March 3 Double Header: T46s and T90s/T101s

Last weekend we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy on a beautiful day. With heavy winds to the north, we headed south down San Juan Channel and made a stop at Whale Rocks, my favorite sea lion haul out.

With a report of whales in Puget Sound, they made the decision to go for it - a bit of a long trek, but new boating territory for me! It was awesome to check off my bucket list going under the Deception Pass Bridge on a boat.

We're starting to see signs of spring, but winter is still keeping her grip on the region, as evidenced by the snowy foothills providing a backdrop to our journey:

When we got on scene with the T46s (and T122 who travels with them) we started by watching the two males T46D and T46E traveling together. It was impressive to see them with all the houses in the background, as it really shows how urban these whales are!

T46D (left) and T46E (right)

T46E (left) and T46D (right)

The T46s are such a cool family for many reasons. One is that T46 Wake was part of the last killer whale capture in Washington State in 1976. She was released and is still plying the same waters as one of the most successful mothers on record. As we discussed on the boat while we were on scene, if she had been taken into captivity as many other whales were in the 1960s and 70s, there would be nearly 20 fewer transient killer whales in the region, because that's how many living descendants she has.

T46 Wake with her son T46E.

Another reason the T46s are so cool is because they actually "disappeared" for 13 years, where they left the area and weren't seen during that time. When they returned, there was actually some confusion about the whales that were present. Two of the returning whales were given new designations as T122 and T123, but were later determined to be the likely offspring of T46. T122 still travels with the T46s, and was actually determined to be the same whale as T46A, a calf who was seen in 1982 before the long gap in sightings.

It's long been my dream to be able to name a killer whale, and my dream recently came true when my suggested name for T122, Centeki, was voted to be her name among the local whale community. (An effort is under way from naturalists, captains, researchers, and others in the region to give common names to many of the transient/Bigg's killer whales in the region that don't yet have them.) Centeki is one of the 13 lunar phases recognized by the Coast Salish people, and I thought this was appropriate given the confusion over her identify after her 13 year absence.

T122 Centeki, named by yours truly!

While we were on scene in Saratoga Passage, the whales appeared to be in travel/passive hunting mode, but shortly before it was time to leave it became clear they were on the hunt. Four of the five whales in the family group made quick work of a harbor seal, which we got a brief glimpse of as one of the whales lunged through the surface with the seal held in its mouth. As they shared the spoils, gulls came down to partake in the scraps. I thought this was a unique perspective of gulls fighting over a piece of seal meat while an orca surfaces in the background:

One more look at the impressive 16 year-old male T46E, with his wavy dorsal fin:

As we started making our way back north towards home, reports came in of another group of whales picked up between us and Friday Harbor. At this point, the trip was already running long, so why not just keep it going, especially when more whales in calm waters and beautiful lighting are right in front of you? Too good to pass up!

T101 and T101B under Mt. Baker

It was the T90s and T101s, and we watched them make their way into Cattle Pass from Iceberg Point.

Spyhop from T90B

The whales just added to what was already a stunning scene, with seals, sea lions, porpoises, and birds actively feeding in what was shaping up to be a pretty dramatic sunset!

Pelagic cormorant flyby

Sunset over the Cattle Point Lighthouse

While it ended up being a much longer trip than expected, it was a particularly memorable one! I absolutely love being on the water this time of year when things are still pretty quiet, especially as the whale sightings start picking up. It's looking like the heightened transient/Bigg's killer whale sigthings are continuing so far in early 2019, so we'll see what the rest of the spring will bring!

October 27th ~ From North Bend to Goldendale

At the end of last month I turned 30, so to celebrate the big birthday we decided to take a little road trip to parts of Washington and Oregon that I hadn't ever explored before. After running some errands the day we left the island, (and driving through Fir Island where I added snow goose [186] to the year list) we spent the night in North Bend, Washington before heading east over the Cascade Mountains. We were so close to Snoqualmie Falls, our first stop in the morning was to check those out:

Snoqualmie Falls

Heading over the Cascades, we got to see some nice fall colors. Overall, it was pretty dark and gray though, so we didn't make too many stops.

As we reached Yakima, the sun was shining. Ahhh, eastern Washington - that's more like it! Having crossed over the mountains, it didn't take long to add black-billed magpie (187) to the year list.

