March 26 and April 1 with J-Pod

We recently got our new boat (acquired last fall) launched, which means new photographic opportunities have opened up again as we get back out on the water! On our first test drive we went birding in Griffin Bay, and I snapped this shot of two mew gulls and reflections unlike any I had ever seen before:

 

So far to date in 2019 the Southern Residents have been in the Salish Sea about twice as many days as 2018, and we are happy to have them! On March 23, I had my first encounter with them in 2019. While it was a lot more hearing them over the hydrophones, we did see a couple whales in the morning from Land Bank. It was great to see J17 Princess Angeline, a whale who had been ailing (and had "peanut head") dated back to the end of last year, and while it wasn't the greatest look, it appeared she was doing a bit better.

J17 Princess Angeline

On March 26, less than a week after we got our new boat in the water, J-Pod was coming down San Juan Channel, and opportunity that was just too good to pass up! Ever since we got the boat last fall, we had been debating which whales might be the ones to "christen" the boat. Given the time of year and the way sightings have been with Southern Residents, we suspected it would likely be Ts, but it definitely felt right for it to be J-Pod.

J35 Tahlequah - It felt perfect to have her be the whale to "christen" the boat by breaching and spyhopping nearby

Spyhop, also from J35 Tahlequah

We always say every whale encounter was different, and this one was no exception - we saw two different whales peeing into the air while laying upside down at the surface! This is a behavior I've never seen before, and to see it twice in the span of about half an hour....please tell me this isn't their new "fad"!

If you are so inclined, you may need to click to see a larger view, but the upside down whale is urinating!

J-Pod only got about as far south as Yellow Island before turning back north again, so as they made their way back toward Boundary Pass and the Strait of Georgia, we headed back to our home port. If this spring was anything like last year's, I thought it might be weeks or months before seeing them again, but amazingly, on April 1 J-Pod was again picked up aiming for San Juan Channel! We hopped out on a boat with friends in the late afternoon and caught up with them just north of Friday Harbor.

The first group we saw was J36 Alki, J42 Echo, J19 Shachi, J27 Blackberry, and J31 Tsuchi following right along the San Juan shoreline. The lighting was just right for backlit blows (at times to the point where we could see the blows but not the whales!):

J27 Blackberry

From left to right J27 Blackberry, J36 Alki, and J19 Shachi

They passed right in front of Friday Harbor, which is always a cool perspective to see!

J27 Blackberry in front of Friday Harbor

As this group continued south, we stopped to watch J41 Eclipse and J51 Nova, who seemed in a playful mood, as we saw Nova do several breaches as they approached. As they got closer we saw Nova pick up a piece of bull kelp, and he spyhopped several times with it draped around his head or over his pec fins.

A peek-a-boo spyhop from J51 Nova - you can just make out a piece of bull kelp floating to the right of his head

On one of the spyhops he surfaced with his mouth open. I don't know what it is about whale teeth, but it is always SO exciting to see them!

J51 Nova, mouth open

It was definitely turning into a spyhop kinda night, and shortly after this one, J42 Echo popped up again, and also spyhopped with her mouth open, teeth showing.

Another mouth-open spyhop, this one from J42 Echo

The rest of J-Pod was starting to come into view over on the Shaw Island side of the channel, and the whales we were watching went over to join them. It turned into a large (~15 whales), slowly moving, playful group that was a joy to watch.

Spyhops for all on this night!

Not only was the lighting perfect, but the whales passed right under Mt. Baker. And, as if on cue, J35 Tahlequah did a huge cartwheel. It sure does the heart good to see her so social and active after her tragic ordeal last summer, in which she carried her deceased neonate for 17 days.

Amazingly, instead of continuing down San Juan Channel, the whales veered for Upright Channel, a place I had never seen Southern Residents go before! As they angled into the channel, they passed close to a Washington State Ferry heading for Friday Harbor.

The ferry didn't seem to interrupt the party at all, as all the surface activity continued.

Half breach from one of the big boys

Next we saw L87 Onyx, in what looked like a sexual pursuit of another whale. At first I thought it was J37 Hy'shqa he was after, but it turned out to be J45 Se-Yi'-Chn. Boys will be boys, and orcas will be orcas!

L87 Onyx upside down at the surface

Suddenly, Onyx veered off and came over to circle the boat, giving us a special up close look, complete with a "rainblow".

L87 Onyx creates a "rainblow"

We hung in the same area for quite a while, as several other pairs and trios of whales came by, spread across all of Upright Channel.

