Eco-Diary: Day 27

Here's what the creek looked like on September 26:

The water level is holding steady:

The first thing I noticed today is that the fall colours are starting to appear:

The asters are still blooming, but the leaves around them are starting to turn. It makes for some striking contrasts:

The turtlehead (Chelone glabra) is still blooming. This is a member of the snapdragon family and is said to have been used as a laxative, purgative and even birth control by Native peoples.

Turtlehead is apparently a popular plant for deer (along with asters and jewelweed), and measuring damage to these plants can be a way of finding out the level of deer browsing in the area. I've noticed that the area on the north side of the creek, next to the cattails, has been looking pretty tamped down  — like something's been lying in it. This area contains turtlehead, jewelweed and asters within a coupe of square metres, so could be an ideal spot for deer to browse. I haven't seen any hoofprints in the area (I haven't exactly been looking), but this could explain why the area has starting looking so rough lately.

This was the first time I'd gone down to creek-level in a while, so I came across far more fauna than usual, and spent several minutes photographing this snail. If you think of the tentacles or antennae as eyes, it looks like a strange, ghostly gnome face:

(According to my Pond Life Golden Guide, snails actually do have eyes at the base of each tentacle.)

Once I started noticing the small stuff, I came across this spider. At first I thought it was a crab spider, but it's clearly spinning itself a (sort of pathetic looking) orb web: 

It's a lot thinner than the bridge spider I saw a few days ago, but the markings on its back are quite similar. Since male spiders tend to be considerably slimmer than females, my guess is that it's a male bridge spider.

While I was taking photos of the snails and spiders, a couple of women came along and asked me what I was doing. (I'm surprised, actually, that I haven't had more conversations with trail users until now.) We had a friendly chat, and they proceeded to tell me that the cattails haven't always been there — it's only in the last two or three years that they've moved in. Interesting.

They also pointed out that this plant is watercress (Nasturtium officinale or its virtually indistinguishable and equally edible cousin, Nasturtium microphyllum):  

Turns out it's the same watercress that's cultivated and shipped to supermarkets.

I also got up close and personal with the pond grass that left me with those cuts on my leg at the beginning of the month. Turns out it's Leersia lenticularis, or rice cut grass. Aptly named: all those little barbs cling to clothes and are surprisingly efficient at tearing human flesh.

Eco-Diary: Day 18

Here's what the creek looked like on September 17:

But I spent most of today looking at the orb-weaving spider that has made it's web in between the bars of the bridge railing:  

Ever since I wrote an article about spiders for WILD magazine earlier this year, I've thought they were pretty cool. There are 42,000 known species of spider on the planet, but scientists estimate there are at least twice as many more still undiscovered!

At first I thought this was Araneus diadematus, a European garden spider, but now I'm fairly certain it's Larinioides sclopetarius, a bridge spider. I can't find anything to confirm this, but I'm guessing that garden spiders are native to Europe and were brought over by colonists. The bridge spider is a holarctic species (found across the northern reaches of the globe), so one would expect it to be more common. Oh, and it's on a bridge.  

Orb-weaving spiders are a large family, with more than 3000 species worldwide, but only about 60 in Canada. They spin their webs by first constructing the anchor lines (like the spokes of a wheel) out of non-sticky silk that they can walk on. Then they create the spiral out of sticky silk to trap their prey.

You can see the spider actually letting out the silk and spinning its web in the next few photos. I watched it rebuild about two thirds of its web, working in a spiral around and around. It's pretty impressive how quickly it can do this. 

Just as I was leaving, I saw this little red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus):

I also decided to start taking photos of the rocks along the southern shore of the creek, as a way of tracking changes in water levels: