This past weekend I went for a nature walk with Mom to Denham Trail around Weaver Lake. Its a 3 hour loop around the beautiful lake and the ecology here was bumpin’! We saw many different animals, one in particular that many people dislike but if you continue reading you’ll learn why that shouldn’t be the case!

One of the first things we came across was an orb weaver spider on his web. I noticed a wasp buzzing around and we watched it head for the spider’s web as an epic showdown began to ensue! The wasp tried to sting the orb weaver which was about twice the wasps size! But I think it was unsuccessful and the spider might’ve gotten the wasp because it kind of fell out of the air and then flew away.

Do you hate wasps? Many people do, but maybe they should change their minds! I don’t mean go slathering yourself in picnic foods and let them eat off of your face, but instead of destroying every nest you come across you may actually welcome these little winged terrors! Wasps include a huge number of species from the order Hymenoptera, covering species that don’t actually sting or harm humans. But the yellow-jackets and hornets people commonly run away screaming from are actually very beneficial as well, especially if you are a gardener!

Wasps around the home are extremely hard workers, building their homes from wood that they chew up into a pulp and paste together little bit at a time. Once the larvae are alive and wriggling the adults will carry caterpillars, leaf beetles, spiders, and all types of insects back to the nests to feed them thereby providing a very important pest control service! The wasp we saw could’ve been trying to kill the spider for a lunchtime snack.

Another super interesting animal we saw was this horned beetle! I haven’t checked out for what species this is yet but he looked like a rhinoceros! Beetles are the most diverse group of insects/animals on the planet with over 400,000 identified species!

Evidence of squirrel activity was rampant. One of my favourite animals is squirrels they’re just so dang cute and are responsible for so many of our wonderful trees being planted! The Douglas squirrel is our native squirrel, those crazy huge black or gray squirrels are an introduced species from Eastern North America called the Eastern gray squirrel. Stories say that when Stanley Park in Vancouver first opened the mayor of New York City wanted to congratulate us on our beautiful new park and sent us a pair of breeding gray squirrels as a gift in 1909!

Gray squirrels are much larger and have very poofy tails, they can be black or gray. Douglas squirrels are much smaller and are brown and beige.

Douglas squirrels love to eat the cones of the Douglas fir tree. often you will see giant piles of cones scales littering the forest floor. They take the cone and eat it basically like corn on the cob, removing the scales to get at the delicious seeds inside! These spots where they like to eat and leave the scales behind are called middens. Squirrels will hide cones or seeds throughout the forest but are quite forgetful, which leads to the planting of many trees! Why do they hide all these nuts and seeds? Squirrels aren’t hibernators like chipmunks, they are active all winter so they need to cache food to last them through these hard times!

Another wasp we saw was one the types that doesn’t harm humans! He was huge and had three “tails”. These tails are actually called ovipositors which are characteristic of the Ichneumonidae family, a group of parasitic wasps. The ovipositors allow the wasp to penetrate insect hosts to lay their eggs, they are important parasite species as the eggs will then feed on the host and kill them.

About halfway along the trail we saw this neat boulder with a dead tree that had grown on top of it. It was full of cavities which make wonderful homes for all types of animals like bees, mice, birds, and bats!

We came to a nice sunny lookout point amidst a hill of various rocks and talus. Bathing in the sun was a garter snake which when startled quickly slithered away into the rocky slope. Rocky areas are a great place to find snakes for a couple of reasons, first of all the rocks warm in the sun which makes them great for a snake to soak up heat and warm their cold-blooded bodies. But they also provide a great place to sleep and overwinter! These piles of rocks are like apartment buildings for snakes and we call them a “hibernaculum” because this is where snakes will hibernate for the winter! Because snakes are cold-blooded they can not function well in the winter months and need to hide away when there is little to no sun and very cold weather. Not just any piles of rocks will do! They must provide pockets for the snakes to sleep and go deeper than the frost line to prevent the snakes from freezing to death but also need to be above the ground water line so they don’t drown either! Also by providing many different layers, the snakes can choose at which temperature they need to sleep at.

The last little interesting thing we ran into was another insect of course! We stopped to look at something (I forget what) but then Mom spotted something small jumping on the ground, it camouflaged in so well that when I got my camera out to take a picture it took some real searching to find him again. We had to blow on the dead tree needles covering the ground to try and get him to move again so we’d be able to spot him! He is a bristletail, with the interesting ability to be able to jump up to 30 cm! He has 3 tails much like the ichneumon wasp but these tails are called cerci (not ovipositors) which often serve as sensory organs. These are an ancient group of insects and can live in a wide variety of habitats, even the arctic!

Have you ever camped at Weaver Lake? I’m hoping to camp there this year and check out the fishing! What’s your favourite nature loop?