Shades of green

  

This is an older photo, but I came across it the other day and was intrigued.  Common Raven (Corvus corax) nest with two eggs photographed on Bodega Head on 14 May 2016. 

Cued by a temperature change?

  

Eric was doing an end-of-day check on some tanks in the lab last night and noticed some sea urchins spawning!  Above, a male Purple Sea Urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) with clouds of sperm being released from the gonopores on the upper surface.  

Looking around, we eventually noticed a few female Purple Sea Urchins releasing eggs (more yellow-orange in color):

 

Our guess is that warmer ocean temperatures during the past couple of days triggered spawning.  There's been a lot of upwelling this year, with water temperatures as low as ~8.8°C (~47°F).  But winds calmed down at the end of the week and temperatures rose to ~12°C (~54°F).

There were also a couple of other echinoderms spawning.  Here's a male Red Sea Urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) releasing sperm:

 

 

 

And a female Ochre Sea Star (Pisaster ochraceus) releasing eggs:

 

 

 

What's that saying, "Spring is in the water"?  ;)

All in one

  

Well, if you're going to put all of your eggs in one basket, you better have a lot of them!

Fish eggs in the rocky intertidal zone, photographed in April 2009.

So egg-citing!

  

So cool!  This is a female Ochre Sea Star (Pisaster ochraceus) spawning.

We had to work a little late tonight, but it paid off because just before we were getting ready to leave, Eric noticed that a few sea stars were spawning in one of the tanks at the lab!

It's possible they were triggered by the recent change in the weather.  When the NW winds are strong, seawater temperatures are usually cool; then when the winds calm down, seawater temperatures often rise.  Yesterday the seawater temperature was 9°C (48°F), but it increased to 13°C (55°F) today. 

Here's an even closer view where you can see a large number of eggs being released through pores in the surface of the sea star:

 

 

Some of the eggs gathered on a piece of kelp below:

 

 

 

 

We were curious about whether other animals might also be triggered to spawn, so we checked another nearby tank and...voilà!

 

 

 

This is a male Red Abalone (Haliotis rufescens) releasing sperm.  The raised pores in the shell act like little volcanoes when the abalone is spawning:

 

 

 

 

 

We don't get to see sea stars and abalone spawning that often, so it was a fun way to end the day!

 

In a wilderness of stones

  

On our way out to a field site recently we came across a Black Oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) nest.  We moved on so as not to disturb the birds, but I took a quick photo with my telephoto lens.  It is such a beautifully constructed nest!  Hundreds of rock chips gathered to produce a shallow bowl.

Later I was reading a short story by A.S. Byatt and was struck by the phrase "in a wilderness of stones."  She was writing about "moor birds" (perhaps grouse in Great Britain?), but my mind went immediately to this oystercatcher nest.  Looking at the photo we were struck by the number of stones used to make this nest, and the phrasing seemed just right, describing both the eggs surrounded by stones as well as the world of Black Oystercatchers.

With thanks to A.S. Byatt, the oystercatchers, and the stones, and the elements that shape them.

Eggs in neon

  

After field work this morning, I noticed a couple of Giant Green Anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica) were spawning, so I took a couple of quick photos for the record.

Sometimes spawning is triggered by a large change in water temperature.  During the past week we saw extremely cold temperatures  of ~8.5°C (~47°F), and then when the winds dropped temperatures rose to ~12.5°C (~54.5°F). 

Here's a close-up of the eggs:

 

 

 

And a zoomed out view of the entire female anemone with the beige eggs accumulated on the lower edge of her oral disc:

 

 

 

 
There were a few males spawning, too:

 

 

 

P.S.  I haven't seen anemones spawning that often, but I wrote about another observation back in 2013.  See "Fortuitous" on 28 June 2013 and "Little narwhals" on 23 July 2013 (the latter includes photos of anemone larvae).

Red end of the spectrum

There's a lot of red in the intertidal zone, along with pinks and oranges and golds at that end of the color spectrum.  Sometimes it's fun to scan across different species to see the color similarities.  Here's a little tour from a recent outing:

 

 Fish eggs

Aldisa sanguinea (nudibranch)

 

Peanut worm (Themiste sp.) tentacles

Clam siphons

 

 

Veiled Chiton (Placiphorella velata) in hunting position

 

Juvenile Red Sea Urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus)

What?

Recently I was trying to photograph some very small bees.  When I'm doing this, I'm often following the blur of a bee in flight.  I can't see any detail; I just try to follow the bee until it lands and then focus the lens.

This time I was surprised.  First, because this one turned out to be a fly, not a bee.  And second, because the fly started to oviposit (lay eggs) in a Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) leaf!  What?

 

In the photo above, the fly has curled her abdomen tip down into the leaf.  This is a classic egg-laying position for many insects.

Here's what she looked like with her abdomen extended:

 

I don't think I've noticed a fly ovipositing in a leaf before, but then again, I don't think I've ever tried to find one doing it, either.

 

Granite-matching

 

Hidden among stone, the granite-matching eggs of a Black Oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani).