Searching for the Robust Lancetooth

We’ve been keeping an eye out for some of the bigger snails during our forest walks this week. They’re much easier to identify than some of the smaller ones that we’ve discovered underneath paving stones and wood. This week we found the shell of a Robust Lancetooth (Haplotrema vancouverense). The robust lancetooth is a fairly common large snail in deciduous …

Some Small Snails

A Very Small Snail on a Very Long Journey Back in September I discovered some very small snails underneath a paving stone in our garden when flipping rocks for International Rock Flipping Day. This past week I’ve found a couple more small snails that I’ve photographed but have been unable to identify. The snail pictured above and below was in …

Termites!

I’ve always enjoyed gently turning over rocks and pieces of wood and bark to discover what is living underneath. Today I was out poking around for snails, inspired by my finds on International Rock Flipping Day back in September. While I did find one new snail (I’ll post on that later this week) I was thrilled to discover a small …

Tail of a Newt

Was driving down from Paradise Meadows last week and spotted a rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) crossing the road. I quickly stopped and helped it to some leaves on the other side of the pavement. Rough-skinned Newt | Taricha granulosa You can read more about Rough-skinned newts in British Columbia at the Ministry of Environment’s Frogwatch fact sheet on Rough-skinned newts.

There Be Dragons

I had the opportunity to lead a Young Naturalists Club walk this morning out at Woodhus Slough just north of the Oyster River. We were looking for dragonflies and on this sunny morning were fortunate to find a few. It’s late in the year for dragonflies and many of the ones that we caught (and released) were looking tattered. Variable …