Yesterday I ventured out to Spanish Banks at low tide, secretly hoping to encounter some of the Elegant Terns that were recently sighted nearby. I found no terns and ended up with wet feet and muddier than usual – but I was able to spend some time with small flocks of Western & Least sandpipers.
Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla)
Least Sandpiper
Sandpipers are tiny birds, and Least Sandpipers are the smallest of them all – measuring 13-15 cm from bill-tip to tail, and weighing 19-30 grams (around the same as a AA battery!). Collectively known as peeps, they can be challenging to identify. The greenish-yellow legs are one of the field marks for these birds.
The air was heavy with smoke, the sunrise smeared into hazy tangerine. Remnants of trees flowing through in suspended rivers from the burning west.
Instead of the Anthropocene, Stephen Pyne suggests we have entered the Pyrocene: an epoch shaped by human-caused fire (including fossil fuels). His book The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire and What Happens Next changed the way I think about fire.
In the smoke, the gulls continue their lives. Now that we’re later in the season, some birds are fledging while other nests I missed are suddenly obvious. There’s a significant amount to get through, so let’s start.
We finally saw chicks at this nest last week – there were three then, but on this pass I only spotted one. Although the precipice the nest is on conjures up depressing thoughts, I’m hopeful the other two chicks crawled around behind those vents and that’s why we can’t see them.
I made it out early yesterday for my weekly gull nest survey. I’m going through the photos and will get an update out in the next day or two.
In the meantime, last Monday I happened to be passing by Boundary Bay and stopped off to find a curious plant I’d seen reported on iNaturalist. It’s a species of Cuscuta, colloquially known as dodder, a genus of parasitic plants with a cosmopolitan distribution.
Identifying Cuscuta to species is notoriously difficult and technical, however there’s good reason to believe the plant I spotted is Cuscuta pacifica given the salt marsh habitat it’s in, as well as the species of plant being parasitized (primarily Salicornia).
Cuscuta in flower
Cuscuta in flower
It’s my first time seeing this plant, and what a treat to find it in full flower.