J26 Mike passed right off the point of Canoe Island

The leaders got up to about Upright Head, and it appeared to be decision time. Would they continue east towards Rosario, veer over to Harney Channel, or come back the way they had come? They eventually decided to head back west through Upright Channel, but amazingly they hugged the Shaw Island shoreline so close they went inside of Canoe Island and right into Indian Cove, a channel not only narrow, but according to the chart on board only 13 feet deep on high tide! It was time to head in, but we had to stay long enough to see if they were actually going to go all the way through there....they did!

The beautiful evening ended as it had begun, with picturesque backlit blows:

Winter Wildlife and December 2nd with J-Pod

Overall, the weather has been windy and rainy, not conducive to much outdoor activity. It hasn't stopped us from getting out there completely, as a couple weekend ago we went off island to do some birding, and successfully saw two different owl species.

Snowy owl at Sandy Point near Ferndale, WA

Short-eared owl hunting on Fir Island in Skagit County

With some family visiting over the Thanksgiving holiday, we went down to check out the foxes at South Beach. This one provided a welcome splash of color in an otherwise very gray landscape on a very gray day!

We've also been able to do a lot of bird-watching from the comfort of our own home due to some very active bird feeders, which we have been keeping a closer eye on than usual with the start of Project FeederWatch. Thanks to the counts we've been doing, we realize we get visits from about a dozen species a day totaling about 60 birds! The vast majority of these are a huge flock of juncos, but we also regularly get visits from four different species of woodpeckers.

Pair of hairy woodpeckers

Anna's hummingbirds have been steadily expanding their year-round range northward over the last couple decades. Ten years ago it was rare to have one overwinter on San Juan Island; now, it's commonplace. For the first time I'm getting them as regular visitors to our feeders during the winter. How do they survive without blooming flowers? These adaptive little guys eat insects and sap - though they aren't above sugar water, either!

Anna's hummingbird - in December!

This afternoon (December 2nd) we got word of orcas in San Juan Channel. They were heading away from us, but a bit later a friend on shore saw them turn around, so we headed out to Reuben Tarte county park to take a look. A few others were already there looking, and surprisingly, the first whales they pointed out to us were a pair of humpbacks! Shortly thereafter we spotted three orcas in the distance heading down San Juan Channel. They were spread out and far away, but since we didn't see any others, we assumed they were transients. Later in the afternoon, however, we got a chance to hop aboard a boat out of Friday Harbor with Maya's Legacy Whale Watching. We thought we needed to go a ways to catch up with them when I spotted a whale right near Point Caution just north of Friday Harbor. I zoomed in on the first photo I took and spotted a large "finger" on the saddle patch - something you don't see on transients! It was J17 Princess Angeline and her youngest J53 Kiki.

Surprise! Residents! J17 Princess Angeline and J53 Kiki in San Juan Channel

The whales were very spread out both north-south and across the channel, but slowly more and more came into view. It's amazing the energy and mood boost that comes from seeing whales, especially apparent this time of year when the winter dolrums have set in. 

J35 Tahlequah

J40 Suttles

Some of the whales practically went right into Friday Harbor! I've seen whales right near Friday Harbor from shore, but I've never had the opportunity to photograph resident killer whales with Friday Harbor in the background before. Another item off the orca photographer bucket list! ;)

As the daylight was fading the last two whales we saw approaching were L87 Onyx and J45 Se-Yi'-Chn. The colors of the sunset were becoming more spectacular and we were all crossing our fingers for a perfect surfacing from them in the amazing lighting. Of course, right when the sky looked like this they took a long dive.

Beautiful winter sunset....but what happened to the whales?

After surprising us by doubling back, we did finally get a look at the big male Onyx in front of Friday Harbor. The light had changed by then, but I'm not complaining - at least it wasn't dark yet! It was pretty awesome to see him right off the Friday Harbor ferry terminal, complete with ferry at the dock!

L87 Onyx and a ferry at the dock in Friday Harbor

Unexpectedly seeing J-Pod and L87 was a thrill that helped make up for the long stretch of dreary days. Luckily it looks like there's a lot of sunshine in our near future, so hopefully I will have more photos to share again before long!

June 25th: The T123s, T36As, and T75Bs in Boundary Pass

After being around for a few days early in the month, the Southern Residents have again proven scarce. This is starting to feel a lot like the summer of 2013, when they were hardly around at all. On a few days, some residents have just poked their heads in, presumably to check things out, before leaving and heading west again less than 24 hours later. On June 18th, it was a sub-group of L-Pod that came in as far as Lime Kiln before heading west again.

