Boreal Jumping Spider - Phidippus borealis

The first time we met was the beginning of May, five years ago. Until then I had no idea that the Boreal Jumping Spider, Phidippus borealis even existed. 

Sorry, handsome, I must apologize for my ignorance for you are the cutest arachnid that I have ever seen. 

I have been searching for them ever since, finding one or two once in a while.

To tell the truth; just like most humans, I too have been conditioned to fear and dislike these eight-legged animals. It was not until my late forties that I realized how amazing they can be. 
They are an important part of the environment and those who cast away their adverse feelings can discover a whole new Universe.

Don't get me wrong - I still carry a healthy dose of respect for them (and a scar on my forearm from a spider bite) for, though so small, everything about them advertises power. They are everywhere where there are insects which means - everywhere. But unless squished or otherwise attacked they will hardly ever waste their venom on a large animal - like you or I. So - put the slipper away (or worse, some kind of cancer inducing spray), and carry the spider into your yard where it can do a lot of good work to keep you happy.  Just don't sit on it.

Ok - so it was the beginning of May when we noticed a colourful spider, about 2 cm in size, wondering about our brand new brick-and-stone stairway.  

It was obviously a jumping spider - we knew that much - the squarish face, the prominent eyes and fearless attitude made it all but clear. But this one was different, it was colourful and extremely hairy and, compared to the rest of our Canadian spiders, it was large 

(Brazilians, please do not laugh too hard, we know that your spiders can as big as ... well not the dinner plate but close.... OK, make it a dessert plate then.)

Later on we found out that we just met the largest jumping spider that roams the Canadian wilderness. We also learned that it was a male. 

He was holding a dead ant and would not let go of it; even when he moved or jumped the ant was still securely in his possession. When approached too closely the spider would not run away. He would turn squarely against the danger facing the camera lens with a great attitude and I must say that it both, impressed and scared me, at the same time. And when he jumped on the lens I jumped too -away from it. Hero me! 

Kudos for the spider! 

And the ant? Still in a firm grasp of his forelegs.

Too much commotion. He scurried off, ant and all. 
Into the railing where there must exist a labyrinth of walkways. 

Humans not permitted!

It was a bit later that morning when we discovered a burrow. 

A SHE PALACE in an empty space between the bricks.

She walked out, most likely looking for him. 

Her temper was not too peaceful and it was hard to blame her for that - we just chased away her suitor.Not only that; he carried a present that was supposed to keep her in good mood during their date. 

Now all of that has disappeared and that made her very jumpy indeed.

What a present was she supposed to get! 

An ant!!! Now what?   

  

Surely she had some powerful pheromones on hand; with those he would find her soon.

None of those cheap artificial perfumes that humans use. 

Yikes

We believe that he did find her and survived the date, for every year since, (especially in May) we stumble upon their offspring.               They mind their own business unless the lens stares too closely at them. Then, provoked by the focusing beam, they face it, ready to jump.

Just a couple of days ago I met him again (or maybe a son of his son ...who knows. How long do they live anyway - he did look a bit grizzled this time.)

He was comfortably perched on the metal part patio chair. No problem with gravity at all. 

Before I disturbed him he was busy waving all those fancy white hairs perhaps tasting the air, perhaps showing off in a courtship display. In any case, he looked quite  like a miniature cheerleader and I had to wonder what kind of the inner muscle system enables him to move each hair on its own.

(A video does have its advantages although this one is of a different subspecies.). 

Either he was practicing or she was nearby - probably hiding inside a rail.

And yes, the reflection in those eyes is of a photographer who once disliked all spiders. Mind you, the look at those powerful, turquoise, poison-delivering chelicerae (the fangs) will not get me much closer any time soon.  

With the front eyes positioned in front of the box-like head (did you just call me a squarehead?) this hunter can judge the distance very well - it is a 3D image that he computes in his fairly large tangle of nerves packed inside the box.

Ooops - others call it a brain or a cerebral ganglion. 

The additional 3 pairs of simpler but quite functional eyes are placed strategically in semi-circle around the head. Such equipment should keep the spider well informed without even turning its head (which this guy can actually do pretty well).

Like all the other spiders, boreal jumping spiders can too, spin a silky web. By looking at the SHE PALACE above, theirs could not compete with those elaborate orb-spider webs. But I am sure that they serve their purpose just as well. The silk, along with little pads on their feet, also anchors the spiders safely in a place, so when the spring arrives they can peek inside a human dwelling as if to say:

Hey, it's May, the bugs are out and we are back to serve.  

Now, put that fly swatter away! And, wash those windows, will ya?

Mystery of The Disappearing Seeds - Part II

Our first clue in the Mystery of Disappearing Seeds was the timing: the feeder became empty during the morning hours. We would fill it up at 8 a.m. and by 11 all was gone. 

