Vertebrates but not birds

A stickleback that died because of low oxygen conditions from summer kill. The fish you see is a stickleback; it is a kind of minnow that forms an important part of the food web.  They never get very big.  The one you see here is an adult and is maybe two to three inches long.  These fish are consumed by larger fish species such as trout and perch, by birds such as herons and kingfishers, and even by insects such as giant waterbugs and water scorpions.  I found this little guy floating on the top of an Alberta lake.  One by itself would not be an issue, but there were dozens of them, all within a very small area.  I am sure there would have been many hundreds if I took the time to peruse more of the shallows.  They all died at about the same time, not from age or because they reproduced, but because of something called summer kill. A lake has a natural cycle of nutrient flow.  Those nutrients are taken up by plants which are then passed along the food chain.  Nutrients are usua

The American Bullfrog.  A terror among us. An invasive species is defined as a non-native organism that does significant harm to the environment it has been introduced to.  What damage can a frog do, after all, it's just a frog, right?  Bullfrogs are originally from eastern North America.  They never made it past the prairies before man showed up due to the deep cold and lack of wetlands.  Bullfrogs were easy to raise, and people had an affinity for their legs.  Young bullfrogs in the form of tadpoles could also be moved unknowingly if they happened to get trapped in a live shipment of fish; upon arrival, they were released by people who wished to treat them humanely.  Then there were those that obtained bullfrogs for the purpose of intentionally releasing them into the wild, hoping to later harvest them for themselves or the restaurant industry. Whatever the reason, they have been introduced into many aquatic ecosystems where they never previously were.  Then they did what

This pair of chickadees just lost their chicks, thanks to a cat raiding the nest. If you have read my blogs, you would know of my bird garden, nest boxes, and a brood of chicks belonging to a pair of black-capped chickadees.  I was excited to hear the peeping indicative of young and noted with great pleasure the rapid comings and goings of the parents.  I was a grandfather, of sorts, although my wife would find that analogy outrageous.  It was the other day when I noticed a black cat perched atop my arbor, just behind the birdhouse.  I wrote a blog on this ( click here ) regarding my fears about the future wellbeing of the fine feathered family.  My worst fears were realized when, two days ago, I found the bodies of the two young birds on the ground.  They had been ravaged, by a cat I'm sure, and their demise led me down a dark path of loathing for the clawed killers.  Even worse, they were not eaten due to a state of hunger of the feline predator, they were simply killed and

Moose on display at a Bass Pro Store One goose but two geese, So you'd think the same For a similar name; One moose and two meese. For more than one moose, The name does not change No need to arrange It's not meese, its moose. Mousses is the word For two tasty treats To make them's a feat Or so I have heard. Mouse could be mouses But really is mice For one of them twice Found in our houses. Mouse, moose, goose, geese mousses, mice, almost done Mousse, meese, Oh such fun What do you call more than one sheep? Hope you enjoyed my temporary elapse into insanity.

I photographed this wild gopher tortoise while visiting in Florida last year. Habitat is important for animals.  Most creatures need a place to live, food to eat, and can live only within certain temperature and precipitation tolerances.  This all sounds very rhetorical, but we seem to forget this when it comes to land usage.  It becomes about the god which seems to drive man more than any other; money.  The land becomes part of the foundation for our creations of building, transportation, or recreation.  These destroy the habitat which the native occupants require, and they do the only thing they can.  They die. It is amazing how much one organism affects another.  A great example of this is the gopher tortoise.  You may think that this slow-moving domed reptile would not have much in the way of needs, or that its existence, one way or another, wouldn't make a difference to neighbouring creatures.  But, you would be wrong.  It turns out they are so important they have the di

Puget Sound garter snake Everyone knows what a garter snake looks like, right?  It turns out that there are many different species of garter snake, and then there are subspecies on top of that.  For example, here in British Columbia, there are three distinct species of garter snakes.  There is the western terrestrial garter snake, the northwestern garter snake, and the common garter snake.  I have caught each of them but sometimes have felt like there were more than just three species.  That is because, within a species, there may be two or more subspecies. A subspecies is a group of individuals belonging to a population, which is geographically isolated from other populations of the same species.  There typically are many differences between the different groups though.  Different subspecies may be able to interbreed if given the opportunity and produce viable offspring that are not sterile.  Genetically they are very close, but it is their differences which make them fall into