Members of the L4 matriline came into mid Haro Strait, barely making it north of Lime Kiln before turning and porpoising back south again

It was nice to see them, however briefly, including numerous spectacular breaches by L82 Kasatka:

On June 23rd, the stars finally aligned for me to see orcas right from our houseboat in Friday Harbor! It's not often orcas come right inside of Brown Island, and despite having the houseboat in the family for the last 13 years, I've never managed to be here when the whales come through. That all changed as I lived out something I've dreamed of experiencing for years! I really only saw one surfacing from pretty far away, but it was still awesome, and I have a photo to document it:

As they left Friday Harbor and turned north up San Juan Channel, we hurried over to the Friday Harbor Labs property where we saw them again, getting a little better view this time of the T73As, a group of transients I had never seen until this year.

T73A with her sprouter son T73A1

Today, with no reports of whales anywhere nearby but sunny skies and calm seas, the Orca Behavior Institute crew decided to head out anyway since we haven't been on the boat in a long time. Maybe all we needed to do was get out on the water anyway! It wasn't long after we left before we heard about two different groups of transients heading south from up north. It was still a bit of a trip for us, but with whale sightings being more limited for us this year, it was worth the effort!

First we caught up with the T123s near Skipjack Island.

Male T123A

They were looping all over the place. First they seemed to be aiming for President's Channel, but then they followed along the north side of Waldron to Sandy Point. Just when it looked like they might aim south to San Juan Channel, they flipped north again, then went west, and finally east across Boundary Pass. For whatever reason, they decided not to intercept the other group of transients that had just made their way down Swanson Channel.

Crossing Boundary Pass is fun in calm waters, but you had better keep an eye out for those freighters!

With the T123s getting more and more unpredictable, we headed over to the other group heading east along Pender Bluffs, made up of the T36As and T75Bs - six whales including two one year olds. They were all slowly traveling in a tight group, and with their more predictable surfacings it was easier to get a good view and snap some photos.

T36A

T36A and one year old T36A3

The T36As

T75B

It was nice to get a look at little T75B2 - who is actually quite a bit bigger than when I first saw him/her as a two week old calf back in April 2015!

When we decided to peel off and head home, they were just at the bottom of Plumper Pass, seemingly undecided as to whether to head north or continue east. If the seas were anything but flat we wouldn't have been able to venture so far from home. I checked out on the map after getting back, and it turns out with all the looping around Boundary Pass we traveled about 45 miles on Serenity today! It was a great christening trip for the new name decals we just got on the boat this morning:

Back at the harbor after about four and a half hours on the water, I had to whip out the camera one more time to snap a few photos of these Canada geese goslings in the bay:

It was a great day that finally felt like summer, but despite seeing lots of orcas, it still doesn't feel right not having our Southern Residents around!

Something Different: Street Photography

 I've really enjoyed getting into street photography in the last couple of months, and while this is a bit of a shift for a blog post topic for me, I've realized taking candid photos of people is really just the art of capturing urban wildlife! Many of the same techniques come into play; you have to be patient, do lots of exploring, train your eye to look for things other people miss, and in general just be ready for whatever might be around the next corner! I'll continue to focus on wildlife here, but if you want to follow more of my street photography, you can follow my page on 500px.

A friend recently lent me the book Street Photography Now, which has great essays and over 300 photos by world-famous street photographers. Some quotes in the book particularly stood out to me, and captured what street photography is starting to mean to me. I've interspersed them below with some of my favorite photos I've taken over the last few months. All these photos were taken with my Ricoh GR IV.

"At a time when staged narratives and rendered images are popular, I am excited by the fact that life itself offers situations far more strange and beautiful than anything I could set up." - Melanie Einzig

"Above all, street photography communicates empathy. It shows the elegance, and the occasional absurdities, which inhabit the lives of ordinary people." - David Gibson 

"Photographing in public keeps me awake and aware, always looking around, in awe at what we humans are up to." - Melanie Einzig

"To see the complexity of life on the street is for me a kind of meditation." -Sigfried Hansen

"Street photography is like gambling. You get lucky or you get nothing." - Markus Hartel

 "Street photographers never switch off. You have to be constantly on the lookout for the unreal moment in the everyday." - Jesse Marlow

"I believe that the photographer's job is to cut a frame-sized slice out of the world around him, so faithfully and honestly that if he were to put it back, life and the world would begin to move again without a stumble." - Raghu Rai

"My personal pictures don't have to 'do' anything. They don't have to sell in a gallery or sit well beside the ads in a magazine. I don't have to make pictures that are easily categorized. They are not reportage. They are just pictures about life." - Nick Turpin 

"I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner." - Alex Webb