Winter Birding on Lopez Island

With so many microclimates and microhabitats in the San Juan Islands, there are very different places to explore and even different birds to see depending on which island you are on. Because of the convenience of the ferry schedule, when we decide to explore another island, we usually go to Orcas, but yesterday we decided to go for the extra early and extra long ferry rides in order to explore Lopez Island. Good decision!

Locally known as "Slowpez", Lopez is definitely the quietest of the larger ferry-served island with about half the population of Orcas and a third of the population of San Juan. It's also been nicknamed "the friendly isle", in part because every car waves to every other car as they pass each other anywhere on the island. I've only been to Lopez a handful of times myself, which means there are still parks I have yet to explore over there. After our visit yesterday, I think I actually prefer the Lopez over Orcas, because there are more coastal access points with dramatic landscapes and fewer in the way of hilly wooded hikes.

One of the main reasons for our trip was to go birding and try and add some species to our year and photo year lists. Our first stop in the morning was to Fisherman Bay, where both the species and photographic opportunities added up quickly!

Belted kingfisher in the early morning light at Fisherman Bay

Great blue heron at Fisherman Bay

Heading out the spit at Fisherman Bay

Abstract rock and tree reflection at Fisherman Bay

Our next stop was Shark Reef, which is on the opposite side of San Juan Channel of our regular stomping grounds at Cattle Point. Unlike Cattle Point, which is all open prairie, you hike through the woods to get to the rocky Shark Reef.

Boardwalk at Shark Reef

Shark Reef, on the east side of Cattle Pass

Next we searched for one of the main target species for our trip: the wild turkey! While they used to be found on other island including San Juan, currently the only flock of wild turkeys on the island makes their home on Lopez. We were just about to give up when we came upon a group of more than 20 of them! I'm not sure why they are so much more fun to watch than many other birds, but they are - I suppose it's because they're very expressive, comical, and have lots of social interactions.

Wild turkeys on Lopez

It's surprising to see such a large bird fly - not only over this fence, but even up into the trees above!

Our next stop was Iceberg Point, a place I amazingly had never visited before. There are miles of hiking trails there and we only got to go out to the point in one direction, so we will definitely have to go back. While the birding was decent, the scenery is absolutely stunning.

Iceberg Point

It also offered a different perspective on Cattle Point:

The geology is complex and amazing throughout the San Juans as well, and Iceberg Point was no exception.

Hummel Lake was pretty quiet, but seems to be one of the first locations swallows show up in the islands each year. With reports of some already in nearby Skagit County, the early arrivals might not be far off! We settled for this picturesque common merganser though:

Our last stop before heading back to the ferry was out to Spencer Spit, but we got waylaid on the way there at first by a northern shrike (which would only perch on fence posts, so sadly will not quality for the photo year list which has the theme of photos "without the hand of man"), and then by these sheep. Have you ever seen sheep run before? I don't think I have!

Unlike the ferry ride there, the ferry ride back was in the daylight, so we continued birding from the boat (as we again stopped at every island on our way home). 

An up-close view of double-crested and pelagic cormorants at the Shaw Island ferry terminal

No luck on the shrike, but I did get a rock pigeon picture "without the hand of man"! I like this theme because it makes me attempt different and more challenging photos, such as in-flight shots. The different challenge means the first rock pigeons I saw this year perched on a man-made structure didn't "count", but I like this result much better!

In the end we tallied 52 species on the day, the highest single-day total yet this year! Not at all a bad showing, and after a several year gap in visits, we will definitely we going back to Lopez sooner rather than later.

Portrait of a glaucous-winged gull at the Orcas Island ferry landing

2017 Photo Year List Summary

Since 2010 I've been keeping track of how many bird species I see in a calendar year, this year adding the twist to see how many I could also get identifiable photographs of. It's a fun project that makes the common species "new" again each year, gets me outside a lot (especially in the winter when it's harder to be motivated to get out in the cold), and helps me explore new places. My goal for this year was to get 200 species on my "traditional" year list. I wasn't sure how many I would be able to photograph, so I decided to aim for photographing 75% of my year list total, or 150 species.

First of all, let's look at how 2017 ended. With the holidays came a trip down to Oregon, and we started out bright and early in order to be able to bird Skagit Flats at sunrise.

Sunrise over the Cascade mountains on December 23

While we didn't get the owl activity we had hoped for, we did see the out-of-range blue jay that has been hanging out at some feeders, where the property owners have generously been allowing birders to visit:

While it took about 20 minutes of waiting in the sub-freezing temperatures for the jay to show up, there was a lot of other activity to watch at the feeders and in the yard, including a few usually-shy varied thrushes in the apple trees.

We also took a short detour to Fir Island to see the huge winter flocks of snow geese and trumpeter swans, quite a sight in front of the snow-capped Mt. Baker on a crisp but sunny winter morning.

We tried in several locations to see some common redpolls, a finch more common to the north and east but a species having a regional irruption year. We didn't have any luck, but at one of these locations did manage to photograph a Cooper's hawk, a species I had seen several times but not photographed yet in 2017.

We struck out with the redpolls at another location in Seattle, too, but did get a nice close up look at a gadwall, and I just love all the intricacies of the feather patterning.

We picked the right day to travel with clear skies and dry roads, because the next day at my parents' house in Oregon the snow and freezing rain hit. I snapped this photo of a junco and his metal friend on my parents' deck from the cozy warm dining room; we didn't venture outside for about two days!

By the day after Christmas the weather had cleared a bit, so we visited one of my favorite local birding spots near St. Helens. I thought I was taking a picture of another Cooper's hawk, but it wasn't until we got home and looked at our photos that my dad pointed out it was actually a red-shouldered hawk! Another new addition.

At the same marsh I also got a photo of an American bittern, a species I had just missed with the camera in January.

The next day we also checked out a local acorn woodpecker colony, though we failed to see the rare visiting yellow-bellied sapsucker that had also been seen regularly nearby.

Acorn woodpecker in Hillsboro, Oregon

 

So how did these last minute additions (nine more photo year birds in December!) help me stack up? I finished the year with 205 species on my year list. I clicked away at well over 75% all year long, surpassing 150 birds photographed early on, so had a stretch goal of also trying to photograph 200 species this year. Despite a good push at the end of December, I fell *just* short with 199 species photographed, meaning I photographed an astounding 98% of the birds I identified this year. How close was I to 200? This blurry Virginia rail photographed December 26th would have been the one to push me to the 200 mark had it been in focus!

So close....better luck next year

I made several more attempts in the final days of 2017 to get that last elusive photo year bird, but with no luck. Seeing transient killer whales twice was a more than fair consolation prize, however.

The T75Bs and T75Cs in San Juan Channel on December 30th

The T18s in Haro Strait on December 31st

 The weather was awesome on the last day of 2017 for photographing the other wildlife, too.

Popeye the Friday Harbor harbor seal soaks up the winter sunshine

One of the resident bald eagles at Cattle Point had a lot to say this afternoon

  

Because I love data and playing with numbers, here are some other facts and figures about my 2017 year list...

Who were the six species I heard or saw and didn't get a picture of? Heard only: western screech-owl, Virginia rail, sora, common nighthawk, and western wood-pewee. Saw but didn't photograph: Vaux's swift.

Big miss for the year? Hutton's vireo. I'm also amazed a poor iPhone photo of a barred owl in September was my only sighting of that species this year.

Biggest surprise? Getting a whopping ten owl species in total (9 photographed plus 1 heard). Our February trip with a birding expert where I photographed six owl species in one day was certainly the main reason, but I never would have expected even with that trip that I would photograph all these owl species in a single year: barred owl, barn owl, short-eared owl, long-eared owl, great horned owl, northern pygmy-owl, northern saw-whet owl, snowy owl, and great gray owl.

I stayed more local this year, as all my birding was in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia (where previous years have often included at least California and Mexico as well) and thus I was surprised to get seven life birds this year as well: glaucous gull, northern pygmy-owl, great gray owl, gray-crowned rosy-finch, Pacific golden-plover, Hammond's flycatcher, and Baird's sandpiper.

I'm not the only one that plays the year list game, and for years I've been comparing to both my dad and Dave in England. My dad traveled a lot more this year so is the winner with 236 species, and Dave finished with 190. It's amazing how close Dave and I always tend to be, despite being half a world apart! In 2013 we even tied. Here's how we've stacked up over the years:

Most of my birding is of course in San Juan County each year, so here's the number of species I've seen in the county each year:

Finally, while it's skewed a bit by when and where I travel each year and how much effort I spend birding, it's kind of interesting to see how many species I add to my year list each month. I had posted this as a table in years past, but here it is in graphical form:

And part of what makes it fun is that tomorrow - January 1, 2018 - it all begins afresh! So what are my goals for 2018? With a few more travels in the plans, I'm aiming for 220 for my year list (a mark I've only hit twice), and I'll target 95% of the birds photographed, which comes out to 209 species! At the moment that sounds really daunting, but we'll see how I do! I'll of course be posted updates on the blog throughout the year. Happy 2018 to you all, and thanks for reading!