It almost looks like the mgapie is in the grass behind the cow, but he's actually sitting on the cow's head

Instead of staying on the major highway, we took a smaller side road that followed the Yakima River Valley. Good decision! It was beautiful. We stopped at a little river access where there was a hike that went up a side creek. It ended up being one of my favorite walks of the trip, perhaps because it was totally unexpected.

Suspension foot bridge crossing the Yakima River

Beautiful fall colors - and sunshine! - in the Yakima River Valley

We also made a brief stop at the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge, but it was a bit of a disappointment bird-wise. The only birds we saw in about half an hour there were two white-crowned sparrows! It was, admittedly, the worst time of day in the middle of the afternoon, but still!

I was very excited to continue across the Yakama (yes, it's spelled different from the town) Indian Reservation. We headed up the Toppenish Ridge and across the Lost Horse Plateau, where I was hoping to see some wild horses. I read about it a bit ahead of time, and knew that there is a rather large population of horses there - an estimated 15,000, which most people think are way too many. When we started seeing groups of horses right away, I really wondered if we were seeing the wild ones. Turns out, we were!

Wild horses on the Lost Horse Plateau, along Highway 90 south of Toppenish, WA

A few groups were even pretty close to the road!

They were so cool to see! Day one of the real road trip was an absolute success, and we hadn't even reached the region where we planned to spend most of our time yet. There would be many more sights to come!

Astoria and Fort Stevens State Park

On Monday as most Memorial Day weekend traffic was heading back towards the city, we headed to the coast for a one day overnight in Fort Stevens State Park near Astoria, Oregon. It was drizzly and windy as we arrived, but we still had to stop to take in the impressive Astoria bridge that spans almost four miles across the Columbia River delta into Washington.

Nearby, among the old dock pilings, were some double-crested cormorants, Canada geese, and a flock of greater scaup.

At Fort Stevens State Park, the rain had stopped and we ate a picnic lunch perched in one of the sand dunes near the shipwreck. While eating, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted a gray whale! The peak season for seeing gray whales off the Oregon Coast is between December and March, though there is a small seasonal resident population throughout the year made up of whales that don't make the full migration north. It was amazingly close to shore for this part of the coast, surfacing just beyond where the waves were breaking.

After lunch we hiked a few short trails in the park, and at the beach access furthest out the spit I saw a flock of more than a hundred Caspian terns (194). On the ocean side of the spit there weren't as many terns as on the inland bay side, but I got closer to one here than anywhere else:

This scene of glaucous-winged gulls with the rocky shoreline behind them to the south epitomizes the Oregon Coast to me:

In the late afternoon we checked into our overnight accommodations: a yurt.

While sitting around the campfire that evening roasting marshmallows I couldn't believe my ears when I heard a northern saw-whet owl (195, NA life bird 347)!! Another one started up it the other direction and we heard them off and on for more than an hour. I used a saw-whet owl call as the alarm clock tone on my cell phone a while back, otherwise I might not have immediately recognized it, but it sounded exactly the same. As a side note, when entering the saw whet owl on my life list I realized that the Wilson's phalarope from Eide Road seen a few days before was also a life bird!

The next day before heading back towards Saint Helens, we walked around the south jetty of the Columbia River.

It was great birding here. Some highlights were eight bald eagles, a flock of 200 sanderlings, a dozen or more red-necked grebes in the surf, and most impressive, well over a hundred brown pelicans. They are so cool to watch in flight, as they fly in a long line, often right over the waves, bobbing up and down to stay close to the surface of the water while avoiding the next swell. Here, some groups were up high and flying overhead, providing some photo opportunities. This picture reminds me of one of those shots where people superimpose the same bird in different positions, but these are all different birds just at different stages of their wing beats:

While kind of an awkward-looking species, I actually find the pelican to be a pretty beautiful bird:

They're certainly impressive due to their size!

Whidbey Island

I'm giving a talk tomorrow on orca vocalizations at the Way of Whales Workshop on Whidbey Island, and decided to come down a little earlier today to do some bird-watching. The weather wasn't the greatest: very windy, and drizzly off and on. Still, I had some places scoped out that I hadn't visited before and decided to see what I could find.

The first stop was Deception Pass State Park. Bird-wise it was fairly quiet other than a trio of loons and a pair of brown creepers, but looking at the Deception Pass Bridge is always impressive:

Next up was Windjammer Park in Oak Harbor, aptly named apparently because the wind was certainly jamming today. There wasn't much visible in the choppy water and walking the boardwalk would have been a very chilly endeavor, so I just spent some time surveying the large flock of gulls near the parking area. Most of them were glaucous-winged gulls, but there were some other types in there. After reading and re-reading the field guide, I didn't trust my ability to tell a western gull from a Thayer's gull from a glaucous-winged x western hybrid, so I just took some photos to look at again later with more clarity. I'm still working on the others, but as I agreed with my ID at the time that this is a western gull (114):

The mantle is fairly pale, but the further north you get on the west coast the paler western gulls become. The black primaries rule out the glaucous-winged gull, which also has pink legs and a dark eye, but I concluded it was a western gull and not a hybrid because of the thick, bright yellow bill.

As for the other gulls, maybe I'll return to them in a future post after I've spent some more time with the field guides!

Nearby at the Oak Harbor marina were some scaup, bufflehead, common goldeneye, and a single Barrow's goldeneye - here's my first-ever photograph of this species:

An unplanned stop that turned out to be a pleasant surprise was Fort Ebey State Park. The beaches there were beautiful, looking over towards Admiralty Inlet and bordered by tall eroding cliffs.  Here's the view across the sound:

 It was difficult to pick out the birds among the bobbing kelp beds just offshore, but I did find a couple of surf scoters, quite a few red-breasted mergansers, a group of four harlequin ducks, and a few more bufflehead. Plus this beach oddity, which looked to me like a bird that had been blown away and left only its feet behind:

After leaving Fort Ebey, the clouds really moved in and it got dark in a hurry. Along with the wind it was difficult to turn up much at Ebey's Landing or Fort Casey State Park, other than a couple bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and northern harriers along the way. The day list was a little shorter than anticipated, but with another year bird added to the list I can't complain. Plus now I'm familiar with some more good birding haunts on Whidbey Island!

The Beginning of The Alaska Highway

Location: Fort St. John, British Columbia
Population: 17,402

By looking at a map, once can recognize that British Columbia is a big province. By flying over it, you may see that much of it is uninhabited and remains raw wilderness. But you don't really get these things until you're driving through the countryside and humans feel like the minority - colonized here and there but dwarfed by the mountains and forests surrounding them. You don't really comprehend how big "big" is until you keep driving and driving and all you see are millions of trees stretching in every direction, mile after mile.

This morning, less than five miles outside of Prince George (and after visiting the hockey rink since I don't think I'll be coming back to see a game played here anytime soon) we saw our first moose of the trip. It was a brief glimpse of a female alongside the road who quickly disappeared into the woods, but it whet the appetite for more sightings and we were hopeful based on all the watch for moose signs we passed. She was the only one we saw today, but I'm sure we'll see more.

One of our first stops today was at a nature park where the mosquitos were too numerous and the trails were too muddy for us to feel much like hiking, but I did spot this butterfly. I've seen these commas (Polygonia spp.) in the field guide and was looking forward to the day I got to see one, since I'm intrigued by the feathered edges of their wings! Beautiful insects:

It didn't take long for us to find another black bear, either. We stopped to watch an adult bear up on the hillside, and before long one cub emerged from the nearby trees. Then came a second cub, and a third! The cubs looked very small - I wonder how old they are? Probably 2-3 months old already, but still so tiny! They were certainly full of energy, running back and forth across the clearing, and were full of energy as they kept wrestling each other down the slope. Very cute:

Our lunch stop was at Bijoux Falls where I got a close enough look at this squirrel to identify it as a red squirrel, a species I haven't seen before:

We also got close looks at a flock of Steller's jays. These are one of my favorite northwest birds, and though we see them often near my parents house in Portland I haven't ever photographed them before. The ones we see in Oregon don't usually have that white eyebrow, which was cool to see:

In general we saw fewer birds today - by far less variety and less abundance. The one highlight was when we pulled over on a wide shoulder to switch drivers and heard an unfamiliar call. It took a bit to locate the bird, get good looks, and agree on the identification, but it ended up being my first life bird of the trip - a singing male Tennesee warbler (year bird #175, North American life bird #321)! Does anyone else find it odd that I had to go to British Columbia to see a Tennessee warbler?

