of a large mosquito.

2. Found: Red-legged Frog on Burnaby Mountain : Sometimes, when writing under the fluorescent lights in the lab gets to be too much, I head out to the woods of Burnaby Mountain to see what I can see. This time I found a less-than common frog.

1. What to expect when your Cellar Spider is Expecting: sometimes the best wildlife stories are close to home!

Posts I liked

3: The Red-throated Caracara: Introducing my favourite loud bird: the overview you were waiting for.

2. Snakes!! A bit about snakes in the rainforest.

1. Ever meet a treetrunk spider? How a beautiful spider got from the forests of French Guiana to our basement suite wall.

So there you have it, Ibycter‘s 6 month blogiversary, and my first roundup post. Please let me know what you liked and didn’t like about these last 6 months, and what you would like to see for the future.