July 3 - July 9th Whales

On July 3rd, with more friends in town for the holiday weekend, we headed out to Lime Kiln and got lucky to be there for a J-Pod passby. In particular, J35 Tahlequah and her son J47 Notch were a spectacular sight as they breached repeatedly on their way past the lighthouse:

J35 Tahlequah

J47 Notch

J35 Tahlequah

On July 6th, after a long day at work, I headed out to Lime Kiln again and was treated to a pass by members of all three pods - about 60 whales. They were mostly quite a ways offshore, but any time you get to see that many whales traveling all together it's a pretty special treat. The lighting was bizarre as a result of all the regional wildfires.

K26 Lobo

Four L-Pod whales hadn't visited inland waters with their usual group earlier this summer - L72 Racer, L105 Fluke, L90 Muncher, and L92 Crewser. In early July they made their first visit, and I got to see them for the first time on this evening.

The distinct dorsal fin of L92 Crewser silhouetted in the strange orange lighting of a smokey sunset

The L4s on the left and L95 Nigel on the right

Lots of whales! :)

On July 9th, this time with some family visiting, we again went out to Lime Kiln for sunset, hoping to see whales. Bingo! Part of J- and K-Pods swam by, with the smokey skies again providing a stunning and unusual backdrop.

After a week of great shore-based whale encounters, and striking out when going out looking on the boat, I was ready for another research trip on the boat. Things would come together for just that on July 11th - stay tuned for my next post.

July 2nd: Western Explorer Trip With Friends!

My Orca Behavior Institute partner Michael and I both had lots of friends and family coming into town for the 4th of July holiday weekend, so I booked a whale watch charter on the Western Explorer, the zodiac I used to work on. Since some visitors didn't make it in time for the trip, I invited some other whale friends along, and we ended up going out with an awesome group of people!

All geared up for the Western Explorer

It also turned out to be the perfect opportunity to get a photo of "Team OBI". While we've gotten some generous financial support at the Orca Behavior Institute, we've also had several friends volunteer their time and skills to help us out. You can read a bit more about some of our team members on the newest page on our website. 

Team OBI - Back row from left to right: Brittany, Keith, Cindy, Sara, and Julie. Front row: Yours truly and OBI co-founder Michael.

While we all enjoy educating the public about the whales and other local wildlife, we also enjoy the chance to "fake naturalize" among ourselves, when we get to make up all the fake answers we're sometimes tempted to give to tourist questions. For now I'll leave those questions and answers to your imagination ;)

On our way out to the whales we went by the smoldering Goose Island, a Nature Conservancy Preserve that was accidentally set on fire by illegal fireworks. After two attempts to put it out, the local fire fighters decided to let it burn itself out, as the fire had gotten into the ground and with the dry conditions and local winds was proving almost impossible to fully extinguish. (It was also a forewarning of what was to come: on July 5th we woke up to bizarre hazy brown skies caused by an abundance of local wildfires that rendered the outside world a living sepia photograph.) Amazingly, while many nests were destroyed, several gull chicks survived and other nests were still occupied. Same with the black oystercatchers and pelagic cormorants, showing their resilience in a still-burning landscape. While the double-crested cormorant nests didn't burn, they did appear to abandon all breeding efforts for this season.

Smoldering Goose Island

Out in the straits, we stopped to check out a pair of minke whales before heading towards the orcas. I don't get to see these guys as much as I used to, so it was fun to get a close look at them again. I sent my sightings to the Northeast Pacific Minke Whale Project - you can do the same with any of your minke whale sightings! They don't get out on the water as much as they would like, so citizen science reports really help their studies. They think the whale in the first photo is a young animal, perhaps even a young of the year.

Up near False Bay, just as the evening lighting was getting golden, we came across the orcas.

The first group of whales we saw was the J2s.

J37 Hy'shqa

J2 Granny

Next up were the J2s' favorite travel companions of the summer: the K14s.

K26 Lobo

One thing that's great about having the camera out to photograph whales is the other photo ops you get along the way - like this common murre.

The whales foraged close to shore for a while as we watched them from offshore.

K26 Lobo and Mt. Baker

Before it was time to leave, the whales pulled offshore and started milling around closer to us.

Another shot of a common murre - this one being startled by an orca

There's absolutely nothing better than sunset whales:

All in all it was a great evening out with friends, and a beautiful ride back to the harbor.

Washington State Ferry heading into Friday Harbor

Birds and a Boat Fire at the South End

Despite a weather forecast to the contrary, today turned out to be a pretty nice day - windy, but sunny - and this evening was the same. It was a beautiful time to head down to South Beach.

The first thing I saw out on the beach was an intact dead common murre. We don't get many stranded sea birds in the San Juan Islands, so I kind of wished I had found it on my COASST beach! Maybe someone else will find it and tag it.

There were lots of (live) gulls about, mostly glaucous-winged and Heermann's. This looks to me like an immature glacous-winged gull, but I should probably let the gull expert Dave chime in to make sure.

