Within 10 Feet

Today I decided to try and find as many species of all types that I could within 10 feet in any direction of the houseboat. I surveyed the area about once an hour between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM, took some photos, discovered you can use binoculars quite well to look at deeper intertidal life, and spent some time with a stack of field guides. In total, I came up with about 40 species - here's how they broke down:

Birds

Glaucous-winged gull

Belted kingfisher

Rock pigeon

Pine siskin

Dark-eyed junco

Rock pigeon

Flowering plants

Licorice fern

Two unidentified tiny, weedy species

Licorice fern

Seaweeds

Bull kelp

Rockweed

Eelgrass

Sea cabbage

Seersucker kelp

At least one other type of kelp-like seaweed

At least one type of sea lettuce (Ulva spp.)

At least one type of brown tuft seaweed 

At least one type of filamentous red seaweed (of which there are about 60 local species that can only be distinguished microscopically)

Amazingly this shot shows almost all the different types of seaweed at once

Mosses 

Five species, including probably:

Juniper moss

Red bryum

Moss species

Lichens

At least four species, including potentially:

Xantharia sp.

Hypogymnia sp.

Lichen species

Arachnids

One type of orb spider

Invertebrates

Blue mussel

Acorn barnacle

California sea cucumber

Orange sea cucumber

Giant plumose anemone

Giant green anemone

Red-trumpet calcareous tubeworm

Ochre star

Monterey sea lemon (a type of nudibranch)

Graceful decorator crab

Kelp crab - perhaps Pugettia gracilis

Giant rock scallop

One shrimp species

One unknown crab-like species (see photo)

Giant plumose anemone

California sea cucumber

Two kelp crabs, possibly graceful kelp crabs (Pugettia gracilis)

The coolest find of the day, a small species with a big name that I hadn't noticed before - red-trumpet calcareous tubeworm

Another red-trumpet calcareous tubeworm - they ranged in color from all white to all red or any level of mixed banding between the two colors

The unknown crab-like species, about the size of a thumb nail. Any ideas??

And a last minute addition!

Mammals
Mink

Sightings Update

I had a few sightings I wanted to log here before leaving on the main part of my trip.....

Last weekend J-Pod made a trip around San Juan Island, and I got a very distant look at them for my first orca sighting of 2012. While looking for them, I also saw my first Pacific loon (108) of the year.

An interesting sighting off the front porch this week was of a nudibranch species I hadn't seen before. My memory of the field guide told me it might be a sea peach - I was close, but when I looked it up it was actually called a sea lemon! (A sea peach is in a different marine invertebrate family entirely). It's a poor picture, but here it is:

Yesterday was the first leg of our trip - the drive to Portland. I made a side trip through Fir Island in Skagit County to see the flocks of snow geese (109), and was successful in finding a flock of about 1000!

Then this morning, I got to see the impressive flock of 60+ pine siskins (110) that visits my parents' bird feeders. Here's a portion of them:

Next up, we're getting on a train and heading south to California! It should bring plenty more sightings to report, and hopefully some better photos than the ones posted here!

A Nudibranch and A Crow

During this, our last week of running trips on the boat, some of my coolest sightings have been on the dock to and from the boat.

There is one particular dock piling that seems to be a favorite of nudibranchs. Earlier this month I shared a photo of a golden dirona I saw there, but this week I found a clown dorid (Triopha catalinae):

I usually don't take much notice of the crows that hang out on the dock, but this one caught my eye. I had to do a double-take and and compare it to another nearby crow to confirm, but it was definitely missing the tip of its beak! Take a look:

It's hard to tell without taking a closer look, so here's a comparison with a normal crow's beak:

This makes the third blog post featuring an animal missing a body part. If you missed the other two, they were a fox without a tail and a Dall's porpoise without a dorsal fin. It's amazing to me how they're able to adapt and survive after such an injury, especially in the case of the crow. You've also got to wonder what kind of bind they got themselves into to end up this way! Any theories?

Golden Dirona Nudibranch

The other day when we got back to the dock, my friend and fellow naturalist Sarah found this nudibranch on one of the dock pilings. Nudibranchs, or sea slugs, are mollusks, so are somewhat surprisingly in the same phylum as chitons, clams, octopi, and squids. There are several different colorful species of nudibranch that can be seen locally. This one is a golden dirona (Dirona aurantia). Members of the Dirona genus are identified by the large, soft "spines" that grow off the back called cerata, and it is through these appendages that oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange occurs.