After-dinner stroll around home

While my mother was preparing dinner, she found two snails in the yam leaves.  She passed them on to me to take some photos before releasing them.

Exploring Lady Eaton Drumlin

Passing by the nest again this morning. I brought my DSLR but no bird was on the nest.

Visiting UBC Botanical Garden with friend

Yesterday morning, I got myself a pair of free tickets to UBC Botanical Garden (thanks to Tourism Vancouver) and invited my friend from Taiwan to visit this attraction located in the campus. I can't remember when was the last time I visited this place, but since I couldn't recall ever posting about it on this blog, I imagine it was more than three years ago when I was still an undergraduate.

While waiting for my friend to arrive, I wandered around the bus stop and photographed the flowers and critters that I could find, such as this tiny snail which was found on the road and I transported it safely to this leaf instead.

Busy Bee and Cool Cat

I headed towards London Farm again this afternoon. But before I did, I went to the sharing farm across the street and saw nothing. London Farm, on the other hand, was lively with pollinating European Honey Bees. I saw one bumblebee here yesterday, but didn't get a chance to photograph it, and didn't see it today.

The most popular plant today was the Hellebore (I believe it is Helleborus foetidus with the purple edge on each petal). According to Wikipedia, it has up to ten nectaries, which is probably a efficient plant for a honey bee to spend a long time in one of them.

Minoru Park & Biked to the dyke

Yesterday, my co-authors in Taiwan received our submitted manuscript on our study about the breeding biology of the Taiwan Barbet in Taipei Botanical Garden. We had good remarks, but we also needed a lot of revision and re-analysis of the results. They scanned they copy to me and now my goal is to get as much revision and rewrite as possible in the last 15 days before I leave for Ontario without internet connection or land-line telephones. Wish me luck!

But first thing in this morning I went to Richmond centre with my mother for our weekly grocery shopping.

Once again, we strolled in Minoru Park before heading to the Public Market.

Minoru Chapel with gorgeous blue sky. Some people call it the Olympus Blue (for the blue color that Olympus cameras produce). Cool!

Exploring the Silver-Dragon Cave at night (2009-10-16)

I was helping my mother cleaning the house today, so I didn't have time to go out and wildlife watch. So here's a continuation of my trip in southern Taiwan after watching the sunset in Guanshan (2009-10-16).

After having mouth-watering dumplings for dinner, we headed back to our dormitory. And after getting some rest, we went to explore a public-accessible cave in the Kenting Botanical Garden. Since the whole area is closed off during the evening, we were the only people able to go into it. The cave is called Silver-Dragon Cave and it is a natural limestone cave.

Below were some of the species we saw. I tried to identify most of them and asked for help on forums and so forth, but not all were identified.

Pancala Snail (Pancala batanica pancala). Taiwan has more than 170 snail species, and the Pancala Snail is an endemic subspecies found only in the Hengchuan Peninsula. This special snail has the special trait of being left handedness. I just Googled an interesting information about "handedness" in snails here - for interest's sake.


Next is a large cave-dwelling cricket called Ceuthophilus maculatus. Or maybe a different species in the same genus, I am not totally sure. But it sure is cool to see such large insects crawling on walls all around you in a narrow cave.


This is a mammal that I was very surprised and happy to see in a cave - Formosan Tube-nosed Bat (Murina puta) - an animal that I researched in in the summer of 2008! You can read about my stories from that summer here - good times! It is surprising because it should be a forest dwelling bat, not cave-dwelling, but I guess since the cave is surrounded by forests, it is much safer in a cave than in the furled plant leaf. This species is easily identified by its pointy nostrils (clearly seen in the picture). Wow!


Then we encountered a female Geothelphusa albogilva. It is a freshwater crab endemic in Taiwan and most common in the Hengchuan Peninsula.


The cave itself is fairly narrow and short, and pretty soon we entered the forest and started shining lights everywhere to see some wildlife. We didn't have much luck and the only animal we saw was this small Stejneger's Narrow-mouthed Toad (Micryletta stejnegeri). They are fairly easy identified with their small body size (2 ~ 3-cm) and their dark metallic gray or brown color.


After a while, we gave up and returned back to the cave and to our mopeds. On the cave wall, we spotted this Hekou's Gecko (Gekko hokouensis) - it has alternating dark and light patterns running from the middoral to the tail, and it's tail is more rounded rather than flattened.


Then we saw a large unidentified Heteropoda spp. hiding in the cracks of the cave. Wow.

After we came out of the cave, our light shone on a Acanthaspis immodesta. Neat insect to see before we conclude our adventure and head back to the dorm for a shower and sleep.

365 days ago (2008-12-28) ...
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Revisiting Iona Beach and seeing Yellow-headed Blackbird

I didn't go biking by the dyke again today. The weather was gorgeous, so I drove out to Sea Island and to Iona Beach instead. There was too many people and dogs last month when I was there on a weekend. So today was nice with fewer people.

Beautiful sky-watch day.

I came across many snakes sunning today along the trails. My first reptiles of the year! I believe this is a Northwestern Garter Snake (Thamnophis ordinoides) - also seen by Wanderin' Weeta when she was there last week.

On the west end of Sea Island, it was completely covered by Scotch Brooms, an invasive pea shrub, and on each shrub, there were at least two or more snails on it. Wanderin' Weeta wrote an interesting post on Scotch Brooms here.

A beautiful Scotch Broom flower.

Another Northwestern Garter Snake observed. A closer-shot this time.

Then it was time to head to Iona Beach.

Iona Beach is at a corner of Sea Island that it shares with the Vancouver International Airport and the Wastewater Treatment Plant. There are also field for horses and horseback riders. Seeing no cars in both direction, I stopped and took a quick photo of this beautiful animal.

During this time of the year, Blackbirds are one of the most common birds on Iona Beach. This is a female Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) and it is quite different from the showy males.

Another resident of the beach is the Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus), the bird species that I was mainly after today.

It is definitely a beautiful bird. I think they are prettier than Red-winged Blackbirds, but that may be because I see Red-winged more often and yellow is my favorite color. To me, their call sounds like a mix between a cow mooing and a cat meowing, which is quite unusual itself.

Yellow-headed Blackbirds are mainly found on the plains of central North America, so this colony here is the only coastal colony found in our province. They were locally rare once when the Wastewater Treatment Plant was being built and their habitat (marsh) was destroyed. But a restoration project took place a few years later and now these birds have returned. What a good story.

Before going home, I just had to take a shot of the beach at low-tide.
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Photographic post: Northern Harrier, funky Towhee, and the life under wood debris

A Northern Harrier was observed several times today circling around fields and even residential areas. It finally landed in grassy patch in front of me. I do not think it made any successful catch though. It's a very beautiful bird with the unique-looking face.

This is either a female or a juvenile since they are both brown. But juveniles are rusty beneath, which I still can't tell from these pictures.

It sort of looks like a lion's face on a hawk's body, almost the opposite of an Egyptian Sphinx.

Caught no meal, it took off after a few minutes.

Let's play a game. Guess who is(are) not the same as others.

While looking around, I saw this bird raised its tail feather high above its head. It then turned around and mooned me!


Turns out to be a Spotted Towhee with a funky hairstyle.

I gently flipped over a fallen tree branch, and this was what I saw. Took a few pictures, then I put it back carefully. Life is still abundant in the dark and moist underground. Anyone know what kind of centipede and snail they are?
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Boundary Bay Exploration

Explored the 12th Avenue Dyke Trail of Boundary Bay Regional Park today. Maybe I'll try the Dyke Trail next time, but it did took a while to walk and look for wildlife at the same time (with the weather permitting). I went there after low tide so I wasn't able to see the shorebirds feeding during then, or perhaps I hit the wrong area. Still, it's an impressive wildlife viewing area that I am sure I will return soon.

