Kicking off the 2018 Year List

It's hard to believe we're already nearly three weeks into 2018! I've been busy birding - at least when the weather allows - and so far am up to 84 species on the "traditional" year list and 70 species on my photo year list. First bird of the year was an Anna's hummingbird at our feeder. They've been overwintering for about a decade now but this is the first time I've had them in the winter.

Anna's hummingbird - I don't know how they do it this time of year

Second bird of the year, a red-breasted nuthatch, is also still in the lead for cutest photo of 2018:

A little puff ball of a red-breasted nuthatch

It's been a treat having three woodpecker species regularly come to the feeders (downy, hairy, and northern flicker). I'm still waiting for a red-breasted sapsucker to show up, but no complaints about getting to watch these guys up close on a daily basis.

Female hairy woodpecker

Thankfully on January 1st, for my traditional day of birding, we even got some sunshine! One of the best birds of the day was this snow goose in with the Canada geese near Roche Harbor.

On January 3rd the birding was briefly interrupted for my first orcas of 2018. I've only seen killer whales once in the month of January before, so this was a pretty special treat! While J-Pod is still occasionally coming through the area, this was actually transients: the T100s, T124As, and T124C.

T124C off the west side of San Juan Island on January 3

As great as the birding is in the San Juans this time of year, especially with sea birds, there are a lot of species on the nearby mainland that just don't frequently visit. During the first weekend of the year, we headed for a day trip off island. First up was a quick pass through Skagit Flats. Sadly we heard but did not see the rare blue jay that is still hanging out near Bow, but we did quickly locate the also-unusual prairie falcon nearby.

Prairie falcon in Skagit Flats

The main goal of the day was to visit Semiahmoo, a spit near Blaine, Washington that I've never visited before. We had recently seen some amazing photos from there, including one a day or two before we visited where literally thousands of dunlin covered the whole spit. It was a pretty gray day and there were no dunlin in sight, but we still added lots of new species including sanderling.

I also got an unexpected photo op of a Pacific wren. I heard something in a bush and "pished" at it, and he or she immediately jumped out into the open to investigate me as the source of the sound. This is probably the best photo I've ever taken of a Pacific wren, as they are usually fast-moving and buried behind branches.

While we didn't see a huge abundance of birds at Semiahmoo (although there were a lot of white-winged scoters, more than I've ever seen in once place before), we did get a good variety. A couple of the best looks were at this female long-tailed duck, and while watching her, a common loon popped up very close.

Female long-tailed duck

Common loon

Last weekend remained gray, but that didn't stop us from trying to add a few more. The best add for me was this Hutton's vireo, an uncommon year-round resident, but one I didn't manage to photograph in all of 2017.

Hutton's vireo! A 2017 nemesis bird checked off early in 2018

Then we were treated to a much-needed couple days of beautiful winter sunshine. Even though our couple of hikes didn't turn up much in the way of birds, it felt great to soak up some light.

Beautiful afternoon at Granny's Cove

Thanks to a tip from a friend, we were able to locate one short-eared owl at American Camp, on the opposite side of the prairie where I used to see them in years past. For whatever reason it doesn't seem like there are as many of them down there as there used to be. This one was being harassed by a northern harrier. That's the harrier up top and the short-eared owl beneath. The owl had been perched, and after doing this barrel roll fell about halfway down the tree before catching another branch to perch on.

Harrier harasses short-eared owl at American Camp

There's been a lot of aerial acrobatics lately - today I caught this pair of bald eagles in what I presume was courtship behavior.

Bald eagle barrel rolls

There was supposed to be a break in the weather today; maybe it was, since it didn't rain and the wind wasn't blowing gale force. It was still pretty dark but with a major storm system coming we took the opportunity to make a quick jaunt over to Orcas Island. While waiting for the ferry we spotted this very cooperative juvenile Cooper's hawk at the Port of Friday Harbor.

This is not a bird that would come to mind when I think of beautiful birds, but seeing it up close, the detailing on the feathers was just remarkable, particularly those little teardrop streaks on the breast.

While birding from the ferry I was shocked to spot a turkey vulture flying over Shaw Island. This species is common here in the summer, and while I've heard about a couple of birds that regularly overwinter on Lopez, I've never seen one here off-season. This was a hastily shot proof of presence photo through the window of the ferry, but enough to document this surprising find.

Turkey vulture in the San Juans in January!

There's been a lot of reports of early arrivals such as barn swallows all throughout the region so I wonder if it will prove to be an early spring or if climate shifts are to blame for more individuals turning up at unexpected times of year. We shall see!

The most hoped-for species on Orcas was an American dipper, a bird I've searched for many times over there. We don't have the right habitat for them on San Juan, but a new Land Bank property called Coho Preserve recently opened up a public access along a creek where they've been reported. I had a good feeling about today and it paid off, as we found not one but two of them at the preserve! It was so dark in the forest it was impossible to get sharp photos, but I was pleased just to see them as it was a new county life bird for me and this photo is plenty good enough for the photo year list.

American dipper! A San Juan County life bird for me

Since this is a 365 day challenge, I decided to do less "post a photo of everything" and more "wait until I get a good shot of common species". This has me at a current mark of having photographed 83% of the species on my total year list to date, but I know that number will rise. I had seen and heard some distant oystercatchers before today but finally got a decent shot of one at Buck Bay on Orcas Island today.

Nearly-silhouetted black oystercatcher

It will definitely be a hunker-down day tomorrow with gale-force winds and more than an inch of rain in the forecast, but we'll see what the rest of the month brings. Then in the beginning of February it's time for a two-week road trip south where the bird reports from our destinations have me eagerly anticipating some life birds and many others I haven't seen in years. Oh, and hopefully some warmth and sunshine, too!

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!

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!

Celebrating Earth Day With Whales, Tulips, Birds, and Marching for Science

Last Friday the 21st circumstances aligned to get out on the water to see a group of transients - the T49As, T65As, and T65Bs, who have been regularly traveling together in recent weeks. It was a short but sweet visit with them off the coast of Sidney Island, BC.

Young adult male T49A1

It was cool to see the two young males (T49A1 and T65B2) hanging out together separate from the rest of the group. Interactions outside of a family group always get my mind going as to what could be going on in their social world. These two were close enough to be touching and seemed to be having a good time, doing some rolling and tail slapping.

The other, bigger group of females and juveniles was a bit further away but we got one nice look of all of them surfacing together.

After stalling out for a little bit, the males joined up and all the whales took off at high speed heading north, so we said goodbye and headed back to port.

T49A1 and family head north towards the Canadian Gulf Islands

I had to head back to my home island because I had a ferry to catch! We were heading over to Bellingham for the March for Science, and in the late afternoon the sun came out which made a detour through the tulip fields of Skagit Valley irresistible.

The weather was a bit less cooperative for the March for Science the next day, Earth Day. But that didn't keep more than 2000 people from taking to the streets in Bellingham along with tens of thousands of others around the world to make a statement in favor of adequate funding for, public communication of, and nonpartisan application to policy making of evidence-based science. 

A couple of very powerful speakers took the stage before the march, reminding us all of the importance of not just pursuing our scientific passions but taking the time to share our research and the scientific method with everyone so there's a broader understanding of just how powerful a tool science is. We might hope for certain results from our research, but we must accept whatever the results tell us, and these facts need to be used to inform policy. Selectively picking and choosing what science to listen to is irresponsible both to our environment and to the future of humanity.

After running some errands after the march, there was still time to get a little birding in before catching the ferry home. 

Caspian tern in Anacortes - photo year bird #148

After many excursions specifically trying for this elusive bird (and hearing them often but never seeing one), I also finally photographed a marsh wren!

Marsh wren - photo year bird #149

What will year bird #150 be?! That was my original target to start the year and now I'm wondering if I might reach it before the end of April!

Speaking of the end of April, as the days tick by closer to May, we're all wondering when the Southern Residents return. After making a few visits in March and early April (by just a couple matrilines), they've been absent again for the last couple weeks. Gone are the days with J-Pod regularly on the west side in early spring, so now we are all left wondering when they will take up their typical summer routine. I am just one among many hoping that it is sooner rather than later!