Residents in the Second Half of September

After a season where the Southern Residents were scarcer than ever, I had feeling the season might continue to wind down with few sightings of Js, Ks, and Ls. Luckily, September, which has always been my favorite whale month, did not disappoint, and the Southern Residents were around more this month than any other month in 2017. They weren't always nearby, spending some days down in Puget Sound or up at the Fraser River or even further north, but that was okay - just knowing they were in the Salish Sea again for a longer stretch of time made everything feel more "right"!

On September 23rd, J-Pod and the Greater L4s (19 L-Pod whales) came down Rosario. The question was whether they would head west out the Strait of Juan de Fuca or up Haro Strait once they rounded the bottom end of the San Juan Islands. Jason and I waited at Cattle Point to see what they would do. They took their time reaching us, but once they did they sped up, and in the direction favorable for us - up Haro Strait!

Porpoising past Salmon Bank

Some whales were way too far offshore to ID, but the last group to pass us was the J16s. Sadly, it was clear their family had gone from six whales to five. We had learned earlier in the month from the photogrammetry team assessing whale body condition using a drone that J52 was very emaciated and appeared to be in "terminal condition". Indeed, by the 23rd he was no longer with us, bringing the total number of Southern Residents down to 76 - the lowest since the mid-1980s. I have no doubt the whales grieve, but they show amazing resilience, and so must me.

As the whales continued north, the waters were so glassy calm that we decided to hop in the boat and meet up with them north of Lime Kiln. The first whale we encountered was J19 Shachi, who seems to often be in the lead these days. We stopped to watch her forage while other whales were visible to the south. Eventually it looked like the whales decided to head southwest, and before she turned around she surprised us with one big, beautiful breach! Luckily I happened to have the camera ready, and snapped one of my favorite photos of the year.

Breach by J19 Shachi

Before leaving we saw some of the J17s, too, including a very active J53 Kiki.

Cartwheel from J53 Kiki

From their trajectory, I was afraid the whales might leave that night, but they snuck back north during the middle of the night and were found the next morning making their way back to the Fraser River. I caught up with them again on the morning of September 27th when they had looped back to Haro Strait again.

For a couple hours the whales were very spread north to south and east to west, all just milling. It was great to see so much active foraging behavior, with lunging whales in all directions.

I was having trouble figuring out who was who, and later when I took a closer look at my photos I realized why - the whales were all mixed up! By that I mean they weren't in their matrilineal family groups as they are most of the time, so there was no making assumptions about who was traveling with whom.

L82 Kasatka and J31 Tsuchi

Eventually the whales decided to head south, but very slowly against the strong flood tide. I was debating whether or not to leave (I was playing hooky from work, the whales were mostly very far offshore, and the wind was very cold!) when I spotted some blows just past the point to the north of the Lime Kiln Lighthouse. That decided it! I wasn't going anywhere.

The best sight: whales heading strait at you across the cove north of the lighthouse

 It was well worth the wait in the cold for this close pass by another mixed up group of Js and Ls including some of the J19s and J16s, the L72s, and L87. Moments like this are always special, but even more so this year when they were few and far between.

Kelping!

L87 Onyx

Tail slap from J36 Alki

L105 Fluke - getting so big!

Kelp on Onyx's tail

I love my versatile 18-300mm lens that can capture those close-up shots of kelping whales but that I can also quickly zoom out to capture more of the scene to show you the feel of just how close these whales are.

My friend Jimmie with J19 Shachi, J42 Echo, and J50 Scarlet

The day after this the Js and Ls split after nearly two weeks together, with Ls heading west and Js heading down for a quick visit to Puget Sound. Yesterday, September 29th, I was surprised to hear a late day report that J-Pod was at Salmon Bank off the south end of San Juan Island heading north in rough seas. We headed to Lime Kiln in hopes that they would make it that far before sunset. Some of them did, though they were still passing as darkness fell. It's always impressive to see the whales in big seas.

J16 Slick and J50 Scarlet

J42 Echo on the move

They continue north as night fell, meaning they're spending at least another couple days in the Salish Sea. As October arrives, I can only hope that we're treated to another great month of having the whales around. It seems to vary a lot from year to year how much they're here in October, but with the Southern Residents being scarce all summer, we're more than ready for a whale-filled fall!