Another new trail

I've been meaning to try out a trail along the Stamp River that was completed last year.

The Angler's Trail, or Sayachlas ta saa nim as it's known in Nuu-chah-nulth, follows the water for about 7.5km. The guide says it has fawn lilies. It does.



There are 29 species of fawn lily in North America. They are also called trout lilies, glacier lilies and dog's tooth violets.

I believe the ones on the open sunny edges of this path are Erythronium oregonum, aka giant white fawn lily.


For this trail it's best to park a car at either end and go in one direction. I was on my own, so didn't have that option.







Round about six kilometers in, as I realized I didn't want to do the route again in reverse, I wondered why I hadn't put my bike at one end.

Didn't turn out to be a problem. I went out to the road at the north end and picked up a ride from a nice young woman.
She lives by the trailhead and said she didn't even know it was there.
She says there're wolves in the area. She hears them at night. I saw some wolfish looking scat on the road near her house. Cool.

Heard lots of birds. Spotted a few. The white-crowned sparrows stood out. Didn't stick around for a portrait though.

This red-breasted sapsucker did. Busy drilling the big old Douglas fir, it hardly noticed me snapping away. The north end of the trail goes though a decadent forest. The kind that wants to make you weep at the feet of the giant firs and cedars.



Near the end of the trail I spotted this red beetle hanging in the air. Then it settled on a cedar branch.



It's a netwing beetle, specifically (sorry folks, I can't stop myself) Dictyopterous simplicipes. It's a species of the north Pacific lowlands. Adults feed on sap and are active in April and May. Young feed on the bark of dead trees.

Timely post

Read this today about whale watching boats breaking the rules of whale watching.

A whale of a time

With the ongoing uncertainty in my current job I'm leafing through my options and one of them is whale watching.

I worked as an onboard biologist for one season out of Victoria and, like any job, it had its low points but looking back I remember spending my day roaming around a gorgeous bit of the world looking at orcas and other marine life.

That sounds all right.

I always seem to find an ethical problem in my paid pursuits. With whale watching I had trouble feeling good about being part of a fleet of high-powered motor boats following a pod of endangered whales around day in and day out.

There are two kinds of orcas seen in the Pacific northwest – residents and transients.

Residents are large family groups of killer whales that eat salmon exclusively. There are three resident pods that stick around the Coast Salish Sea between Seattle in the south and the Georgia Strait up to about Vancouver in the north, with lots of roaming beyond that home area.

I've been keeping an eye on the industry and noted a few births in the resident pods this year. That's good news as this group is listed as endangered with just under 90 whales divided between three pods. The two biggest threats to the animals are pollution and dwindling salmon stocks.


The baby above was born the year I was on the water, 2006.

This spring there have been a lot of transient killer whale sightings. The transients travel far and wide in smaller groups (often a single female with one or two of her offspring, or lone males) and hunt marine mammals.

The most interesting website I came across is the Cascadia Research project that's following the movements of the transients here.

The other whales commonly seen in this region are the minke, grey and humpback whales, baleen feeders that strain small sea life through what amounts to sieves in their mouths.



This is the nose of a mature female humpback whale. She hung out between Victoria Harbour and Race Rocks with her calf for several weeks in October 2006.

There was a grey whale sighting in the Alberni Inlet just a few weeks ago. Highly unusual but indicates the health of the formerly industrial waterfront is improving.

The paper mill used to dump wood fibre into the Inlet and it formed a thick mat on the ocean floor, choking out life. A few years back people looked into whether it could be removed as a restoration project but found that now a new layer has settled over top and marine life has colonized this sub-sea floor again. Disturbing the new habitat would be too damaging, they decided.

Grey whales scoop mud from the bottom and strain the edible bits out of it. I wonder if that whale was able to do that or if it left the Inlet hungry.

What a difference two weeks makes

At the first hummingbird banding session (see April 7 below) we had a total of four birds.
Round two, we captured and measured 135 feisty jewels. Eighteen of those were recaptures from previous years including one from 2005 that must be at least five years old.
We could have caught many more but we were limited by a small crew of three. That meant two people on the traps and one banding non-stop. I caught two at a time more than once. This is what the feeder looked like at the end of the day (noon) when we took off the traps.


Male rufous hummingbirds, like this one, make up the vast majority at the feeders. They fly ahead of the females from the southern wintering grounds to establish a good territory up here, and further north, where they nest.

We were surprised to see a fair bit of territorial behaviour in the males at this point in the season. My readings indicate they are pretty easygoing during migration Maybe the local boys are chasing the other males off.

Females hung back and waited for the ruckus to settle before buzzing in for a sip.

If you feed humming birds at home, don't use the dyed solution or mix the solution too sweet, both can harm the bird's kidneys.

Return to Burde Street ponds

I guess once the Northern pintail shows up, that's it, the party is on.

Today, on my favourite walk, I saw little bit of everything and managed to photograph some of it between flash showers.

First eye-catcher was a wood duck. They are the type that looks like a decoy. Every decoy painter choses this dabbler for a model because their plummage looks unreally real.




Also new to the pond were groups of ring-billed ducks and an Audobon's yellow-rumped warbler flitting about. I plan to capture a photo of that adorable little songbird before it heads south again.

Instead, I captured the stately – and sedentary – swamp lantern (aka skunk cabbage).

Bird's eye view

Of Port Alberni.
Including a log boom in the Alberni Inlet (lower left) and Mt. Arrowsmith looking much less towering than usual (upper right).

New character at the pond

Signs of spring.

Noticed a new duck amongst the buffleheads and Canada geese at the pond on my run a few days ago.

Can we have and ID please? Northern pintail. Dapper duck. The bill is such a baby blue, it looks painted. (The one in front is an American widgeon, put that name to the tune American woman)
The Northern pintail is one of the first ducks to return to their northern nesting grounds in North America.

In French it's called canard pilet. That has a nice ring.
In Spanish it's known as pato golondrino.
Now, I don't know what the Spanish have against the pintail, or what they know that I don't, but the online Spanish-English dictionary says that golondrino means a boil in the armpit.

Day 1

First hummingbird banding session started at 6:47 last Saturday morning. That doesn't sound bad, but our crew of four met up an hour before to head down the road to the site.

6:47 was the first bird. A frisky, and cold, male rufous hummingbird. Young by my estimate.

The next bird was 10:07 a.m. A recapture, which is always exciting. Stan, the master bander, didn't know what year the bird was from (has to check records at home), but at the very least you know the little male hummingbird you hold in your hands has made at least two round trips to southern wintering grounds and back here.

That was the bright side. It was a cold morning to be sitting around doing nothing. Sure, the odd kingfisher, song sparrow and bald eagle livened things up, but it's still frosty right after sunrise.

Then the sun broke out over the trees and the mountains and it was a glorious day and we went home.

West Coasters

Thinking about a spring trip to the real west coast - Tofino, Ucluelet side of Vancouver Island - and I'm amazed I haven't been over since last September.

That was a great trip, though. Put my camping gear and bike in the back of the car, set up at Surf Junction (good spot, equally far from both towns and well-situated for the big beach and intimate Half Moon Bay).

Campground had outdoor jacuzzi and composting toilets, thumbs up on both.

I didn't drive at all while there, and popped back and forth between Long Beach during the sunny days and Half Moon Bay for sunsets.




Snapped some shots of tide pool life at Half Moon.




Here we have pisaster.

Notice the white sticky-looking strings between the sea star and the rock?

Those are tube feet. Starfish have this very cool hydro-mechanical system that operates these appendages on their bottom (non-dayglo coloured) side.

Tube feet are only found in echinoderms (which also includes sea cucumbers). The tubes and suction cup feet work thanks to a complex water vascular system that the early Romans would have envied.

The feet are for walking. Slowly.