I read about this park from Rock Paper Lizard and Wanderin' Weeta and always wanted to pay a visit, and today gave me the perfect chance. The weather today is mostly gray and cloudy, although some blue skies could be seen southward. To me, here seems like the dykes and beaches of Steveston but with more sea birds and much larger in area.

As soon as I was there, I was greeted by a welcoming male Belted Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon) - the only kingfisher in North America, which I have never seen so up-close before. It is very noticeable with its loud and dry rattling call, and I know it's a male because of the lack of rust belly bands. I overheard someone saying that there used to be two pairs of them around, but only one left now. I also had the opportunity of watching it dived straight down into the water and came up with a small fish, what a show and such a great start!

If you look out to the sea, you will see many tiny black specks on the surface. But using a binocular, you will realize that every individual black dot is a bird out in the sea.

Can't be too sure of the species out there, but here are the identifiable ones closer to the shore: Northern Shoveler and Green-winged Teal (?).

Feeling naughty, I decided to flip over a couple of logs to see what are there, and I discovered many Sand Fleas or Beach Hoppers (Traskorchestia traskiana). Of course, I returned the log to its original position after I was done.

There were also many of these invasive Asian Snail (Batillaria attramentaria) on the beach. These animals hitch-hiked with the Japanese oysters brought here many years ago to recreate the oyster industry in Pacific West Coast.

Didn't saw any live crabs today, but I did saw these empty shells of: Red Rock Crab (Cancer productus) - on the right; Dungeness Crab (Cancer magister) a.k.a. Master Crab - on the left. I hope I identified them correctly.

The flowers of sand dune plants are quite pretty and standout in this gray-filled environment and day.

As I was going back home, I was greeted by the same kingfisher again. Such a well-mannered fellow. I will have to look for him again next time.

See you next time, Mr. Kingfisher!

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While I was waiting for my bus going back home, a Korean tourist (named Lee) came up to me to ask the how long it takes to get to Steveston and is it worth going there. Looking up at the clouds around 4:00pm, I truthfully told him that it is not worth going to Steveston with this kind of weather and at this time. We chatted for a little bit, and Lee is apparently going back to Korea (after a week stay here in Vancouver) tomorrow morning and his friends recommended him to visit Steveston Village. He seemed to be disappointed with my answers, but that's the truth (to me, at least). So he left. But then he came back to ask to take a picture of me (with his nice looking DSLR) for memory, and I obliged. I hoped I gave him the right answers, and it was definitely an interesting moment.
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Visitors from Taiwan.

My friend/co-worker (from summer's bat study internship) is recently in Vancouver for a conference. So several of us locals were showing him and other Taiwanese friends UBC and Granville Island this Saturday.

We showed them the gardens, the forever-constructing faculty buildings, the libraries (in construction as well), and the clock tower (not in construction, but perhaps in the future), which are all fine and touristy, but I would rather show them the beautiful Pacific Spirit Park or even the beaches because they are more interesting than the man-made structures (to me, at least). Too bad, maybe next time.

A tropical fish-shaped cloud.

In the afternoon, we went to check out the artsy vibe and Emily Carr "University" (?) in Granville Island. It was a bit more interesting than UBC because we saw different art workshops and unique designing stores, and we definitely were entertained by the robot street performer (especially my friend who was stuck in a handshake with the performer for several minutes).

Biology-wise, I saw a Great Blue Heron and these two beautifully-colored land snails. I want to say they are Striped Snail (Monadenia fidelis) but I am not too positive because they look like the ones in my hand-drawn field guide but not too similar with the online pictures.

The field guide says M. fidelis is "typically brown with one or more dark and light bands" and the body should be "black and red" (which we couldn't see). One interesting fact is that this species has a garlic odor, which should be interesting if I picked them up, but I didn't. Too bad. I'll see if I can confirm their identity by tomorrow.

~Edit~
Never mind the garlic odor. Hugh (of Rock Paper Lizard) proposed the identity of Grove Snails (Cepaea nemoralis) and I think he may be right. Thanks, Hugh.

Hope the weather will be nice tomorrow because I want to go to Nature Park tomorrow!
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