Damsel Bugs (Nabidae) can still be found this time of year.
All the leaves were brown, and the sky was kinda gray, but with some blue yesterday. I went for a walk around the campus, and found some bugs!
Anthocorid!
A tree aphid. These seem to lack cornicles.
A robust little fly. Any ID suggestions? Update! Valérie Lévesque has ID’ed this as a Scuttle Fly, family Phoridae! Thanks Valérie!
The winter moths are here. You can blow on them to get them in this position.
The sun was shining, the MS revisions were nearly done, I went out to take a break after lunch.
A Stropharia something like Stropharia aeruginosa, near the Community Garden.
These are some of the most common flies around now!
There were caterpillars under the dying rhubarb leaves.
The Acanthosomatid stinkers are still hanging around.
All kinds of crazy Amanita muscaria coming up all over campus.
This Weekend Expedition was a bit rushed, as things were both busy and tiring for me, with the Spooktacular on Saturday, followed by a 5 h bout of Barn Owl tracking all night on Saturday-Sunday. As I slept in til nearly noon, and had a vehicle, I took Catherine out to Lynn Canyon, in her fabled homeland of North Vancouver. The place was absolutely crawling with people, as are most natural areas on the North Shore are on nice weekend days. A major infestation! For this reason, Catherine and I stuck to the woods high above the river.
Although it was a nice dry, sunny day, the understory was still quite wet and teeming with fungal life,
Fungi, such as this Ramaria added colour to the forest floor.
Even the crevices we examined for spiders seemed to be full of fungus.
Most of the spiders we found were small Linyphiids or Araneids, but we did encounters some larger Amaurobiids, such as this pretty one. I really love the silky look of their abdomens.
We even found a Jumping Bristletail on an old cedar trunk.
We say several large slugs, but not much else in the way of arthropods except for some stray, sunning Leptoglossus and fungus gnats.
Despite the crowds, getting out to the woods was good for us, as recently life has felt rather hectic.
These Admirable Boletes (Boletus mirabilis) are especially abundant at Pete Wolf Creek. Unlike many other boletes, these like rotting trees.
This weekend was the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada, and following tradition, I went out mushroom picking. This is something I have done since I was a teenager, and since I do not get out much anymore, every time I go it is pretty special. If the mushrooms are plentiful, it is even better!
My buddy Jeff drove, which was very non traditional!
A nice Ramaria. Apparently some are edible, but I have never harvested these.
A nice cluster of Chanterelles!
Jeff examines the second-growth forest above Pete Wolf Creek. We found that a large number of of our favourite sites had been or are being clearcut. Just a few hundred metres north of here has a new road and cutblock…
Because of the super dry summer, the king Boletes (Boletus edulis) were still good this late in the season. They must have fruited late.
Jeff with a Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) and Catherine with three Kings!
Folding boxes make great transport containers.
Jeff headed back from a downstream scouting mission.
We got up pretty high, but the pickings were better at lower altitude. The Strait of Juan de Fuca was pretty nice to see though.
Catherine in the woods.
A Grisette-like Amanaita
After a strenuous day in the woods, we chilled out with my brother’s new kitten!
who is super-cute!
Here we are, it is already Arachtober, and fall weather has definitely arrived. While the rains last week kept me from going out shooting, this weekend we had a beautiful Sunday, perfect fall weather for some photography in Stanley Park.
Migration season has arrived, and all the Canada Geese are definitely in flying mode. There are takeoffs and landings every few minutes on Lost Lagoon in the morning. Go south, oh poopy ambassadors, and spread your green, cylindrical, gifts across America!
This may very well be my last jumper of the year…I found her under some bark on an old cedar stump.
A Snowberry leaf makes a nice perch for this spider.
Termites are of course still to be found in rotting wood. I hope all the Entomology students pay attention: if you do not have these in your collection by now, you aren’t looking hard enough!
A couple crow shots, because i can’t help it…
Flipping logs is something I have been doing since I was a little kid…And this Ensatina is a good reason why!
Ensatina eyes are some of the prettiest of salamander eyes. They are almost like the eyes of a doe.
This is a very odd fungus I found on an old stump. I wonder if it might be a really young fruitbody of a Hericium species.
A tiny Uloborid spider, likely Hyptiotes gertshi.
Looking elegant, stretched out on a grass blade. Metellina?
Seriously, I don’t get out much! The recent rainy weather has made photography and pretty well all other outdoor activity really unpleasant. In addition, it seems more and more work is piling up that requires my attention. Because we had a rare sunny break yesterday, I went out on the campus for an hour to see what I could see. And what I could see was soggy! The summer insects are gone, and seemingly the forest is once again the realm of water, fungi, dampness and decay.
Update: I read this line in a novel this morning: “In the distance… Simon Fraser University rose up on Burnaby Mountain, a cluster of grey-slab buildings, miserable and gloomy, saved from utter desolation by the surrounding patches of evergreen trees.”
From “A Thousand Bayonets” by Joel Mark Harris.
Seems appropriate!
Some nice Mycena.
Witches’ Butter! This is a weird basidiomycete that grows on woody debris (and sometimes bark).
This is not predation, but just photographic conjunction of an amaurobiid and a millipede.
The damsel bugs can be found through much of the fall.
Some kind of Coprinus.
Chicken-of-the-Woods! This is an older fruitbody, but I probably would have grabbed it when it was younger (if I got out more).
A hardy orbweaver sits in her tiny web.
I may not get out, but sometimes insects come in! This Western Conifer Seed Bug came into the lab. looking for an overwintering spot.
Some of my favourite photographic subjects to revisit periodically are crows. These bold black birds seem to me unusually expressive, with minor variations in posture and plumage conveying very different feelings photographically. I like to get in close, to show their eyes and plumage. In the following shots, you can see that some are molting countour plumes around the face. In another month or so, they will be at their sleekest and blackest, and I will probably go out for some more crow sessions.
The past week has been rather hectic, with a flood forcing Catherine and I from our home, paper revisions made and further plans for Honduran fieldwork underway. I did not get a chance to post these shots I took from our time on the Island, where I spent part of Sunday morning out shooting in the dry grasses of Beacon Hill Park.
I saw lots of moth eggs on the dry grasses.
Now is the time to find sclerotia of ergot (Claviceps spp.) which contains chemicals studied by Albert Hofmann (from which he synthesized LSD-25).
This sleepy robber fly was not as sleepy as I thought, and flew off after this shot.
The skipper was more accommodating.
A peacock stalks the Garry Oak meadow.
Coelioxys rufitarsus hanging from grass in the dawn light.
I tried a couple wider shots with the 18-55 on 11 mm of extension (around 24 mm focal length). This is something I would like to try more of…
Romance between highly sexually dimorphic spiders such as the Cross Orbweaver, Araneus diadematus is fraught with danger for the smaller male. His potential objet d’amour is many times his size, fast and often hungry. Therefore, when he approaches a female’s web, he is very tentative, signalling his intentions with much tapping and stroking of her web and forelegs. With repeated bouts of this, he is often able to approach closely while the female appears to be put into a quiescent state.
The size differential is great, so the male is cautious
Much “footsie” type courtship seems par for the course, and is kinda cute.
Eventually the female hangs motionless.
the final approach
that is a close embrace!
hmmm. that seems like too close an embrace!
Doesn’t look good for Lothario here.
Nope. I think we may chalk this up to a “fatal sexual encounter”. I am sure another male will be around shortly!
Next time you are on a ferry passage, I recommend you investigate the use of french fries for gull photography. That is all.