Other Half Moon inhabitants (that I photographed) with interesting habits are anemones. Never mind the let-it-all-hang-out posture, look at the little flecks of stuff stuck to the anemone's body.


Bits of shell and other tide pool detritus. Makes them look sloppy. But a-ha. There's always a purpose. In an elegant little study, a young marine biologist (not me) demonstrated that the anemones purposely cover themselves to protect their bodies from damaging ultra violet light.

The undergrad put one group of anemones under UV light and in a short time they had collected a protective layer of sea crap. A second group, not exposed to UV light, kept themselves free of gunk. When that group was moved under the intense light they were soon shielded by broken shells and pebbles.

Further supporting this. The substance that gives anemone tentacles their pearly irridescent colours also reflects UV light to protect the delicate appendages. You rarely see stuff stuck on the tentacles.

To the outdoors

The first truly spring day on Sunday and I tried out a new trail in city limits.

Still need to explore further but an hour's walk didn't show me all of the Maquinna trail system here in Port Alberni.

I did like what I saw and know it will be a viable alternative, on bike or foot, to my favourite in-town trail.

The Burde Street Ponds, or Rogers Creek Nature Trail or whatever it's called is four loop trails that intersect at picturesque spots, like Rogers creek. Plus side branches I haven't wandered down yet. It's mature second-growth forest, steep hikes up cliffs, flat strolls on old rail bed. There are two ponds rimmed in yellow lilies at the right time of year, but always alive with ducks and beaver families and sometimes a turtle or two.







It's five minutes from my home. I can get on a loop and do an hour-long cross country run or take a 45-minute bird watching walk.



I've seen a barred owl mobbed by about a half dozen robins in broad daylight there. A warbler I'd never seen before. Woodpeckers. Winter wren. Cooper's hawk. All the other usual suspects.

I've been looking for salamanders for a few years and I saw one there. Right on the trail.

I love it. I use it a lot and I thank the people who created it very much.

Everything's coming up thrushes

I met this chap while out hummingbird banding.

One of the things I like about this project is that it gets me out at the crack of dawn bird watching. Something I never seem to be able to make myself do otherwise.

So you're outside, sitting still and quiet, and if there aren't many hummingbirds coming to the traps, it's great bird watching time.

The bird in the picture is a Swainson's thrush. One of those robiny species that I take for granted and tend not to pay much attention to.

So, I decided to put my raptor bias aside and learn a little bit about these birds.

First off, they are known for their song. Walt Whitman wrote about it, so did Henry Thoreau.

The reason their songs stands out is that thrushes have what's called a syrinx, or a double voice box that allows them to have air moving in and out at the same time. In essence, they can sing two notes at once and harmonize with themselves.

It makes a chimy, unearthly-sounding song. The hermit thrush's call is especially beautiful. You've no doubt heard them in the wood of the west – or the Swainson's or varied. If you hear a coach's whistle in the woods, there's a varied thrush somewhere nearby. In Eastern North America it's the voice of the wood thrush that inspires poets.

Speaking of the wood thrush.
A recent study involving the birds, fitted with geolocator backpacks for the first time, demonstrated that they migrate about three times faster than researchers had guestimated previously.

They fly about 500km each night and spend the day feeding and resting. Who wouldn't?

Another fascinating thrush tidbit is that they harvest pesticides from ants. People have seen these birds rubbing ants over their feathers. It's called anting, naturally. The most reasonable explanation seems to be that use the insect's defensive secretions to ward off pests.

Parasites are costly for any animal, and there are many examples of animals using natural products as pesticides (because going to the drug store is inconvenient, and they are staunch environmentalists).

Thrushes, it seems, take an ant bath.

Hummingbird banding

In a few weeks I'll return to a citizen science project I joined last year.

There's a group of dedicated volunteers in the Alberni Valley who've joined the Hummingbird Monitoring Network.

Each year teams from Arizona all the way up here to British Columbia collect information about hummingbird populations and their migration patterns.

