Our first Christmas Bird Count!

Dec21

I suppose it is kind of odd for a bird researcher to admit that I have never really taken part in organized birding. This is because I have never really considered myself a birder as such. I admire birders, with their excellent field sense and their identification skills, but I am more of a birdwatcher than a birder. I like watching birds, so long as I am getting insight into their behaviour or appreciating them aesthetically.

Nonetheless, I have adequate ID skills, at least as far as the winter fauna of Victoria goes, so Catherine signed us up as volunteers for the annual Christmas Bird Count. These events are an old tradition of the Audubon Society, and historically have provided quite a bit of abundance and presence/absence data on a continent-wide scale.

Victoria’s count took place yesterday, on a windy and rainy Saturday, which is not really the best weather to see lots and lots of birds. Most songbirds have to eat, however, so the early morning was bound to be at least somewhat productive.

We met other volunteers at a Tim Horton’s, and were assigned a largely-residential section adjacent to Panama Flats in Saanich. The objective is to walk the area, identifying and counting birds, recording how many of each species we saw. For a full list of what we saw, click here. Check out the pictures, and follow the Victoria count results here.

My brother, Colin came out to help. Colin, Catherine and I were the only ones to cover an area to the southeast of Panama flats.

This is the final sunlight Catherine saw before the weather socked in!

We did not record these, but did take a picture to document the sighting.

We recorded 75 crows, but it is likely we missed many.

We saw this Barred Owl in a small floodwater ravine.

White-crowned Sparrow, one of two that we saw.

We saw quite a few House Sparrows, although counting them was difficult due to them hiding in the bushes.

The sole Stellers Jay we saw.

Juncoes! These were one of the most abundant birds all day; we saw 56.

I am sure I could have figured out some of the gulls we saw, but since the checklist included an “unidentified gulls” section, that is what I put.

We had some attention from local pets.

This was the only eagle we saw, and we also spotted one Peregrine Falcon.

This dog has fogged up the window with his barking.

Photo session with a jumper

Nov24

This weekend, I did not have much time to go out and shoot, so I got my photography in by taking some shots of a Phidippus ~~johnsoni~~ female we are keeping in the apartment. In some of these shots, I was trying to mix hard and soft light to show the hairs of teh spider more clearly, but with the activity of the spider, it became a bit of a free-for-all regarding lighting.

Update: I am not sure if this is Phidippus johnsoni. It may well be P. borealis.

Here is the spider just before leaping. The extended forelegs are characteristic of an about-to-leap jumper.

This is the effect I was going for with the bare flash to the rear.

The colour of the chelicerae seems to depend hugely on the angle of light. Not surprising, as this seems to be an example of structural colouration.

Here they are with more direct lighting.

When not tearing around the tabletop studio, the jumper liked to hide in the dried leaves.

BC Day Long Weekend part 2: Bees in the garden

Aug6

A second feature of this past weekend was getting out to various gardens and plantings to see some flower visitors. I first stopped off at the Strathcona community garden, then some gardens near Commercial drive.

Early morning on Echinacea: often bumblebees don’t make it home in the evening, and I find them dew-wettened, clinging to the flowers they were visiting the previous evening. They are in no mood to fly in this state, and I get the opportunity to experiment with lighting.

With a diffused flash to the left, and a reflector card on the right, this bee gets the beauty treatment, despite her bad hair day!

For some reason, this bumblebee looks to me like she is enjoying a belly laugh.

The advantage of working with immobilized insects cannot be overstated. This shot mixes in the dawn light, hence the sunbeam!

I found a few other creatures in the garden, such as this awesome sac spider.

This flower longhorn was one of the few non-bee insects I ended up shooting at Strathcona.

Here is a dew-wettened honeybee on some kind of mint.

And a dry honeybee foraging on Echinacea.

Later, during the heat of the day, I went to Grandview Park near Commercial Drive. This is our native paper wasp, Polistes aurifer.

There were a whole lot of the introduced wool carder bees (Anthidium manicatum) foraging and stalking on catmint. Here is a male on his lookout perch, where he watches for rivals and females to chase.

One of the few times they are still is during copulation, wherein the male violently grabs the female while she feeds. I believe the white tuft on the male tibia has something to do with shading part of the female’s eye.

