ALBERT: The Solved Mystery of the ....

Move over Sherlock Holmes! Our mystery has been solved. Lest we convicted a wrong guy.

Remember last year's post about Dogbane and the creatures that use its deadly sap for their protection?

Of course not but that's OK.

In that post I was milling about a handsome white caterpillar and the cocoon it it spun about ten days later. 

We found the caterpillar on August 24. It was white, hairy and somehow forecasting a subtle message: 

"Do Not Touch."

Or maybe it said: "Do Not Eat." 

The birds certainly heeded the warning since the white one was freely roaming about, looking for a place of solace.

Who was it, we wondered, totally taken by its beauty and tickled by the subconscious thoughts of it perhaps stinging or even being poisonous.

By September 3rd, the caterpillar arranged for a wild haircut - all that remained was a soft-looking, somehow unrecognizable lump of cells wrapped in a mat of scary looking hair. Our caterpillar readied itself for the upcoming winter. And we still did not know who might emerge next spring.

Another ten days later, on September 13th, we found another caterpillar - same shape, same size, only its fur coat was yellow. Who was he in relation to the white one? A brother, uncle or a total stranger? We chose to believe that it belonged to the same family. But its name was still far from clear. This one too, crawled into a pile of vegetation to become a cocoon.

I am not sure what happened after. I believe that there was a huge reorganization inside of the hairy cocoon that resulted in a pupa -  hard cased structure that would overwinter in soil. Inside it a creature much different from the caterpillar would patiently wait for the glorious days of Spring.

Now, imagine this: one day you go to bed and by the morning your body will have fallen into bits and pieces which will reorganize and rejoin in a totally different way. By itself! You will go to sleep being a crawling caterpillar and wake up being a flying moth. No waste. That's efficiency!

But I am getting ahead of this story.

Winter arrived and left. 

It is end of May now and millions of things are happening all the time and all over the place. 

The plants are sprouting and blooming, and with them a whole world of other creatures is rushing to commence and complete new cycles of  life.

Just yesterday, I too was crawling in the grass trying to be artistic! That's what Spring does to everyone.

I was taking photos of a tiny chickweed flower. 

(Chickweeds, Stellaria - So good for you - did you know?)

It looked so fancy through my macro lens that my mood shifted into a nostalgic mode 

(it does not take much these days). 

All I could think of was how many amazing things and creatures we go by every day without looking, without even knowing that they exist.

When I finally peeled my eyes off the viewfinder I was staring straight at another white creature that must have just emerged from the safety of soil; its whiteness so pure that it made me gasp in awe. 

(I was in that nostalgic mood, remember?)

It sat there - hugging the grass stems,  motionless - for quite a while, probably sensing all the Carbon dioxide given off by my body and flooding its space, cursing its bad luck.
(Insects and other creatures can tell the presence and size of another animal by the amount of CO2 that it exudes. That's why they wisely move off or move in - depending on their way of making a living.)

There was a lot of CO2 at the moment  and even more poured out with my breath as I whispered a flurry of questions:
You? You were that caterpillar! Who are you? I think that you are a male.....but ... what's your name?

He should have answered:
Of course I am a male - I have big antennae which females do not posses. It is MY job to seek them out, not theirs to seek me. They only exude their perfumes, you know? And, by the way, my name is Yellow Wooly Bear Moth, Spilosoma virginica.
Nice to meet you!

But no!

All he would do for the moment was to sit there, feeling (instead of thinking):
"Dry fast my body! Pump air into those air tubes in my wings so this body can harden, the wings stiffen and carry me away from this gaseous heap!
I need to fly, flitter about, start looking for females (not this one though!). 
I hope that I will not get squished soon.
I need to carry out my job - I have to mate!"

Not knowing his real name then, I named him Albert.

The reasoning for giving him that name is quite obvious: in its white lab coat and with a head full of untamed white hair, even with a hint of a bushy moustache, he made me think of Albert Einstein.
He also made me think of many unsolved secrets, of the processes that make his white body work, his ways of dealings with the world - so different from ours, his powers and his role in the interconnected world that we, humans, are only vaguely becoming to understand.

Finally! His wings spread wider and then wide until they were flat and ready. They started to vibrate in a very rapid sequence, his antennae perked up, one last breath and a clumsy take off. Airborne at last! By the time the sun sets he will be an expert flier. And then ......

Every moth-boy knows by default how to get a moth-chick. There are two ways:

The first way is kind of crude: one can patiently sit perched on vegetation, saving his energy for things to come. When a suitable moth-girl flies by, peacefully giving off her pheromonal perfume,  he takes a sniff, takes off,  forces her to the ground and .... is this legal? REALLY? Bully style?!?

The other, more caring way, is to fly about, seek the girls by tasting the air with the huge antennae and hone on closer and closer. Follow a bunch of irresistible pheromones, release some of own... and ... voila.
When done, go and seek another. Energy consuming?
Yes. but ... job is a job.....is.....a......job!

Albert is the caring kind - he will fly and seek and find his girls, his awesome antennae (which the bully guys do not posses) tasting and analyzing the air for molecules that came his way from miles and miles away. He will not eat or drink; just fly ceaselessly, using the fatty reserves of his strong, handsome body. He will father several families before his time is up. Then, before the summer arrives he will die. But the summer generation(s) (some say one and some say two) will progress towards the Fall. His offspring will gorge on dogbane and milkweed and other horribly tasting and poisonous plants that could harm me and you but not them. So the birds and mice and skunks will leave them alone allowing them to make a bed in the cold October soil.,  ..... -

......and the cycle will repeat itself as it has so many times.

Good luck Albert - fly well! I am glad we've met.

TREE SWALLOW (Of The Birds and The Bees)

This is a story of the magnificent Tree Swallow and its domestic life.

A Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, got its common name from its nesting preferences - it likes to place its grass-lined nest in a tree cavity or an old woodpecker hole.

Had The Happy Prince of the famous fairy tale met this hardy little swallow instead of the European one that, with the first sign of the upcoming winter, needed to fly to Egypt Oscar Wilde's story would have had a much happier ending. Our Tree Swallow would have been able to take a bit of a colder weather and it would not die. Fewer children would have to cry over the story's sad end (as I certainly did, over half a century ago).

The North American Tree Swallow is quite hardy and does not need to travel as far South as the other swallows do. So, when the winter comes to its end this handsome bi-colored bird is one of the first to return.

It is usually in March or April  when we notice the flocks of these fast flyers arriving to Southern British Columbia.





Tachycineta bicolor is bi-colored indeed. It is freshly-white underneath and metallic-blue on the males or beige-brown on females on the backs. Very elegant!

How do the the birds come to those amazingly shiny metallic feathers anyway? These questions are lately being answered by the ever-evolving science, leading us away from Biology and Chemistry of  Pigments to Biology and Physics, due to the arrangements of extremely tiny particles of the feather and their reaction to the environment.

As John Muir once famously said a Century ago:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Another reason why Biology, Chemistry and Physics should all be compulsory in every High School in the world.

These birds are Tree Swallows by the name, but just like many other birds they will happily take up their residence in man-made nesting boxes. Smart!
Once they have arrived they do not waste much time before taking care of the business. Their job here is to bring up a family ( or rarely two if something goes wrong with the first clutch).

So, it is the real estate that they need to look up first.




He is the one who seems to look for a suitable site first. Then he invites her for a closer look.

              A big discussion follows:
              What do you think Honey?
              Up to your specifications?

             Hmmmm .... lets see what it is like inside!

She likes the site and indicates that by commencing to collect building material.
I would like to use this kind of grasses, please. oh ... and some loose feathers too, if available.

They flitter about, happy that the real estate issue has been settled. He tweets his heart out in series of happy notes. She joins him for a couple of seconds and what looks like a shouting match is actually an exchange of gentle chirps - the sign of things to come. It really lasts only a moment before they take off to catch some bugs.
Swallows are multitaskers; they feed in flight -with their beaks widely open, sucking in mosquitoes and such.
Sorry to spoil the fun with a scientific fact.

She returns to her perch and starts on her makeup - a VERY feminine thing. She fluffs up her feathers and twists her body this way and that. All done up she settles down, pretending that nothing special has been going on.

Honestly, I did not mean to pry!

I was just peacefully hiding in my blind, clicking away, thinking about the fact that the birds need to preen their feathers 75 percent of their time and about the importance of it. I clicked the shutter open in the very same second that this kamikaze appeared out out of nowhere. One short second to join the plumbings and the most important task of the season was done!
Tricked me, if you happen to wonder!

My university years are well in the past. But I still remember my zoology prof talking about the bird reproductive strategies and how they pass and accept the reproductive cells. Cloaca was the word - an opening that, like the Jack of All Trades, serves the reproductive, urinary and elimination purposes in one. Call me dirty, but ever since that lecture I always wondered how on Earth can birds do it with their long tails and layered feathers covering the whole works. Fifty years later I got my answer!

What a speed! Split of a second, an amazingly precise balancing act ....and - over. 

Was it worth all the fluffing and twittering?

You bet!

And the bees? How about some other time?

Deer Family of British Columbia: WOODLAND CARIBOU

Rangifer tarandus

Here is a member of the deer family (Artiodactyla) that,  in countless, seemingly undiminishable numbers, roamed the cold regions of the entire Northern Hemisphere since the beginning of time. Well, not quite the beginning but longer than many other mammals have.


Its common name is ... what?
Is it a caribou on a 25 cent coin or is it Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer tied to the Santa's sled? 
Enough to drive an "English-as-a-second-language" person crazy.

Caribou is derived from "qualipu" - an old Mi'maq word meaning "he, who digs in the snow" or "snow shoveler". Referring to the caribou way of living - searching for lichens, of course.
Reindeer sounds more like a workhorse, why not to entangle an animal in reins and send it flying to the sky! Very European!

Things can get even messier when we attempt to classify the species. Just try.

