Month: December 2023

My posts from British Columbia got very long (sorry!), so I kept having to stop myself adding even more. Now that you are recovered from festive eating, here is something that got left out.

This is a banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus, posed on my hand for scale; they can be up to 25cm (10 inches) long. In many areas they are bright yellow, hence their name, but this was largely black. The striated lower portion is its foot.

Slugs are lopsided. They have just a single lung on the right, and a single orifice for breathing, called a pneumostome on their right side of their mantle. (The dark mark above it is just skin coloration.)

They have four tentacles on their head. The top two (on the left in the photo below) are called eyestalks, and detect light or movement, and also smells. There is a light-sensitive spot on the end, visible on the lower tentacle. The bottom two (on the right in the photo) are for touch and taste. If they get damaged, the slug can grow new ones.

This image from Oregon State University shows the slug’s anatomy really clearly.

Slugs like the rainforest for a reason: they are at risk from dehydration, and so their body is covered in a fascinating (if disgusting) mucus that helps protect from this.

The mucus is neither a liquid nor a solid, but a sort of liquid crystal which can absorb (and store) up to 100 times its volume in water. Apart from its off-putting texture, it contains a chemical that has a numbing effect on predators. The local challenge is to kiss a banana slug, and your lips will then be numb for several hours. I considered it, but declined.

Thank you for reading my musings, and have a wonderful 2024.

Now I’ve shown you the giants of the Great Bear Rain Forest, here are a few extras. When you are sitting around waiting for bears or whales, there is lots of spare time when nothing much is happening, so you pay attention to the smaller stuff. Somehow birds seem an appropriate topic as I prepare my turkey stuffing…

Great Blue Herons stalk their prey in the estuary:

but they also benefit from the leavings of the bears. This one was scavenging in the river:

rather successfully:

Eagles too, despite their noble mien, are scavengers as much as hunters. At one point we had six in view loitering near a favorite grizzly fishing spot. Here is a close-up of a juvenile:

and here is what he/she will grow into:

A local favorite is the Stellar’s Jay, but I got only one good look, in deep shadow:

And an even smaller resident is the American Dipper, searching for tiny invertebrates in the river:

Finally, this gull, seen at low tide from our boat, bit off more than he could chew. We watched him for a good fifteen minutes while he stood motionless, the food apparently stuck in his gullet. It appears to be an octopus, or perhaps a starfish:

Bears are not the only ones stuffing themselves as winter arrives. Enjoy the holidays.

Sea otters, harbor seals, and sea lions are all in my same conceptual filing system as furry water-adapted mammals. Sea-otters were right at the top of animals I had never seen in the wild, and now I have, thanks to a remarkable conservation success story.

Here is a sea otter, Enhydra lutris,

They have the densest coat of any mammal, about 500,000 hairs per square cm, and the fur trade almost exterminated them; in 1911 their population was estimated at about 2000 worldwide. After strenuous protection efforts the world population has rebounded to some 120,000, but they are still considered endangered.

The IUCN says “Between 1969 and 1972, 89 Sea Otters were translocated from Alaska .. to the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where they established a healthy population. Sea Otter range expansion has continued and in 2008 it was documented that they have left Vancouver Island and moved into northern Queen Charlotte Strait and the adjacent British Columbia mainland coast and in some portions of the central British Columbia mainland coast. The most recent population estimate is 6,754 (Nichol et al.2015), representing around 7–8% of the global population. ”

They are the most endearing creatures, very social and famously playful:

They swim just as comfortably on their back as on their front, nonchalantly corkscrewing through the water:

And when they rest, they bask on their backs, toes in the air,

and they gather in cosy social groups, among the kelp forests that are their homes. How many can you find in this picture?

This one is feeding, I think, but I couldn’t see on what.

[My last post went out too soon, a result of an overenthusiastic keystroke, so I’ve delayed this a bit to give you time to breathe!].

In addition to Spirit bears and Grizzlies, our other goal on this trip was to see a properly black Black Bear, but although a few of the group glimpsed one, we didn’t. Still, those of you who read this regularly know I have them at home ! The temperate rainforest nonetheless showed us other mammals.

We saw several Black-tailed Deer:

It was the time of year when the males begin to fight for a mate, and so their antlers need to be in prime condition. When they are still growing, they are covered in velvet which contains blood vessels, and when growth is complete this velvet is rubbed off. Look closely at this guy:

The most striking thing is the color of his antlers. They are red and shiny, but this is temporary. When the velvet has just been shed, the antlers still retain a coating of blood, which will soon rub or wash off. At the base of the left-hand antler you can see greenery: he has been rubbing his antlers on trees or on the ground to get rid of the last vestiges of velvet.

A much smaller and shyer local resident is the Pacific Marten, Martes caurina, or perhaps an American Marten, Martes americana. Until recently, these were thought to be a single species, but now they are divided into a species native to the Pacific coast, and one spread throughout North America. Since they also interbreed, and they look very similar, I am not entirely sure which this is:

They are related to the European Pine Marten, Martes martes, but distinct. They are about two feet long, and weigh up to 3 lbs. They are predators, eating rodents, rabbits, and birds, but they particularly like voles, preferably three a day!

Pacific Martens face threats from habitat loss due to logging, and from interbreeding with the American Marten (which was introduced by the fur trade).