They seem to be having a good time.

I do not normally chill insects, but this male I chilled for a short time to see what would happen. they are normally out on such hot days, it stood to reason they would be sensitive to chilling. This procedure allowed about a minute of shooting, and in not such terrible positions either.

Here he is, looking fierce and about to fly off.

Booty duty: this natural light shot shows a megachilid with a scopa full of pollen.

Pretty boy: finding the male of Agapostemon texanus is a wonderful thing. The combination of the striped abdomen and brilliant green is hard to resist. They would steal my heart from Coelioxys if they weren’t so damn fast!

I see you!

Jul31

Yesterday, I got a reminder that spiders, wasps and bees are not the only cool stuff to see at Iona Beach! Here is a beautiful Great Horned owl, waiting out the heat of the day under the cottonwoods. The long lens also brings in other creatures:

Cedar Waxwing, probably feasting on elderberries.

A skimmer on its hunting perch.

Herons on the rafted logs in the Fraser River.

Weekend Expedition 54: Burns Bog and Centennial Beach

Jul28

This past weekend, The Spider Crew (Sam Evans, Catherine Scott, Samantha Vibert and Gwylim Blackburn) and I set out to find an elusive and rare gnaphosid in the vast wetness of Burns Bog. Gnaphosa snohomish is supposed to be the only peatland specialist gnaphosid in Canada, and was a great reason to go out to the bog.

Believe it or not, we all piled into Daisy, a 1984 Toyota Tercel on loan from Sofi Hindmarch. Yeah, it’s got a hemi!

Samantha examines some riparian flowers on the walk in.

The Labrador Tea was fragrant and abundant.

The wild blueberries were in full swing!

I liked the way the fern was projected on this skunk cabbage.

In the bog proper, there was evidence of spiders. This belongs to a Hahniid, which Catherine will cover in an upcoming post.

A very odd construction indeed. An egg sac?

Sam managed to find a jumper on some blueberries.

and a crab as well.

Under the trees, in rotted logs, amaurobiids were common.

Interestingly, they seem to show a curious “legs up” posture when blown on. We had seen a similar reaction among Ctenids in Honduras.

An Uloborid with its amazing silk trap set.

A gorgeous linyphiid on her web. Check out her weird epigynum!

Samantha and Catherine consult the primary literature in the field. The article in question is: Bennett, R. G., S. M. Fitzpatrick & J. T. Troubridge. Redescription of the rare ground spider Gnaphosa snohomish (Araneae: Gnaphosidae), an apparent bog specialist endemic to the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin area. J. Ent. Soc. Ont. 137: 13-23.

Our hunt was turning up nothing gnaphbosid like, so we stopped for lunch.

Spidering makes for healthy appetites, especially when goat cheese, hummus tomato and basil are available.

Shortly after lunch, it was evident that the black dog of spidering failure had visited us, so we made a move for our second objective: confirmation of a population of black widows at Centennial Beach in Tsawwassen.

We were shocked at the similarities between this beach and Island View Beach. Each has a shallow bay, a large foreshore protected from high tide, abundant driftwood, sloping fields behind, and a bluff overhanging. The human traffic is a bit more intense at Centennial though.

Rolling over logs, and what did we find?

Black widows! Just look at this absolutely gorgeous overwintered male!

This guy was so spectacular… Almost the size of a young female.

Females with egg sacs and hatchlings were also around.

Here is a youngster near an egg sac.

And a large female with a new egg sac.

We ended the day back in Vancouver with some ice cream. Overall, a good effort, with 1/2 of our objectives met. We will get you next time Gnaphosa snohomish!

A wider view of Ammophila

Jul25

A “normal” focal length of 27 mm (about equivalent to 43 mm on full frame, so a tiny bit on the wide side).

A focal length of 39 mm (about equivalent to 62.4 mm on full frame, so still actually a telephoto shot). Much wider than the 100 mm lens though!

One of the tasks I have set for myself this season is to start experimenting with wider closeups, a style best demonstrated by great photographers such as Piotr Naskrecki, Clay Bolt and Paul Harcourt. Shooting close and wide has the advantage of showing the subject in the context of its surroundings, and can be surprisingly effective. In fact, a vast proportion of wildlife photography contest winners are shot on wide lenses, as seeing animals in these perspectives can really make for some stunning compositions.

