Celebrating Earth Day With Whales, Tulips, Birds, and Marching for Science

Last Friday the 21st circumstances aligned to get out on the water to see a group of transients - the T49As, T65As, and T65Bs, who have been regularly traveling together in recent weeks. It was a short but sweet visit with them off the coast of Sidney Island, BC.

Young adult male T49A1

It was cool to see the two young males (T49A1 and T65B2) hanging out together separate from the rest of the group. Interactions outside of a family group always get my mind going as to what could be going on in their social world. These two were close enough to be touching and seemed to be having a good time, doing some rolling and tail slapping.

The other, bigger group of females and juveniles was a bit further away but we got one nice look of all of them surfacing together.

After stalling out for a little bit, the males joined up and all the whales took off at high speed heading north, so we said goodbye and headed back to port.

T49A1 and family head north towards the Canadian Gulf Islands

I had to head back to my home island because I had a ferry to catch! We were heading over to Bellingham for the March for Science, and in the late afternoon the sun came out which made a detour through the tulip fields of Skagit Valley irresistible.

The weather was a bit less cooperative for the March for Science the next day, Earth Day. But that didn't keep more than 2000 people from taking to the streets in Bellingham along with tens of thousands of others around the world to make a statement in favor of adequate funding for, public communication of, and nonpartisan application to policy making of evidence-based science. 

A couple of very powerful speakers took the stage before the march, reminding us all of the importance of not just pursuing our scientific passions but taking the time to share our research and the scientific method with everyone so there's a broader understanding of just how powerful a tool science is. We might hope for certain results from our research, but we must accept whatever the results tell us, and these facts need to be used to inform policy. Selectively picking and choosing what science to listen to is irresponsible both to our environment and to the future of humanity.

After running some errands after the march, there was still time to get a little birding in before catching the ferry home. 

Caspian tern in Anacortes - photo year bird #148

After many excursions specifically trying for this elusive bird (and hearing them often but never seeing one), I also finally photographed a marsh wren!

Marsh wren - photo year bird #149

What will year bird #150 be?! That was my original target to start the year and now I'm wondering if I might reach it before the end of April!

Speaking of the end of April, as the days tick by closer to May, we're all wondering when the Southern Residents return. After making a few visits in March and early April (by just a couple matrilines), they've been absent again for the last couple weeks. Gone are the days with J-Pod regularly on the west side in early spring, so now we are all left wondering when they will take up their typical summer routine. I am just one among many hoping that it is sooner rather than later!

Birding the Fraser River Delta

With friends turning up some fantastic bird sightings just north of the border, it was time for another weekend trip to the mainland and into BC to see what could be seen. First up was a stop at Blackie Spit where ring-billed gulls were the first addition of the day.

Ring-billed gull (photo year list bird #82)

There were also a crazy number of Eurasian wigeon there in with the American wigeon!

Another highlight were the relatively tame black oystercatchers:

As well as the crows opening shells by dropping them on the rocks:

Crow diving to retrieve a shell it just dropped on the rocks

Next up was an afternoon at the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. I'm not entirely sure how I haven't visited this place before! It's a bit more park-like than many birding areas in that there are hours, admission fees, and many people feed the birds there, but there are also natural trails to walk and an astounding array of species. It got me a lot closer to some species than I've ever been before!

Northern pintail

Sandhill crane (86)

And while I have been close to wood ducks before, this was still one of my favorite shots of the day:

Wood duck (88)

 It was also clearly a very popular place, and it was cool to see so many people communing with birds, including people who otherwise might not.

Man befriends wood duck

Girl befriends red-winged blackbirds (I also overheard her declare this the best day of her life!)

I, too, had a special moment, with an immature bald eagle who didn't seem to mind at all that the path went right by his/her favorite perch!

It's not often you get the chance to take photos like this of a wild bald eagle...

We also got to see the great horned owl and two saw-whet owls that roost right near the trails at Reifel, and also within just a few yards of each other! Unfortunately none of them were very cooperative for photos - we counted this one for great horned owl:

Great horned owl (92)

But I couldn't quite convince myself that this northern saw-whet owl was identifiable from this photo:

And one more cool find:

One of four black-crowned night-herons (91)

There was still a little bit of daylight left, so we headed over to Boundary Bay, where I went to see snowy owls back during that great irruption year in 2012. After visiting many other likely habitats so far this year, I finally saw my first short-eared owl of 2017.

Short-eared owl (92)

While I added 12 species to the photo year list challenge on the day, just like when visiting Skagit county, it was the bald eagles who stole the show. We thought seeing over 100 eagles on the day in Skagit was impressive - try over 500 within a few miles of each other in Delta, BC! I've never seen anything like it. There could easily be 50 eagles in a single stand of trees, and in one location I counted over 250 eagles while standing in one spot. Apparently they've been congregating there in the winter months for the last 10 years or so, right around the landfill and the turf farm. At first they thought maybe it was indicating a problem at their normal winter food source, but I'm assuming by the fact there are more and more of them there each year including loads of immatures that they've just found something they like. I'm still not sure what exactly is supporting that many eagles in that narrow area, but it's an incredible sight!

I felt sorry for this fella trying to work on his nest in one of these trees...nothing like trying to defend your breeding territory from 500 rivals!