The terrain again changed a lot today from flat farmlands to rolling hills blanketed in aspen trees to rocky mountains covered in spruce forests. Here's a picture of some of the highest mountains we saw today, still capped in snow, with Highway 97 winding its way between them:

It's pretty amazing to me that we've been driving all this way and didn't even reach the Alaska Highway proper until today! But we passed the Mile 0 marker in Dawson Creek and covered about 50 miles or so until reaching our destination city Fort St. John. Along the way we got to detour onto a small portion of the original Alaskan Highway, which was amazingly built in just over eight months in 1942. It took thousands of people to complete the road, which was intended as a supply route for use during World War II. In the years since the highway has been rebuilt, and while it follows closely to the original route it is a bit shorter since they straightened it out considerable. At the old portion we drove today, we got to see the only original bridge that is still in use - the Kiskatinaw wooden bridge at Milepost 20:

Point Reyes National Seashore

The last full day of our trip didn't go as planned, but it was still full of awesome sights. Our first stop was at Golden Gate Park to take in a view of the Golden Gate Bridge:

We had planned to head straight to Point Reyes National Seashore to have a full day of birding there, but we had to pull over when we spotted some American avocets, a life bird for yours truly. As with many species we've seen this trip, some were in winter plumage and others in summer plumage. Overall, it was an interesting time to be out birding because there were a combination not only of plumages but of birds you'd expect to see in an area just in the winter or just in the summer.

Point Reyes is a unique peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean with a complicated geologic history and a rich anthropological story dating back to the Coast Miwok Indians who first inhabitated the peninsula 5000 years ago. It is a fantastic birding location as 490 species have been seen there, and I was looking forward to a big day of birding. We got the sunshine, but unfortunately our birding was inhibited by the incredibly strong winds. It was so windy that when we took the half mile walk out to see Point Reyes lighthouse, it was impossible to walk in a straight line. We weren't able to descend the 300 stairs to the lighthouse itself, as the stairs were closed due to the heavy winds. Still, it was well worth it to see the scenic lighthouse, and in the photo below you can get a glimpse of the nearshore white caps as well:

We weren't the only determined visitors that braved the windy conditions, either. When a migrating gray whale was spotted near the lighthouse (only the fifth of the day, compared to more than 25 the previous day - it is harder to spot in all those white caps!), tourists seemed to materialize out of nowhere to catch a glimpse. The photo below, especially if you take into consideration the harsh, cold winds that were pummeling everyone, really attests to the simple magnetism of cetaceans:

We really shouldn't have been surprised about the wind. The exposed coastline of Point Reyes has been shaped by the constant winds, as demonstrated in the leaning cypress tree below. Can you guess which way the wind was blowing?

We did see some juvenile elephant seals hauled out on some sandy beaches, and a few California sea lions as well. What really struck me on these beaches was the spray being blown off the top of the cresting waves:

Nothing much smaller than a turkey vulture was visible in the windy conditions, so bird sightings were actually pretty scarce. The coolest bird-related thing we saw was a grove of trees absolutely covered with the holes of acorn woodpeckers. We couldn't find any of the woodpeckers, but there was evidence of them up and down every tree in the area:

Closer inspection revealed the reason for the holes - a place to cache acorns:

After having enough of the winds ourselves, we ended up leaving Point Reyes early which allowed us to enjoy the next part of our drive in the daylight. We were all impressed with the beautiful rolling green hills of this part of the California landscape, as when we've been in the state before the hills have usually faded to a dull brown. The timing was just right to enjoy a beautiful and lush landscape:

The best birding of the day ended up happening at dusk at Sacremento National Wildlife Refuge, which has been designated a globally important bird area, or a habitat essential for birds and considered vital for maintaining global biodiversity. Some highlights included flocks of white-faced ibises and ring-necked pheasants around every corner.

Last night we made it back to San Juan Island after two full days of driving. I'll make one more post about the California trip to include a few sights that didn't quite fit in to the other posts, so check back in a day or two for a few more cool notes, including a group of 20+ sea otters!