Abundant Wildlife at the End of December

Normally I associate this time of year with bad weather, short days, and hunkering down inside, but the last week has proven that wildlife in this region can be epic regardless of the season!

On December 21 we headed out on the water with friends before taking off for the Christmas holiday, and were surprised to find an active group of 10+ humpbacks in the Strait of Georgia. Humpbacks, like transient killer whales, were rare when I first started spending time here in the early 2000s, but both have been increasing dramatically in recent years. Even with the recent influx of humpbacks, we expect them to be gone and off to their breeding grounds by December, but perhaps with the increasing population some of them will start staying year-round. Things are changing so fast in the Salish Sea!

The first group we came across of about half a dozen whales was super active at the surface: breaching, lunging, tail slapping, and trumpeting. My friends who have seen humpbacks at their breeding grounds said it looked like a male rowdy group; it makes sense their hormones might be kicking in even if they haven't left for warmer waters! These types of behavior are amazing to see regardless of the season in the Salish Sea, but even more astounding given that it was December!

BCX1233 "Coon"

MMX0047 "Bullet"

There were several "new to me" humpbacks in the group, including one that particularly caught my eye due to the very white flukes:

BCZ0297 "Pulteney"

It turns out this sighting was extra cool, because this was the first time this whale was documented in the southern Strait of Georgia/Salish Sea!

You may be wondering about the humpback naming system, both the alphanumeric designations and the common names. The "BC" refers to whales that have been added to British Columbia/DFO humpback whale catalogue. The X, Y and Z refers to how much black or white there is on the tail: “X” = less than 20% white; “Y” = 20 to 80% white; and “Z” = more than 80% white. The common names come from various sources, but in the case of Pulteney, it's in reference to the Pulteney Lighthouse on Malcolm Island off Northern Vancouver Island. Not only is this where this whale is commonly seen, but the dark marking between the white flukes looks like a lighthouse.

But there were more than just humpbacks up there in the Strait of Georgia! We also got to check out the impressive sea lion (both Steller and California) haul out at the Belle Chains, and a pair of eagles in perfect lighting on a nearby rock.

A very vocal pup!

California sea lions - uncommon in the San Juans, but there were plenty of them up on this BC haul out!

Sea lions always have the best facial expressions >.<

After a trip down to Portland to visit family and friends for Christmas, we are now back in wildlife mode up north, and today spent time with the bald eagles that congregate along the Nooksack River in the winter to take advantage of the spawning chum salmon. I've been here a couple of times before and it never disappoints, but it was awesome to have more time to spend today. While it's impossible to capture in the photos the experience of having ~50 eagles visible in all directions, the shots speak for themselves in terms of the kinds of behavior that can be witnessed here!

Very close fly-by from an immature

Probably my favorite shot from the morning encounter - the smaller/compressed version really doesn't do it justice, but hopefully it gives you an idea!

Lots of multi-eagle interactions

This one is taking flight with a salmon carcass

I feel so lucky to live in such an amazing part of the world where there is so much wildlife to watch. Here's hoping 2020 starts off with some amazing encounters as well, but it will be hard to top the end of 2019!

The Trek to 157

With only a short time to go before leaving the island for the holidays (and thus the rest of the calendar year), I renewed my efforts to find a few target species I thought I could add to the county list in my quest to reach 157 species and best the existing record for species seen in a year. (I bet people have probably seen more species in a year, but 156 is the number on record with Washington Birder, so that's the number I'm trying to best.)

Thayer's gull is one species I knew I should be able to get. It's a hard one to find, not because it's not here, but because it looks so similar to several other gull species. It most often gets compared to the herring gull, but I think it looks almost exactly like our western x glaucous-winged gull hybrids that are fairly common regionally. I studied up all the details of identification and went out with the specific purpose of studying gulls. 

I found this gull in Griffin Bay and have concluded its a Thayer's gull due to the three features indicated with the arrows. The blue arrow shows the dark (almost black) primaries - darker than those of a glaucous-winged or hybrid gull, but not jet black as in other gulls. The red arrow points to the shape of the forehead - on this gull it is more rounded, whereas in western and glaucous-winged gulls the forehead is flatter. Finally, the green arrow is pointing to the bill. On Thayer's gulls, the base of the bill is a pale yellow while the tip is bright yellow, as on this gull (it's more apparent on a zoomed in version of the photo). In glaucous-winged and western gulls, the bill is almost a school bus yellow throughout. So - Thayer's gull (153 for San Juan County, year bird 202)!

I got an e-mail from an ace birder, Ryan, inquiring about the details of the San Juan snowy owl sighting from a couple weekends ago. He came up to the San Juans last weekend, and in a couple of days turned up more than 100 species including 7 or 8 that would be county birds for me. (He also heard a long-eared owl, very rare for here, and a species that would be a life bird for me! More on that later.) In the process, he also pushed his own county list for the year to 161 - better than the existing record of 156! Uh oh! Realized 162 was probably out of reach for me, I decided to take advantage of some of the great sightings Ryan reported and still push towards my original goal of 157.....