The most exciting find was a lone sandpiper. It took some deliberating and the consulting of multiple field guides, but I've identified it as a fall juvenile sanderling. The bird looks remarkably similar to a semipalmated sandpiper, but after comparing to some additional photos and also given its size I've decided it's a sanderling. There have been fantastic shorebird reports from further south in the Puget Sound area, so I'm glad to get some migratory shorebird action up here too!

As we were leaving South Beach, we pulled over to check out a boat that was on fire in Griffin Bay. As we watched the fire boat came from Friday Harbor and put it out. I wonder what happened?

The seas were pretty rough out there by the looks of it, and I heard a fishing boat was sinking in the Cattle Pass area as well, so it was a good day to be on land! 

There have been a few whale-less days here, a rarity this summer. The Southern Residents had been in inland waters for 80 days straight before making a journey out to the open ocean. The word was they were heading back in this evenings though, so tomorrow could be a good day to be back out on the water and looking for whales!

Js (and the L12s!) Off the Pender Islands

Lately I have seen a lot of jumping fish in the area - both large salmon and smaller bait fish. The word is the fish runs are strong this year and that is great news for all the local marine wildlife. In the last few days I have seen many bait balls and multiple minke whales, which are undoubtedly enjoying the schooling fish. Here is one rhinoceros auklet I saw today:

The good salmon runs are likely responsible for the fact that orca sightings continue to be fantastic. This afternoon we headed north and caught up with J-Pod just as they passed Turn Point and started crossing Boundary Pass. With the beautiful clear weather this made for some great photo-ops with Mt. Baker in the background. This shot shows J1 Ruffles in the foreground:

We followed the whales across Boundary Pass to the Pender Islands in Canada. They were spread out over a couple of miles but the first group we spent time with included J1 Ruffles, J2 Granny, and the entire J14 family group. As I scanned the waters it seemed reasonable to assume we had most if not all of J-Pod in the area. Next we came across J8 Spieden:

J8 Spieden was rolling around on the surface with a male, who I thought was J26 Mike. Nearby were J19 Shachi and J41 Eclipse, so at the time it seemed like we still had just J-Pod whales in the area. Not so! After I got home and looked at my photos closer, I noticed that L12 Alexis was traveling right with J19 Shachi. That made me doubt my original ID, and sure enough it turns out the male playing with J8 Spieden was actually L79 Skana! So at least some L-Pod whales were there too! Here's L79 Skana, who was right behind J8 Spieden, at time swimming upside down underneath her:

It's never safe to make assumptions when it comes to the whales, because as soon as you think you know what they're going to do they do something completely different and surprise you. I'm still puzzling over some of my photos to figure out who all was there today!

For a while we continued to follow the whales slowly north, and several of them were right along the shoreline maybe just yards from shore. Before it was time for us to leave, however, a few of them pulled a little further offshore and started getting much more active, which was a great joy to watch. Here is L79 Skana surfacing in front of another male doing an inverted tail slap:

I recently posted a sequence of photos showing a female whale spyhopping followed shortly thereafter by her calf. Today we saw one better, a mom and calf spyhopping simultaneously! I think it was J35 Talequah and her first-born calf J47:

The last group of whales we saw came by at high speed, porpoising out of the water and creating huge splashes. I think this whale is L85 Mystery:

On the way home we passed what looked like it may have been a wildfire on Stuart Island, and a little later we saw a fire boat heading out that way. I hope everything is okay out there!

Lime Kiln in November

Early yesterday evening a blanket of fog started to descend on the islands, and it never really lifted all the way today making for very gray weather. Still, with no rain or wind, I was drawn outside and we decided to go out to Lime Kiln State Park to see what there was to see. There were an amazing abundance of sea birds out, most of them lounging in loose rafts on the extremely calm water. I saw kingfishers, loons, cormorants, harlequin ducks, auklets, murrelets, guillemots, gulls, and even this group of common mergansers that flew overhead:

There weren't many people out, but I did come across some of the park staff tending a large brush fire. They had actually taken down several madrone and other trees in order to open up vistas, especially from the upper trail since not all visitors can navigate the trail down to the lighthouse. It definitely looked a lot different and will take some getting used to! Historically, there were no trees at all between the upper buildings where the lighthouse keepers lived and the lighthouse itself, so they could keep a constant watch on the tower and the straights. The lighthouse was actually designed so that the light at the top would flash right into the keepers' bedroom windows. Luckily, with an automated lighthouse, that no longer has to be the case, since there are some beautiful trees in the vicinity!

This will also be the first post I link on Birdfreak.com, a bird conservation site that has a weekly post for its readers to reference their own posted bird photos, with a goal of getting as many species as possible represented in a given week. I just learned about the site today from Vickie Henderson's blog, where she documents many of her own local bird sightings, down in Tennessee posts some of her artwork, and follows the trials and tribulations of the endangered whooping crane.