With that many predators/scavengers in one place, the skirmishes were frequent - not only among the eagles but between the eagles, gulls, hawks, owls, etc.

Harrier causes short-eared owl to drop large rodent - winner was an immature bald eagle who came in and grabbed the prey

The next day, before heading back to the ferry, we decided to try and twitch some of the many rare bird sightings in the area rather than go for other more common species we're likely to add at some point throughout the year. It was a mixed result, as it so often seems to be when looking for rare birds, but I did come up with a life bird! This very distant glaucous gull at the landfill site was not easy to find among the 10,000 gulls that kept reshuffling anytime one of the hundreds of eagles took flight. I was glad to find him; the black-headed gull that was also in there somewhere remained elusive.

Glaucous gull (93)

With the weather taking a turn we drove to Pitt Meadows, where again we went 1 for 2, finding the prairie falcon but not the gyrfalcon that have been there for the last several months. It's crazy to me that two such similar looking rare birds would hang out in the same block of each other! If it weren't for the photos proving otherwise I would suspect the same bird had just been ID'd as two different species!

Prairie falcon (94)

Back on the US side of the border, we had enough time to try for one more rare bird - the yellow-billed loon in Anacortes. I just don't know how some people have success in nearly all the rare birds they attempt - perhaps they just have much more time to wait! The loon was seen a few hours before we were there according to reports by others, but no such luck for us. The scenery was a good consolation prize, though.

No yellow-billed loon, but the view from Rosario Beach wasn't too shabby

Back home, I just added ruby-crowned kinglet as the 95th bird species photographed so far in 2017. I usually have a loft goal of 100 species on my traditional year list in January if I can - I had no idea I would get so close for photographed species in month number one as well! I'm closing out the month with 106 species on the year list and 95 species photographed, for a 90% photo rate that is far ahead of expectations!

Next up I'm hoping for a birding trip that will result in more owls and more life birds, but the tenuous weather forecast may postpone that - we shall see!

Pelagic Cormorants at Anacortes Ferry Landing

I was looking through some of my bird photos the other day and I realized I don't have any good photos of any of our local cormorant species. Yesterday I made my way back to the island after a nice visit in Portland, and the ferry terminal in Anacortes was the perfect place for me to take some pictures of pelagic cormorants.

These smallish cormorants of the north Pacific usually nest in small groups on cliff faces, but this particular colony has made its home on the large pilings at the ferry terminal, nesting on the little ledges inside the guide boards that direct the ferry into the slip. Quite a few of the birds hanging out there were juveniles, distinguishable from the adults by lacking the iridescent plumage and having dark eyes. This bird is a juvenile:

On this adult you an see a little bit of the iridescent coloring, but also the two crests and the beautiful emerald eye:

I even saw one parent come back and feed its chick. I guess cormorants must not have a gag reflex?

The pelagic cormorant is closely related to the red-faced cormorant, a relatively unknown North American bird that I saw for the first time earlier this summer near Homer, Alaska. Adults of these two sympatric species are distinguished only by the amount of facial skin showing (more on the red-faced) and the size of the crests (larger on the red-faced).

Anacortes Ferry Terminal and a Close Look at L41

On Wednesday we headed to the mainland to meet up with some friends from Portland and catch the Seattle Mariners game versus the Toronto Blue Jays. Still in the middle of the heat wave, we ended up being part of the hottest game in Mariners history on the day where the city Seattle set a record for the hottest temperature ever reached at 103. Thank goodness for air conditioned hotel rooms!

Yesterday we got caught in traffic on the way back north (that's one thing I don't miss at all while living on the island - here in the San Juans we don't even have a traffic light, let alone rush hour) and we ended up just missing our ferry by three cars. We had a lengthy 3.5 hour wait for the next ferry, but luckily it was finally cooling down and there is a nearby beach and marsh to explore. So, camera in hand, I decided to see what I could see.

There were a lot of ring-billed gulls in and among the glaucous-winged gulls, including this one that wasn't too skittish at all:

I think there was a gull on every single piling in the bay:

Some of the pilings also have nest boxes mounted on them, which have become the residences of purple martins, two of which I could see flying overhead. Another bird highlight was a single Caspian tern. After walking the beach I decided to follow the trail into the marsh, where there was an abundance of cattails:

I also found this flowering plant that was hard to photograph in the breeze, but this shot captured it pretty well. It's bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcmara):

There are also a lot of thistles and teasels in bloom right now. These first two shots of thistle species were taken at American Camp today, and the next two are Fuller's teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) photos that were taken at the Anacortes ferry terminal:

This one had a bumble bee on it!

Today the heat wave finally broke and temperatures are back to their normal summer range of the the 60s and 70s. It was a beautiful day to get out on the water, and I did just that while working on the Western Explorer. All three pods were headed in after looping way out west last night, and we met up with the lead group. It was the L12 subpod, and strangely they were more than 8 miles ahead of the other whales!

When we got on scene they were all nicely grouped up and moving quickly towards San Juan Island. We followed them for a while, then jetted off to look at a minke whale feeding near Hein Bank. Then, before heading back to Friday Harbor, we met up with the whales again just off of South Beach. They had all spread out and were foraging, and we got a nice look at L41 Mega as he zig-zagged on by: