November 10: A memorable day on the water

Things have been changing so much and so quickly in the Salish Sea; the transformations are astounding. When I first started spending time up here 20 years ago, both humpback and transient killer whales were rare sights. Now, they are around almost daily - even in November! With a friend up visiting for a long weekend, we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy today and our sightings rivaled a good day during the "peak season" (whatever that is anymore!)

Early in the morning a report came in of the T18s near Orcas Island, and luckily they didn't travel too far too fast. We caught up with them at the west end of Spieden Channel, where they were first split into pairs with T18 Esperanza and T19 Spouter together, and T19 Mooyah and T19B Galiano about a mile further to the west.

18 year-old male T19C Spouter

A little while after we got there, the two groups merged and started making their way northwest up Haro. 

From left to right T19B Galiano, T18 Esperanza, and T19C Spouter

They were zig-zagging a bit, but their final surfacing before we left was perfectly lined up with the Turn Point l=Lighthouse. What a sight!

The T18s in front of the Turn Point Lighthouse

As we reversed course back through Spieden Channel we slowed down along Spieden Island. With its exotic wildlife, it rarely disappoints, but it was exceptional today. There were hundreds of Mouflon sheep, sika deer, and fallow deer out; more sika deer than I had ever seen, in fact!

Sika deer buck

It's also rutting season, which means there's plenty of drama unfolding! This male was bleating at these two very unimpressed females.

Male fallow deer bleating

We were distracted from the exotic wildlife when we spotted a family of river otters running along the hillside! They darted down into the water but 7 of them tried to all climb out on this little rock at the same time, some of them sneaking a curious look at us as we looked at them. One of the collective nouns for a group of otters is a "romp", and watching them today, you could see why!

A romp of sea otters

Down at Green Point there weren't any Steller sea lions hauled out, but there was a gang of them in the water. This one looks vicious in the photo, but he was just yawning.

We only got a quick look at the sea lions, because just across San Juan Channel was a humpback whale! We were shaking our heads in bewilderment at so many sightings on a chilly November afternoon! It was BCY0160 known as Heather, who seemed to just be doing circles.

BCY0160 Heather

It was just a short ride back to Friday Harbor from there, but I kept my camera out anyway, and I was glad I did! Eight ancient murrelets were flying amazingly fast, keeping pace with us for about a minute!

Ancient murrelets in San Juan Channel

By the end of the day, by my count, we had seen eight mammal species and about another dozen marine bird species - not too shabby!

March 16 ~ T49As and T101s; T2Cs

On March 16 we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy from Friday Harbor. There were no whale reports but it was a beautiful day, and with many groups around over the previous week hopes were high we would find some. Our first stop though was at Spieden Island, where in addition to the sea lions, there was lots of other activity.

Pigeon guillemot in flight in Spieden Channel

Spring was clearly in the air with lots of Mouflon lambs about.

This mom had twins!

Over at the seal haul out west of Sentinel a pair of bald eagles was hanging out, making for an even cooler photo op!

We cruised up around Turn Point and crossed Boundary Pass, with amazing scenery in all directions.

Snaking our way through the Canadian Gulf Islands, we stopped at the Belle Chain Islets - a place I haven't visited in many years! It's one of the most spectacular sea lion haul outs in the region, plus a great spot for bird life, all with snow-capped mountains in the background.

While watching Steller sea lion antics a report came in over the radio that someone had made contact with killer whales, luckily not too far south of us between us and home! We headed in that direction and encountered the T49As and T18s near East Point of Saturna Island. Interestingly they were split into three groups, each with members of both matrilines.

T49A3 and T19B

T19 Mooyah

The distinct dorsal fin of T19B Galiano

T49A4 (left) and T49A5 (center)

While watching the whales this massive freighter came through - look at how much water its displacing off the bow! The noise from commercial shipping traffic in the Salish Sea has by far the greatest acoustic impact on the whales.

As we departed to make our way back to Friday Harbor, another vessel found an additional group of whales - somewhat amusingly after all our travels, right near Friday Harbor itself. It was too tempting not to make another stop, especially because it was the T2Cs, a very special family group of whales.

The T2Cs in San Juan Channel

One of the members of this family group, T2C2 Tumbo, has scoliosis, and the rest of the family regularly waits for him and also feeds him as he seems incapable of participating in the hunts. While mother T2C Tasu has four offspring, I always particular love seeing her two oldest together:

T2C1 Rocky and T2C2 Tumbo

From there it was a very short trip back to the home port, concluding another stunning day on the waters of the Salish Sea!

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!

It's T Time!

As we get into March and April, we hopefully anticipate whale sightings to start increasing. In years past, this is the time the residents start to spend more time around the San Juans, and in more recent years with the residents elsewhere it has been a time of abundant transient sightings. So far, March is shaping up to be a transient kinda month!

On Thursday, March 5th, I heard a group of transients was out in the middle of Haro Strait. It was too tempting not to take a long lunch break to go investigate! We met up with the T18s near Kelp Reef. T18 Esperanza was nearby but off on her own, while T19 Mooyah was traveling with her two sons T19B Galiano and T19C Spouter. (This group is among the transients named by the Vancouver Aquarium.)

From left to right: T19B, T19C, and T19

They were swimming in circles, intermittently fanning out and then joining up again. That unpredictable surface behavior combined with long dive times led to this unexpected close surfacing by T19B. I've seen this whale a decent amount over the years, and he's definitely grown up, because our little boat felt downright tiny as he approached!

T19B Galiano

T19C, meanwhile, was sporting some pretty serious battle scars on one side of his dorsal fin:

Because I had to get back to work, we just had a short jaunt out on the 5th, though I heard later on that these whales met up with the T60s and T2B.

On Saturday, March 7th, the weather was just to beautiful to not get on the water again. I wanted to wait until the afternoon, hopeful that whales would show up....and they did! Around mid-day I heard about another group of transients on the west side of San Juan Island. Several of us met up and took out Serenity, and we came across the first whales just slightly south of our home port. The first whales we saw were T137A and T137B; we knew their other two family members had to be around somewhere. When these two whales went IN to Open Bay and gulls started circling overhead, we assumed they had made a kill, and this seemingly attracted mom T137 and the youngest, three year-old T137C.

T137 (age 32) and T137C (age 3)

T137A (age 13) and T137B (age 9)

Eventually the whales came out of the bay and rounded Henry Island. Near Battleship Island we saw harbor porpoise speeding right towards us....away from the whales. Sure enough, they made another kill here, of a harbor porpoise. All the whales were circling and converging, undoubtedly prey sharing.

T137, T137A, and T137 B converge and feed together

What happened next was something I've never seen before. One of the whales (I later determined it was T137A) spyhopped, shaking its head back and forth (in head-banging fashion) with a piece of meat in its mouth. I was excited when I saw it, but even more so when I looked at the pictures later: the piece of meat was actually a fully intact harbor porpoise fetus!!

T137A with harbor porpoise fetus

Just imagine the dexterity required to remove that from the mother intact....I know many people are sad to see a photo like this, but it just left me in awe to witness it live!

After finishing their meal and the four whales grouped up and started heading towards Stuart Island. About now most of the other boats on scene took off, leaving us with the whales! It's the first time I've had to try and track transients on my own. When they zig-zag all over the place and take long dives (these guys were going down for 6 minutes at a time) you never know where they might pop up next. Luckily, the waters were like glass so we could see them from far away regardless of where they popped up.

The T137s

On one surfacing they suddenly made a left turn and started heading across Haro. This group of whales has recently spent a lot of time in Puget Sound and got the reputation for being boat curious. For whatever reason, in the whole wide straight, they chose to pass by right off our stern. (They didn't really seem especially curious about us, though - they just seemed to not care we were there.)

13 year-old male T137A. Focal length on the zoom lens was just 86mm for this shot!

Once they passed us, their blows looked awesome:

We followed them over towards Gooch in Canadian waters. The blows just got more impressive as the sun lowered in the sky.

T137A off Forrest Island in BC

T137A split off from the other three for a while. We thought (or hoped) they might be trying to stir up something else to eat, but they seemed content to just slowly continue on their way.

T137 and T137B

We got one last, nice look of T137A with Mt. Baker in the background:

Mt. Baker, the very distant Turn Point Light Station, and T137A

On the way home we got an unexpected grand finale when a few Dall's porpoise came over and rode the bow (and stern wake) on Serenity. It was the first time we've had playful porpoise on our boat, and it turns out our low-to-the-water ride is in the perfect splash zone for rooster-tailing Dall's! They drenched the windshield and some of my passengers before we went out separate ways.

In the end, we spent an amazing four hours with the T137s; that's among the longest length of time I've been able to follow one family group of whales (resident or transient) and see what they do. It's super interesting to watch them over a period of hours rather than just getting a snapshot of their day when they pass by land or on a commercial whale-watching trip. Because I'm such a nerd, I made this little map to show where we followed them:

So far March is off to an AMAZING start!!