From early April to July we put in about a dozen sessions heading out at sunrise with traps and calipers to catch hummingbirds, band them, take measurements and send them on their way. Follow this link to an article I did about the project.





I've always had some apprehension about the whole banding, radio-collaring side of biology. Now that I've seen how little effect it seems to have on rufous hummingbirds, I feel a little more like the benefits may outweigh the risks.

I also hadn't realized how little is known about what seems to be a fairly common and highly visible species.

That's something that big-name biologist Paul Erhlich talked about recently after releasing a review paper on the 408 mammals discovered since 1993. That's 10 per cent of the known species of mammals.

"Our analysis indicates how much more varied biodiversity is than we thought and how much bigger our conservation problems are if we're going to maintain the life-support services that we need from biodiversity," Ehrlich said in an interview about the paper.

Basically the author of the 1968 bad news book Population Bomb, says these discoveries attest to how little is known about the natural world. The world that a single species, humans, are busy altering in every conceivable way.

"I think what people miss is that the human economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the economy of nature, which supplies us from our natural capital a steady flow of income that we can't do without," he said. The income is the host of services that intact ecosystems provide.

Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich are the originators of the rivet-popper hypothesis. As in an airplane, nature has some built in redundancies. So you can remove rivets on an airplane wing and still fly, but at some point, you pop one too many and the wing falls apart.

They say it's the same with natural systems. We can keep taxing them and breaking them down, but at some point they will collapse. Without a full understanding of the systems, and their components and interplay, it's anybody's guess when that will happen. What the last rivet will be.

Dog gone

I heard there was a Great Dane at the Port Alberni SPCA and I thought to myself, "This is a message from the universe."

And the message is, don't leave this town. Stay put, get a big dog and settle in.

Great Danes don't turn up at the SPCA very often. Great Danes are bred and they cost and that's another issue for me because I need to get a dog from a rescue centre, not a designer breed.

I had to go see. Had to see the dog to know what to do. I cruised over to the pound and heaved a sigh of relief when the woman told me the dog had already been adopted.

Stupidly, I decided to have a look at the dogs that remained. Just for fun, I told myself.

Ten minutes later I was sobbing in my car in the SPCA parking lot. I could have taken any one of those wonderful animals home. One of them I really wanted. None of them deserved to be dropped off, possibly facing death if they don't get picked.

I have wanted a Great Dane for years. I'm not in a position to commit to a dog right now. My lifestyle, my work, just wouldn't make it fair to the animal.

I won't be popping in there again anytime soon.

Alberni Valley Hiking part II

Here's another hike I like.

This one follows along the Alberni Inlet starting just south of China Creek.
Part of it follows an old (1913) Canadian Northern Pacific Railway grade which never was put into service.

The 4km trail has a little bit of everything. A steep descent on a rocky path through old growth. Views of lovely Underwood Cove. Flat stretches lined with flowering current that hums with hummingbirds in May.

Then when you get to the rail bed proper, you walk between sheer rock walls created from blasting that make dark tunnels. Electric green moss on tree trunks jumps out against the damp charcoal backdrop.

From time to time the foilage opens up and you get views of the long inlet heading out to sea via Barkley Sound.




Near the Franklin River logging operation is where the path winds up and where this poor Douglas fir is being choked for no apparent reason. Obviously the cable was put around the tree to do some job long ago and it's just never been taken off.

There are plans to join the CNPR trail into the town's network, and eventually run it all the way down to Cowichan Lake, relying some on logging roads, and beyond to the Galloping Goose trail in the Capital Regional District (VIctoria).

This ambitious plan would create an alternate route for exploring large chunks of Vancouver Island on foot, or by bicycle. Governments are putting money into trail building, so it looks promising.

Hiking

All set for a fresh hiking season, I set out on a trail today that climbs up above Cameron Lake on Wesley Ridge to mountain tops that give a view of Georgia Strait to the east.