I have been in my 100 mm comfort zone for too long, and I feel the need to get a bit more creative with my composition. In addition, I feel like the context is missing from many of my macro shots, and going wide will help me to centre my subjects in their habitat.

While I can get wide and close with a couple compacts I have, the only SLR lens my kit capable of wide shots is the EFS 18-55 “kit lens”. It is not a bad lens at all, stabilized and light, it is easy to pack around. Last night I made good on my resolution and tried it out on some sleeping Ammophila at McDonald Beach in Richmond.

Here is the same Ammophila cluster at 18 mm, bringing in yet more of the surroundings.

Again at 18 mm, stepping back about 3 cm further from the subject. Small differences in subject distance make a dramatic effect on the picture. Also, here you can see another Ammophila cluster down below and to the right! One of the disadvantages to working with a kit lens is the hexagonal highlights in the out-of focus areas of the background. Pricier zooms have rounded aperture blades that yield a more pleasing “bokeh“.

For all of these shots, I shot handheld in aperture priority, with the subject lit with a diffused manual flash held just overhead. Mostly I dropped the exposure compensation down 2/3-1 stop to emphasize the darkening evening. This shot is at 21 mm.

And here is one shot back in my comfort zone with the 100 mm and the flash held using the Monster Macro Rig at full extension of the rail and friction arm. Be sure to check out the larger versions of all this in this flickr set.

Weekend Expedition 53: celebrating being done!

Jul14

A beautiful longhorn! Stictoleptura canadensis on Tansy at Iona Beach.

This weekend, to celebrate being done with my PhD defence, I made sure to get out on both Saturday and Sunday morning. I went somewhere close by, as it has been very hot and clear here in Vancouver and the shooting gets pretty bad pretty quickly. Thus,I went to Iona and McDonald Beaches in Richmond.

One of the biggest chalcidoids: Leucospis affinis (Leucosppidae). Check out those rear legs!

A green lacewing, missing its antennae.

A nice megachilid with a cool moustache.

This sphecid is covered in dew and looking cool in the morning.

A tachinid picking up the rays of the rising sun.

A tetragnathid eating prey. It looks like this one might have a mantispid larva attached to its abdomen, something I have never seen before in Vancouver.

Things are not going well for this tetragnathid either!

A pretty Ammophila against the sky.

Skippers are out in abundance, although I have not seen them ovipositing yet.

This and the next photo show the dramatic effect of the background light using the Monster Macro Rig.

The background is at a sweet spot to blur at f13.

And of course, with any morning walk on the beach, I found some Coelioxys!

A cluster of Ammophila against the sky.

A tiger moth carcass being stripped by Tetramorium ants (Pavement Ants). I have been seeing more and more of these!

Defending my PhD thesis

Jul14

Thursday morning last week was a pretty special day; it was the day I defended my PhD thesis. For those of you who don’t know, a thesis defence is a formal examination, wherein the candidate (me) gives a public seminar on their thesis, and then is questioned by an examining committee, generally composed of their supervisory committee, plus an internal and external examiner, and all headed by a chairperson selected by the department.

Here is the room I defended in. We figure it had 45-50 people in total.

Catherine made some great caracara cookies to go with the coffee and water (which is required at defences!).

My examining committee was headed by Dr. Margo Moore, who did a great job keeping the event rolling and the atmosphere relaxed. Dr. David Lank was my internal examiner, a great guy I have always gone to with questions on bird research (we do not have a lot of institutional experience to draw on in a chemical ecology lab). My external examiner was Dr. Keith Bildstein, a researcher at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, with decades of experience in raptor research and in particular experience studying Striated Caracaras in the Falkland Islands and Patagonia. My advisory committee consisted of Dr. Sean O’Donnell, who was absent for the defence, but there in spirit (he is doing fieldwork in Costa Rica), Dr. Ron Ydenberg, an expert in bird foraging behaviour, and of course my supervisor Dr. Gerhard Gries.

I gave my 40 minute presentation, outlining my research on Red-throated Caracaras, focusing on several aspects of their biology:

It is not clear that Red-throated caracaras build nests, as our observations in 2008 and 2009 showed that they nest in cleared areas of large epiphytic bromeliads. They seem to have only a single chick per nesting, and have some of the most extreme cooperative breeding in the bird world, with up to 6 or 7 adults providing care to a single chick.

