WW: Vertical tidepool

(This chunk of 30-inch concrete culvert was probably rolled off a construction barge and into the bay as surplus at some point in the past. In the meantime it's been colonised by a wealth of sea life, including most conspicuously at least two species of starfish. The community is located well below mean low tide, and only fully exposed at minus 4. I'll bet it's a great visit at high tide, with diving gear.)

WW: Mystery mostly solved

(Last week I posted a photo of feathers mysteriously left by an extremely fastidious predator. Just a few days later I found, 50 yards away, the above remains. So whatever left the feathers seems only to have plucked its prey on that log before transporting it to a less exposed position to eat.

Still no skull, but most of the other bones are here. So though the exact culprit remains unidentified, given all the data points, I'm leaning toward a raptor. Likely a great horned owl or bald eagle.)

WW: The Case of the Absent Hen

(A few days ago I was walking around a crumbling, overgrown abandoned farm near my house when I happened on a mass of feathers piled on a fallen tree trunk. Even more intriguing: no sign of their owner. No bones, no flesh, not even blood. Just a nearly complete, completely empty, suit of feathers.

I can't think of a local predator that surgical, though my experience in such forensics is far from exhaustive.

On another account I'm more confident: these are hen feathers. So whoever this neat and thorough raider was, he or she will have come over, under, or through the fence just out of frame.)

WW: Red-eared slider

(I believe this is Trachemys scripta elegans, the red-eared slider, shot near the same containment ponds I found overrun with turtles last spring. This puts a new spin on our chelonian population boom, since sliders are invasive. From the looks of things, this one's a female on the hunt for a nesting site. The sandy, sunny, well-drained slope she's painstakingly scaled, through heavy brush and across well-travelled trails, is perfect for that.)

WW: Rain owl

(Stryx varia.)

WW: Autumn bullfrog

(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.

Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.

Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Sea Star Wasting Disease Cracked

Over the past eight years I've posted regular reports on the welfare of local starfish as they endured (and some populations became extinct due to) a mysterious contagion that makes them rot alive. Now American television network CBS has announced that the cause of Sea Star Wasting Disease has been firmly established, and it's not a virus as suspected, but a bacteria.

As noted before, several species have developed a measure of immunity to this pathogen since it first appeared in 2013, but a few have been wiped out, at least in shallower, warmer water. One of my favourites, the sunflower star (Pynopodia helianthoides), once omnipresent on the North Coast, is now basically exterminated; according to the article, less than 10% of the original count still exist, all in cold, deep water. But efforts to breed them in captivity have been successful, so there's hope they might be reintroduced to their old habitat one day.

A little Googling verified that another old friend, the giant pink Pacific starfish (Pisaster brevispinus) also lives on in colder water.

As suspected, the underlying cause of this pandemic is climate disruption, which has allowed the bacteria to flow north along the eastern Pacific Coast, to warming waters where sea stars have no defence against it.

But we've got an important scientific advance in the identification of the pathogen. Together with significant rebounding on my local beaches and location of surviving populations of much-mourned MIAs, I'm taking delivery.


(Photo of pre-plague tidepool crammed with young Pycnopodia courtesy of the US National Park Service and Wikimedia.com)

WW: Deer through the back window

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WW: At it again

(The beavers. Like all rodents, apparently created for the express purpose of sowing chaos.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Great blue heron

(Ardea herodias. Standing about two feet tall here.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Ochre star

(Pisaster ochraceus.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Winter waterdog

(Taricha granulosa. One of the many good things in life.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Invasive snail

(Cornu aspersum, the brown garden snail. Originally imported to the North Coast from Europe to be eaten as escargot; now it's eating us.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Pacific sideband snail

(Monadenia fidelis.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermits and Hotdogs

In the fifty-odd years I've worked with pets and farm animals, I've learned that anxious and abused ones often fear men – but women, not so much.

Some of this gender-specific apprehension may be down to the fact that we're bigger, louder, and maybe don't smell as nice. But a lot of men also appear to believe the world is an action movie, of which they're the beefcake.

They hurt everything that doesn't meet their approval, usually while shouting. And those guys create dread and disconsolation in many creatures.

Catch enough of that, and any sentient being learns mistrust.

You can accomplish a great deal with their victims by just sitting nearby, not reaching out, speaking quietly or not at all. It takes steady patience, but often eventually works. Perhaps the target simply concludes, based on available data, that we're not really "men". (Or maybe that we're just not failed men, which would be accurate. Brothers barging around hotdogging for the camera snatch the lion's share of attention, which is why we non-gnawers of scenery tend to fade into it.)

I was put in mind of this recently during a night sit in the back yard. First, a coyote stepped into view 30 feet away. He seemed unconcerned, not just with the intense human habitation all around him, but even the intense human right in front of him. I hissed, and he ducked away.

Then not one, but two squirrels almost climbed into my lap, in the course of whatever before-bed routines they were pursuing.

As a Zenner who sits outdoors whenever possible – it's a form in my hermit practice – I've had countless similar experiences with wildlife. I've also used this technique intentionally, with lost or traumatised cats and dogs; nervous horses; and at least one refractory laughing dove.

The grace of these encounters never ceases to thrill. For a brief instant I'm freakin' St. Francis.

Very brief, to be sure. But a flash of kensho all the same.

And a reminder that true warriors are silent and watchful.


(Photo of a true warrior courtesy of Wikipedian Petr Novák and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Mummified crab

This hand-sized specimen of Puget Sound kelp crab (Pugettia producta) quite startled me on the high tide line, far from its habitat on the low tidelands, till I noticed that it was completely dead and dry. Probably thrown up there by the waves, then dried by the sun in this lifelike posture.

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Hummingbird in hand

(Photo courtesy of my friend Laura, who rescued this guy from a cat. Prevailing theory is he's a juvenile black chin [Archilochus alexandri].)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: View out the front door

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WW: Bullfrog

(Rana [Lithobates] catesbeiana. Invasive and destructive here on the North Coast, but extremely common.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Dunn's salamander

(Plethodon dunni; a melanistic specimen, lacking the wide, yellow-green back stripe and mottling typical of the breed. Another lungless North Coast salamander with no aquatic stage. Instead it lays its eggs under rotten wood, and they hatch into tiny, fully terrestrial young identical to the adults.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.