My trusty guide book also promised a 360 degree view further on, but I lost the trail in the snow so I headed back down to an arbutus bluff overlooking the lake. I had my lunch and went home very satisfied with the challenging two-hour hike.
The second viewpoint will be something to look forward to later in the spring or summer.
Along the way, I saw a varied thrush, and a merlin and heard a red-breasted nuthatch.
That little taste made me want to share some of the other great hikes I've enjoyed on central Vancouver Island.

Last July, I tackled Teodoro, a gorgeous climb up above Sproat Lake between Port Alberni and Tofino.
Like so many trails, finding the start was a challenge and when I returned to my car about four hours later, I had a flat tire.
Still, no regrets.



The name Teodoro lead me to research how it came to have such an exotic moniker, and there's a good story there.

The local man who built the trail named it for the Mexican environmental activist Teodoro Cabrera Garcia who, along with Rodolfo Montiel Flores, was tortured and jailed in May 1999 for opposing forestry company Boise Cascade's logging in the Sierra de Petatlán in southwestern Mexico where they live and farm.

In 1995, the Idaho-based logging company, which also operates in Canada, signed a deal with the state of Guerrero to buy large tracts of land. Mexican farmers watched as entire forests were logged and hauled away by the truckload. The deal, made possible the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), caused a dramatic surge in the rate of destruction of one of North America's last old-growth pine and fir forests.

Teodoro and Rodolfo organized farmers to speak out against the clear cutting of the forests, which they also depended on for their livelihoods. They were on their way to stage a demonstration in the capital of the state when they were stopped by federal police officers. Without warning, the police began shooting, killing 17 and injuring 20 more.

The two men were taken to a military camp, beaten and told to confess to drug trafficking.


Their case drew international attention, including that of Amnesty International, and the men were finally released in November of 2001.

Eventually, Boise Cascade left the area, claiming that the inconsistency of wood supply had forced them to close shop. Many were convinced it was directly related to the activities of Garcia and Rodolfo.

I've planted Boise Cascade blocks in northern Ontario where only the bears know what they're up to.

Beading

This is a craft I've done since Grade 3 when three Cree women came to my class at Opasquia Elementary during one of our well-intentioned aboriginal education sessions.
Yep, I'm a child of the 70s.

I still do beadwork, these days mainly to cover logos that I've ripped off of new purchases, especially knapsacks and camera bags.




The funny thing is, in my desperation to remove the branding, I almost always slice the new fabric with the stitch ripper. I blame this on the company's effort to make the embroidery indestructible so that the label is never lost.


To rid myself of the corporations' logo, I damage my nice new things.


Needless to say, I loved Naomi Klein's No Logo and remember a conversation at university with friends who wondered why I removed what they called cool logos. In other words, the branding marks of companies people like, like Apple, or Roach, or MEC.


Whether I like the company or not I do not want to walk around with anyone's mark on my back. Not without payment for advertising for them.

Tell me a story

I started reading Rawi Hage's Cockroach in the bathtub on Sunday. For no reason at all I read it out loud. I may read the whole book that way. I've never done that before.

Threats to birds

This is what a pine siskin looks like after it has hit a window. The two biggest threats to passerines, or perching birds, are house cats and obstructions (like windows).
It's estimated that there are half the number of these small birds travelling back and forth between breeding and wintering grounds in the Americas.

Other views of the Valley

Besides the idyllic views, there's also still an industrial waterfront in Port Alberni.

While the paper mill has cleaned up its act a lot over the years, it still dominates the waterway in the central part of town with smoke stacks (discharging only steam, I'm told) visible from everywhere.

While it may have cleaner discharge, the once grand operation still gulps water through big pipes and has left a fibre mat on the ocean bottom that smothers life trying to reclaim the once toxic estuary. Meanwhile the company may be on its last legs and no one seems certain of what level of environmental clean up they are responsible for.

Views of the Alberni Valley

It may be grey and foggy now but these photos remind me that I live in a really nice place and that can be just as true on a grey day as a sunny one.