Time to pay attention!

One morning we saw a flash of yellow ..... we rushed to the window to see an American Goldfinch.

It was a male - already "ripe" as we often joke. 





Male goldfinch changes its colour twice a year. In springtime to impress the females; 
later on during the summer and fall it moults back to a less conspicuous design - for safety. Back to looking somewhat like a female! 
No need for show-off when the breeding is done!



Springtime females are tiny bit more colourful as well (compared to winter) but their plumage is nowhere near as striking as that of the males.

American Goldfinch - female

Pine Siskin

However, the finches are modest feeders and their numbers this season are not too high. They could not empty the whole thing in two hours. 

Not even with help of their Pine Siskin cousins. 

Siskins do sport yellow in their wings and they do arrive in large numbers, however they prefer to pick the seeds from the ground.

So who else was there?

Another flash of yellow! Much deeper shade - more of it. 

Now, imagine some scary music.

The sunflower seed robbers arrived! Not one or two but five of them. They took us by surprise because we would never expect them to be here at this time of the year - in April. 
In any case - that never happened before! Not here.

We saw them in the winter, yes, and they were not nearly as colourful as they were in their spring outfits.
Males - as usual - more dressed-up than the females: more yellow, more brown, more everything. What was really neat were their greenish beaks. 

 Evening Grosbeak, 
Coccothraustes vespertinus, 



We had seen them during the winter and I posted their portraits in my winter blog.
What a difference!
Sporadic as they are they might arrive to the winter feeders in very large numbers. But seeing them in springtime was a real treat.

Two bachelors arrived at first.


As their strong beaks rapidly shelled the seeds a shower of husks and tiny bits of inner meal rained on the ground below.

The little guys knew. Smartly positioned underneath, they waited for their favourite snack.

How nice of you, cousin finches (grosbeak is a large finch)! You do empty the feeder in no time but there is plenty to pick up from the ground. Thanks for your messy work.

And so ... they all had a blast!

... UNTIL ...

She landed on the branch like a bomb.

One look at the two bachelors and she was on the feeder!


The entire setup began to twirl around like a carousel. Two males, one female.


She picked one.

A smart maneuver and an ambush. 

At least - that's what it seemed like to me; a human hiding under a very large umbrella. 

She made him feed her! Yes, it does look like a kiss. 

Are we humanizing? Who on Earth knows, Science is still so young.

(Remember the osprey?)

So that was it! Mom and Dad (future Mom and Dad) making a bond. 

The Mystery of the Disappearing Seeds has been solved!

As for the grosbeaks - 1 more pair showed up - lingered around for a couple more days and .....disappeared!

Mystery of The Disappearing Seeds - Part I

Okay - we do feed our birds. In the morning we fill a smallish hanging feeder with black-oil sunflower seeds that the birds like so much. The supply usually lasts a couple of days, however, recently the seeds began to disappear with unusual speed. 

The feeder is placed fairly high above the ground. It is tucked amongst the branches of a young pine tree so the visitors other than birds do not have access to it. 
I do not mean our human neighbours by that - there are others here too.
And SOMEONE is steeling the seeds! 

• the deer (ah yes, the flower-veggie-twig & bud-fruit-seed-loving whitetail deer. It will take care of any garden in no time.), 
• the elk (the bark stripping-tree pruning-heavy weight that will trample all your newly planted trees, bushes and plants), 
• the bear (the cunning-smooth-dexterous- inquisitive-vacuum cleaner that will eat anything that smells of food. So PLEASE clean up the garbage, pack away the used diapers and feminine hygiene products, hide the pet food, pick up the fruit and of course take away or secure your bird feeders. We do not need misunderstandings of any kind - and neither do the bears.)
• the raccoon, 
• the skunk,
• the squirrel
• the chipmunk
• and an army of mice and voles

They all seek seeds and, save the skunk, they are all very good at getting to them. Make no mistake - we love them all. Well ....


So here is the gallery of suspects figuring in our Mystery of The Disappearing Seeds. 
I have taken these mugshots over the years - most of them at or in a vicinity of our place.

Bambi and his darling Mother love to visit every night, and sometimes they come during the day.
The Father comes here on his own unless it is winter time. 
Then the entire extended family shows up!
When we see them we sigh: "ahhhh, look how cute they are!"
That lasts only until the next morning when we count the numbers of destroyed or missing plants.

Was it Bambi who stole the seeds? Hardly so -  though he could stand on his hind legs and try to reach the feeder. But we placed it way too high. Out of question!


Elk like to visit during their vertical migration in Spring and Fall. 
They might show up after sunset although their favourite time seems to be 11 p.m.
How do we know that they were here? I don't really want to get into that - it makes me nervous just to think about it!
(Once I counted 27 of them - the moon was full and they were not really afraid of a nightgown-clad monster who was pretending to be a pitbull. I cannot bark too well.)