This "snow-shoveller" has lived on Earth for more than 200 000 years, having enough stamina to outlive the much more famous creatures of the pre-ice, ice and post-ice ages. 
It also had enough time to evolve into 9 subspecies, 2 of which, along with the 20th Century, have taken their final bow and departed into oblivion.
That leaves us with 7 subspecies still roaming the North. All in all there are about 5 million caribou left worldwide.

6 of those 7 subspecies can be found in North America and for a nice VISUAL overview just have a look at a nice map. Just click.

On this excellent map we can see that in Canada, the most numerous species (close to1 million ) is Northern Woodland Caribou, Rangifer tarandus caribou 

GREAT, 

narrowed it down to one sub-species

BUT

The caribou depend mostly on terrestrial and arboreal lichens …. which means that, as the seasons change they must migrate to different places to be able to feed and survive.  

NOW

Migration on Earth can happen in two directions: 

one can change the latitude travelling from South to North and back = more like a flat, horizontal travel,

or one can change the altitude and descend to the valley bottoms where there is much less snow in the winter and return up to the mountain tops in spring and summertime = vertical travel.

SO

A very long time ago the Woodland Caribou, have figured out these migratory possibilities and evolved into 

3 different ecotypes:

the horizontal traveler of the barren tundra became northern woodland caribou

 the horizontal traveler of the northern boreal woods became boreal caribou

and the vertical travelers of the southern interior mountains became mountain woodland caribou,

They share the same genes but live in different habitats.

UMPH! LIVE & LEARN!

Check out this BC wildlife publication if you really wish to learn more.

And while there are still close to one million of the northern Caribou left in Canada (seems like many?) 

there are very few mountain woodland caribou left  living in small and scattered groups in BC and Idaho.

Maybe I am not good at searching for the numbers, but I cannot figure out how many are actually left.  

The latest number I found was 1700 but I am not sure about the year.

 http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/speciesconservation/mc/index.html 

 All I know is that this group that we've met in April 2013 

is known as

The International Selkirk Population, 

and that it is extremely small, rare and vulnerable. 

West Kootenay region with its semi-wet climate supports the largest variety of tree species in British Columbia. It has been heavily logged although there are still some old growth stands left where lichens and mosses and other vegetation still thrive.

Mountain Caribou of the Selkirk group during their Spring migration. The snowpack is hard enough to support their weight and high enough to help them reach the lichens growing on the trees.

Mountain Caribou have very wide hooves - they serve as shovels for digging out mosses and other food and as snowshoes that help them to walk on the snow.  

They are also a formidable weapon helping to drive away the predators.

Their main enemies are wolves, cougars, perhaps wolverines and bears  and of course - humans.

I am not worried as much about the caribou being preyed upon by the "bad guys" such as wolves, cougars or other of their natural enemies. After all, they all tried to out-trick each other for a very long time, playing more or less a fair game.
I am much more worried about the "good guys", the smartest species on Earth invading and changing their routes and habitat. As we take our guns and machines of all sorts up to the wilderness we force all wildlife to yield - often displacing them into inferior locations thus making them weaker and more vulnerable to everything else that they must face.  
Every first-grader knows this talk these days .... yet ....

There are only 40 - if - of these caribou left in the Selkirk mountains.

Arboreal lichens make major part of Mountain Caribou diet. The are slow growing and require mature trees to dwell on.

Any time a person says “I saw a bunch of mountain caribou today” everyone jumps up.
Really? 
Where? 
How many? 

…… I am not kidding, it happens all the time.

It was our turn last April and for the first time in our lives we saw a small group of mountain caribou!!! 

Lucky us!

Really? When? 
April 23rd. The snowpack was hardening and they were on their way up the mountains.

Where? 
I am not telling – though most locals will know.

How many? 
Only a handful, less than ten.

The bulls shed their large antlers in the fall, right after the rut season that spans September - October.

They are starting to bud anew in Spring.

.

The only individuals sporting small antlers at the time were all females. 

They are the ones who keep theirs until they give birth up in the mountains in early June. 
When it comes to antlers the caribou girls do not have so much to brag about . They are just small and uneven, but they are good enough for protection against a predator or for driving away young males with strange ideas.

On the other hand – caribou females are the only  girls in the entire deer family sporting antlers at all. So there!

When they reach the safety of the high country, each pregnant females will give birth to a single calf . The young are born in the first part of June.

Found a lichen! Yum!

Crossing the road.
Salt on the roads is irresistible to all ungulates- there is too little of it in their winter diet. Licking the highway salt put the animals in great danger from traffic.We have seen and heard the heavy commercial trucks gearing down and doing their best to avoid collision on the steep downhill of this high mountain pass.

I don't know how valid this is but somewhere I read  the following:
Reaching the high alpine meadows used to mean safety and food. With the warming trends though, the caribou are getting out of sync when it comes from reaching their summer grounds. Warmer climate means that the vegetation starts to grow earlier than it used to and by the time the caribou arrive most plants are past their prime. 
Yet another challenge for a creature that survived the ice ages and climate disasters of all previous sorts?

http://www.conservationnw.org/what-we-do/british-columbia/mountain-caribou