One day after work, I headed out to look for the ruddy duck he saw on Sportsman Lake. Most of the ducks were on the far side of the lake, and as is often the case when I go out looking for a specific species, I didn't find it. I did, however, finally find my northern shoveler (154) - not just one, but a flock of 15 right up close! While continuing my circuit of the lakes and ponds in the center of the island, I also found a singled cackling goose (155) in with a flock of Canada geese.

Yesterday my birding pal Phil came over to San Juan and we had a couple of hours to tour around the island and see what we could turn up. Our first stop of the day was again at Sportsman Lake, and this time the ruddy duck (156) was close enough to be identified! Some other highlights from the rest of our afternoon included an American kestrel along Bailer Hill Road, a northern shrike at Cattle Point, and six ancient murrelets in Cattle Pass. By the end of the day, we totaled nearly 50 species in the 2.5 hours birding.

This morning I decided to try for the long-eared owl that Ryan heard at American Camp in the early hours of last Sunday. This is a rare species for the region, and as far as I know, there haven't been any prior confirmed reports of healthy birds on San Juan Island. I say healthy birds because twice, once in 1987 and once in 2010, long-eared owls were found on the island but were sick or injured and had to be taken to the local wildlife rehab center. It's not often I set my alarm earlier for a Saturday than I do for a work day, but this seemed like a worthy cause.

It was still completely dark when I arrived and it was a little bit eerie walking out through the forest towards the prairie. I spend about half an hour walking up and down between the two habitats, listening carefully. Not long after I got there an owl did give me a close fly-by, startling me enough that I jumped. I'm assuming it was probably the expected short-eared owl, but who knows for sure!

As soon as it started becoming light more and more birds began chirping, peeping,  and calling. My first species of the day was actually a bald eagle!

Since I was up and out anyway, and this is a good time of day for birding, I decided to continue further to the south end of the island and see if I could find anything else interesting. As soon as I was pulling into the road to South Beach, however, my attention was diverted from birds to what turned into a pretty darn spectacular sunrise:

The sun itself came into view just as I crested the rise heading towards the Cattle Point Lighthouse:

While watching the sunrise, a flock of 15 ravens came by. Here are a few of them:

There were a pair of red-tailed hawks and a northern harrier patrolling the prairie near the lighthouse. The waters were rougher than I expected off of Cattle Pass, but I was still able to find the expected surf scoters and bufflehead as well as a Pacific loon, a red-necked grebe, several pigeon guillemots, and a half dozen red-breasted mergansers among the choppy surf.

After having been out birding for close to two hours, I decided to head home. I got in the car, started the engine, and did a U-turn to head back to town. I immediately stepped on the brakes. Kiting right above the middle of the road, about 50 feet in the air, was a rough-legged hawk (157) - an incarnation of the birding spirit and my quest for that one more species. I'm often pretty reserved, but I'll admit that I whooped in excitement at this white hawk in the sky. As I've written in previous posts, while I keep a lot of bird lists, I wouldn't saying listing is my main motivation for birding. I set goals and try to reach them, but I won't go the extremes some do to add that one more species. I would be fine if I stayed at 156 species for the county for the year, and not just because Ryan's already bested that mark all the way to 161. Still, there was something magical in just being ready to pack it in for the day, turning around, and having that one more species literally hovering right in front of me, lit up by the golden light of the sunrise. In one sense, it was just another hawk. In another, it's a bird I will never forget.

West Side Feeding Frenzy

I went out to Land Bank this afternoon for an hour to see what activity was going in Haro Strait. The first thing I noticed when I arrived was all the sport fishing vessels out there, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, I saw there was lots of wildlife taking advantage of what looked like good fishing on this first day of October.

A couple of rhinoceros auklets were diving, and about twenty gulls were taking advantage of the resulting bait ball from the surface. In the mixed species flock were glaucous-winged, Heermann's, mew, and California gulls. Several harbor seals were in the vicinity, and offshore I heard and then saw a Steller sea lion surfacing. Closer to the rocks, a group of four harlequin ducks were diving and feeding, too.

Shortly after that a group of about 10 Dall's porpoise started surfacing. Despite being chilly and a little drizzly, the water was calm and it was quiet enough that I could hear their breathing from a quarter-mile away. One of the porpoise looked a little different from the others, and I think the top of its dorsal fin was missing. I recalled seeing a porpoise like this before, so I came home and looked at my photos. Here's the porpoise I saw in October of 2009, almost in exactly the same spot that I saw the group of porpoise today:

The porpoise is swimming from right to left in the above photo, but since it can still be hard to figure out exactly what you're looking at here unless you've seen lots of Dall's porpoise, here's a comparison shot. This porpoise is in nearly the same surfacing position, but has a complete dorsal fin:

I wonder if it was the exactly same animal with the chopped fin that I saw today? It seems plausible, especially since it's the same time of year and the same place. We're spoiled a little with the orcas that can each individually be identified. Sometimes I wonder more about the individual lives and habits of our regional Dall's and harbor porpoise, that we don't get to observe or study in such detail. Dall's porpoise can live to be 15-20 years old. Locally, they used to be common all summer, until the last couple of years when they seem to leave the area in the summertime until returning in great numbers in September.

Too bad the chopped-fin porpoise today was a little too far away for a photo, but I'll keep an eye out for it over the next few weeks to see if it's hanging around.

By the way, did I mention I saw all the wildlife listed in this blog post in about 10 minutes? It was quite a feeding frenzy out there! The orcas were around, too, but well to the south out of view, where I heard that they were also foraging.

Jellyfish Invasion

There have been thousands and thousands of tiny jellyfish in the marina this week. They seem to come in waves - sometimes the ocean is full of them and other times you can only see a few individuals. Yesterday and today I spent some time on my hands and knees at the edge of the dock (with camera in hand, of course) to take a closer look, and I was surprised to see no fewer than six different species. My cnidaria ID skills are very amateur, so I'm definitely looking for input if anyone knows more than I do about my tentative species identifications.

The most abundant species is the aggregating jelly (Eutonia indicans), shown here against both a dark and a light background:

The next most abundant species, that really seems to come in waves, is the thimble jellyfish (Sarsia spp.):

The only one of these species I have seen before is the cross jelly (Mitrocoma cellularia), which has been abundant in recent summers though completely absent in years prior to that:

Now come the three I'm not so sure of, and which I only saw in very small numbers. I think this might be a water jelly species (Aequorea spp.). It doesn't seem to quite have enough "spokes", but it's the closest I can come with my Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds And Selected Fishes field guide:

This one might be a hanging stomach jelly (Stomotoca atra). If it is, as the name suggests that would be the stomach hanging out of the bell, surrounded by the lips.

Finally, and this is another tentative ID but also another great example of why jellyfish common names are awesome, the closest I can come on this one is the blob-top jelly (Neoturris breviconis):

As with most wildlife viewing efforts, you end up seeing more than your "target" species. While taking such a close look at the water I also found this coonstripe shrimp (Pandalus danae) sitting on this giant plumose anemone (Metridium farcimen):

Gull Debate and Year List Check-In

Mark Lewis, co-author of Birding in the San Juan Islands, left a comment on my recent Whidbey Island blog post questioning the ID of the gull in the photo I posted. I identified this gull as a western gull, but he suggested it might be a Thayer's gull:

After closer examination and a little research, I'm still doubtful it is a Thayer's gull for the following reasons: A) The bill does not show a two-tone greenish tinge, B) the legs are not a deep pink, C) the head shape is more flat than rounded, and D) the underside of the far primary is not pure white (see Greg Gillson's discussion here). However, I'm now wondering if it couldn't be a herring gull? Or a glaucous x western hybrid? Your input encouraged.

Is anyone else starting to think that maybe most or all of the Larus gulls should be considered one species? Once I'm getting into reading about all these hybrids and back-crossings, I've got to wonder.

Regardless of the final conclusion on this gull's identity, I for the time being am going to keep it #114 on the year list. Thus I closed out January with 114 birds on the year list, 14 species above my goal and a whopping 27 species above last year's January total.

The only other bird I've added since then is this greater yellowlegs (15) I saw at Jackson Beach yesterday:

I also went for a walk at British Camp today, but was unable to find the varied thrush that has eluded me thus far this year.

Next up, a couple more marine science notes of interest, plus a report back after checking in with some other gull references.

Cool Whale Shark Photo Identification Project

One reason we've learned in recent years that K and L Pods make trips down off the coast of California in the winter time is that individuals are relatively easy to ID. Whale watchers out of Monterey Bay, for instance, take photos of dorsal fins and saddle patches when they see a group of orcas, and if they don't match the local whales they recognize they can send the photos up to the Center for Whale Research, which keeps the catalog of Southern Residents. Even the untrained observer can quickly see the difference between and open and closed saddle patch:

The challenges of tracking individuals are much greater, however, with other species that don't have such easily discernible unique markings. I recently came across a website that has taken an innovative approach to helping researchers track whale sharks. EcoOcean maintains a whale shark photo identification website, where divers from all over the world can upload photos of whale sharks they see. Since it's a popular species divers search for world wide, they are well-photographed. Then, the online database matches the unique spot patterns on individuals to other known animals, and creates a list of sightings for each whale shark. Much like SETI, you can even donate your unused computer time to helping the database match photos by using SharkGrid.