This April we did not find the elk tracks in the yard - even so, an elk trying to reach the feeder would leave pretty deep marks in the soft ground and there are none. Doubtful!

The fattest bear that I have ever seen showed up in the yard just before his hibernation. 
He (it was a he for sure) looked as if he were going to collapse at the moment's notice. Didn't mind the lights and the camera flash. 
(I was well hidden behind the door). 

But as soon as I made slight noise he disappeared in the shadows; smoothly and quietly as if he never existed. 



As for the seeds, nobody in the village had seen the bear signs anywhere yet, he is probably still drowsy in his winter den. Besides - the branches are all intact. Innocent.

An ursine cousin, the raccoon, is just as dexterous as the bear. It can climb and squeeze into tight spaces and do many very smart things. 
This is a country guy - unlike his city relatives it will not parade boldly about the property. 
Still - sunflower seeds are sunflower seeds!
And, boy, can he ever climb!

Possible.

You already met Pepe, as we call this potent stinker, in one of my previous entries. Had to recycle - somehow I do not have too many skunk photos in my files.
He too comes snooping about (oh yes, we can tell when he is out there) and one night when the house lights came on we watched him munching the sunflower seeds that had fallen on the ground. 

We already knew that it was he, who made the lawn look as if someone emptied one of those crazy semi-automatics into the grass. 
For each night he (or she ?) digs out the big fat grubs that peacefully reside below the surface.



This is no seed thief - still asleep under someone's pile of lumber. Besides - I haven't heard of a climbing skunk yet. Absolved.

Looking at that unfortunate grub photo I now wonder what would ever become of it? 

A beetle? Another summer project ahead. For now it looks like a skunk-prawn to me.

This is Mathilde - the Grey Squirrel. 
(Grey or Gray - THAT is the question! Check your continent.)
We do not have many of those here so when she (oops, a he?) showed up we were kind of thrilled. 
I know - the nesting birds were not that happy, for the squirrels love to steal their eggs and hatchlings. But it was Autumn and the birds were packing up for their journeys. 
There was someone else however, who disapproved of Mathilde's presence: it was our hazelnut-raising neighbour. He and Mathilde both loved the nuts so one of them had to go. One day we saw him driving away with Mathilde in a cage. It had been relocated to the wilderness some 30 km away from here. And you know the price of gasoline!
True story. Great neighbour!

So Mathilde is gone and there are no replacements in the neighbourhood. No problem there.

Chipmunks and seeds go together like a hand and a glove. 
Could this little guy, already dressed like a convict, steel the April seeds?
We believe that in this part of the world he is still in his winter coma. Estivating as they say.
Impossible.



So who's done it?

Mice and Voles? At 4 meters above the ground? It is a slippery plastic-coated patio railing that they would have to climb. Good climbers as they are - hardly so. 
(Just realized - I have NO photos of mice. None! Bad! Bad! Bad! But I know who has - check him out.)

Conclusion of today's entry? We will have to redirect our search.

Even so; on this bleak, rainy, cold April day it was refreshing to recollect who shares this parcel of land with us. 
As for the disappearing seeds we already have a decent clue. Stay tuned.

GRAND TETON National Park, Wyoming, USA

While the discussions about creation of Yellowstone N.P. took only a couple of years before its approval, Grand Teton had to wait decades for the final stamp. 

The first ideas about setting  the area adjacent to Yellowstone as another National Park surfaced 25 years after opening of Yellowstone in 1872 . It seemed only natural to join the two since they are naturally connected anyway.

The park was to include the Teton Range plus some areas of fertile land in the valleys between Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. Teton Range would have been OK - fertile areas were not. The settlers wanted to use that land for ranching and farming, not for entertaining tourists from all over the globe.

So the project yo-yoed up and down until the 1940's when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (then the richest man in the world) bought some 35,000 acres of land between Yellowstone and Jackson Hole  to offer it to the US government as a gift. For political and other reasons it took additional 15 years to create the Grand Teton park as we know it today. The year was 1950.

The entire story is well presented in CREATION OF GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK.

By the way: the meaning of Teton according to the free dictionary 

Teton or Te·tons In both senses also called Lakota, Teton Dakota, Teton Sioux.

1. The largest and westernmost of the Sioux peoples, made up of seven groups including the Oglala, Hunkpapa, Brulé, and Miniconjou. The Teton became nomadic buffalo hunters after migrating westward in the 18th century and figured prominently in the resistance to white encroachment on the northern Great Plains.

2. A member of this people

The highest mountain in Teton range is Grand Teton at 4,199m.
It is the second highest mountain in Wyoming.

The ranges on the horizon are known as the Cathedral Group.