They are specialist predators on social wasps, and probably are responsible for a lot of brood mortality in these animals. They prey on a wide range of genera, mainly swarm-founders and almost invariably aerial nesters.

They are extremely social, vocal and territorial, with a repertoire of calls and displays, and even use physical conflict in territorial disputes.

Contrary to previous hypotheses, we found no evidence of a chemical wasp repellent, but discovered that the caracaras exploit the absconding response of their swarm-founding prey to avoid harm when attacking wasp nests.

The work in my thesis was not done single-handedly. I had great help from field assistants, granting agencies and the CNRS is Guyane. Here is Onour Moeri, my assistant in 2008 and 2011 with a Red-throated Caracara we had radio-tracked.

This is Tanya Jones, a biology graduate who is now a triathlon coach, who came to French Guiana with me in 2009 and 2010.

Catherine Scott, also known as @cataranea, came in 2012 for help with the army ant portion of the thesis (soon to be published!).

Patrick Chatelet, of CNRS Guyane was our good friend and host for much of our fieldwork. He has been at the Nouragues station for longer than most of the monkeys.

Philippe Gaucher of CNRS Guyane, is a great guy to have on your side when doing raptor or frog research in the rainforest. Here he is climbing the 2008 nest tree for the first-ever glimpse into a Red-throated Caracara’s nest.

My mom attended the defence, and it was great having her there. She has encouraged me through all the years of this process!

A bird in the hand: at the end of the seminar, I was questioned for about 1.5 h. Most of the questioning was more in the form of a discussion and I found I had quite a bit to say to everything thrown at me. In the end, the decision of the committee was to accept the thesis with minor revisions. When that is complete, I will have fulfilled all the requirements for the PhD program, and the school will award my degree.

After the defence, we had lunch with teh committee, and then went to Trout Lake for a bit of a celebration. Here are some shots from the defence and the after-party. I know I have missed some important faces (Gerhard and Regine and Keith Bildstein!), but I hope you will forgive me, as I was just feeling relief!

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Catchup on images from the past week.

Jul7

Tetragnatha caudata at sunset.

OK, I am in full lockdown/practice mode for my upcoming PhD defence, so here is a collection of images without much commentary, taken at Iona Beach over the past couple weeks.

Colletes males in a sleeping aggregation.

Ochlerotatus dorsalis, taking my blood.

A Phidippus, looking great as always.

Bembix digging a nest.

Some kind of dwarf spider. I like how the legs reflect on the shiny body.

Colletes showing me his tongue.

A cuckoo wasp Catherine found sleeping in dead wood.

The folded legs of a sleeping Coelioxys.

Colletes.

My favourite bee, Coelioxys.

A long-legged fly eating a mite.

Coelioxys rufitarsus showing its reddish tarsi.

A Stilt-legged fly (Micropezidae).

Crazy heads these guys have!

Aggregation of sleeping Coelioxys.

Tetragnatha caudata at sunset.

Life and death at Burnaby Lake

Jul5

Yesterday, on the way home from the University, I decided to spend a bit of time at Burnaby Lake. A light warm rain was falling, and the lakeside was a quiet place to wander around and contemplate the life all around. The evening had a somber feel, and the photographic subject matter at hand echoed this.

What does it all mean? This towhee looked worried in the rain.

New life: goslings were resting by their parents by the lakeside.

On its own: a brown headed cowbird, fledged from its hosts nest was picking damselflies off the dockside.

Lost: these three ducklings were searching for their mother.

Master of contemplation: a Western Painted Turtle surveys the scene.

End of a short life: a gull shakes a baby Wood Duck before swallowing it alive.

For the next generation: a female Aedes cinereus drinks my blood to provide protein for egg maturation.

The essential transfer: mating gall midges on a flower.

Top up: Aedes cinereus again, really going hard at my ankes.

After swatting some Aedes cinereus, I share the bounty with a Lasius worker.

Nearly dead: A Meadow Jumping Mouse (Zapus hudsonius) by the side of the trail. I have no idea what was wrong with this beautiful, normally speedy rodent.

Ibycter

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