Grand Teton range is part of the Rocky Mountain system that extends from Alaska to new Mexico.

Here are the information signs about the Teton range and the valley below. 
We learn about the the movements of the earth crust. The mountains are rising up and the valley is dropping down. The fault line is visible in this area.

One of the information signs in the park.

June meadows are bursting with colour wildflowers (balsamroot, larkspur, lupins and phlox) and sagebrush in the flat valley and a vertical backdrop of the magnificent mountain range provide great opportunity for landscape photography. If only one could stop the wind.

Snow from the Teton range turns into creeks that feed Snake River.

Beautiful Snake River starts in Yellowstone and winds its 1735 km to join the largest North American river:
the mighty Columbia.

The silvery-green Big Sagebrush, one of many sagebrush species, grows up to 1.5 m tall and covers most of the valley.

It provides food, shelter and cover to many animals: moose, deer, antelopes, coyotes, foxes and a host to smaller creatures and birds. 

There are many recreational opportunities  in the park including trails, waterways and aerial trips.                                                  

A young moose, Alces alces decided to take a stroll on a cycling trail.

Ooops!                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Animals in national parks have a right of way and they seem to know it. Most people, be it hikers, bikers or drivers know it too.  Most respect it, those who don't should stay somewhere else. 
After all - wouldn't it be nice if we took care and stopped for other creatures everywhere?                    
What a statement to human intelligence that would make!

Grand Teton includes beautiful glacial lakes; the best known are probably Jackson and Jenny lakes. For our 2 day visit we chose to rent a log cabin in Colter Bay Village - again a rustic log structure - comfortable and beautifully set in the natural surroundings. No TV or other modern-day distractions - one came here to experience Nature, not to kill time by watching .... fill in your show. A highly commandable decision.

We had an entire afternoon to spend and gladly heeded advice of people in the info centre to take 
a trip to Antelope Flats Road. It is a small secondary road winding through some flat country overgrown by sagebrush. 





It did not take long before we noticed the ...well ... "antelopes", or rather pronghorn, Antilocapra americana. 
Not a deer, not a sheep, not a goat and NOT an antelope either!
This is a genus in their own right  - they are antilocapridae (Capra means goat ). They are the only antilocaprid species surviving today - there used to be 12.
Their proper common name is Pronghorn, that because of the shape of the males' horns. 
So, bison is not a buffalo and pronghorn is not an antelope .... but!!!! Everyone has a nickname.

There was a small group of females and their offspring - probably from the past season. The males are solitary 
Pronghorn are the fastest mammals on the continent. They are also the ones with the longest migration routes. We used to see them in the prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta, their range extending from there southwards. Just like the bison they roamed the grasslands in large numbers until .... we all know what ....

The evening found the three of us on the shore of Jackson Lake. Of course we were taking hundreds of photos trying to record the flowers and the lake and alpenglow caused by the setting sun. 

This park is very close to Yellowstone but one might as well be on the other side of the world - that's how different they are. How wonderful that they are side by side.

Ospreys' Valentine

It is Spring and I definitely need to take a break from last year's travel! 
All those Yellowstone entries were a good learning experience but.....the birds are back presenting their wedding colours AND behaviours .... it is time to get OUT of the house and LIVE in Nature.

The sure sign of spring around here is the return of Osprey, Pandion haliaetus, also known as the fishing eagle.
The Kootenays are blessed with water - a lot of it - therefore these fish-eating birds love to return here after spending their winters in Meso and South Americas. 
I hope to write more about them soon, today it is only a short sequence that I would like to share.

Osprey return to their nest year after year; this one is an an old railway bridge by Columbia River.

As it is usual with the birds of prey, the female is larger, in this case it is the one sitting on the nest. She keeps on looking up and soon I see a tiny speck in the sky - another osprey is descending to the nest. Her mate! 

He clutches something dark and red in one of his talons. 
A fish.

He lands and they start "talking" in a series of gentle, hardly audible sounds; then something strange happens: 
Are they kissing?!? Surely not!

I am too far away but it looks like they are sharing small nibbles of the fish. They are not hungry for food!


This is taking a while - a couple of minutes at least. Then he gets up, ready to leave. 

I thought that they finished the meal and he is going to get some more. But wait!









What is it, that he is holding in his talon? The fish?????
Was this only a teaser?
Or a showoff : "Look, I can do this any time I fly! I'll be a great Dad to the chicks!"?

Did she not like the fish? 
Why did he bring only a half? 
And why is he taking it back? The red that we cannot see in the photo indicates the same fish that he brought in.

Too many human questions.... shouldn't snoop into private lives like this!

Soon he circles high above. She gives me an inquiring look, then takes off as well. 

Good luck lovers! Maybe it was the Osprey Valentine's.