The T65As and T75Bs

For several days there's been a group of seven transient (Bigg's) killer whales roaming the area; on Friday they went right into downtown Vancouver and were seen off Stanley Park! Sunday morning I was excited to hear that they were seen right outside of Friday Harbor. They made their way south down San Juan Channel, and we headed down to Cattle Point to try and see them. As we reached the south end of the island, I was surprised to see whale-watching boats very deep in Griffin Bay, practically along the shoreline! Instead of waiting at Cattle Point we went to Third Lagoon, where we saw the whales from shore - never thought I'd see killer whales from there!

The group of whales was made up of the T65As (female T65A and her three living offspring) as well as T75B, her offspring T75B1, and her sibling T75C. Originally called transients because they roamed more widely, there's an effort under way to get them commonly referenced as Bigg's killer whales after pioneering killer whale researcher Mike Bigg. They're marine mammal eating whales as opposed to J, K, and L Pods who eat exclusively fish. Below is the family tree of the seven whales (T75 and T75A were not present) taken from the 2012 Bigg's killer whale ID guide available for download here.

 

After the whales rounded Cape San Juan, we headed back to Cattle Point, hoping they would stay close to shore. Instead, they veered out to go around Goose Island, but it's always pretty special to be able to see transients from shore. They also often do different sorts of behaviors than resident killer whales - I've seen them swimming backwards, for instance, and this one did the slowest cartwheel I've ever seen. That black line that looks like a log to the bottom left of the whale was actually a seal, hoping the whales moved on before the tide got too much higher:

There were a lot of seals in Cattle Pass, but the whales didn't seem to interested. Word was they had made a kill, maybe a harbor porpoise, shortly before we saw them. Here was another seal more concerned with looking at us than looking at the seal-eating whales out beyond him:

As the whales headed out the pass into the choppy waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we turned our attention to all the birds that were around feeding along the shoreline and in the water. It's not the best picture, but look at this black oystercatcher whose beak curves to his right:

We got a few closer looks when the oystercatchers took flight, coming right by where we stood on the rocks:

Also, we see harlequin ducks all the time, but I usually don't get too close to them. This is probably the best picture I've ever been able to get of them when they, too, passed right by where we were:

While walking back to the car, I saw a huge orange moth. When it landed it quickly hid under some leaves, but I'm pretty sure it's a banded woollybear (Pyrrharctia isabella), which we see much more commonly as the black and orange caterpillars in the spring and fall.

Today, after a week without resident killer whale sightings, word was that L-Pod returned, so hopefully I'll get to see them sometime later this week. I will of course report back here :)

A Week Without Whales (But With Moths, Birds, Flowers....)

The Resident orcas headed back out to the open ocean last Sunday night, and there haven't been reports of them since then. While the boats in the area have had chances to see transient orcas (there were Ts right off Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver yesterday!), humpback whales, and minke whales, those of us on shore have turned our sights to other creatures. It's been another beautiful late spring week and there's been a lot to see!

Monday while picking up my lunch near the Friday Harbor Airport I was thrilled to see my first chipping sparrow (162) of the year. I had gone out to several places I've seen them in years past looking for this species, but without luck. Then, later the same afternoon, I saw one from the office at work. Amazingly, I think, my bird list for species seen at work in 2013 is approaching 40 species.

Also at work that day I found another cool moth. We had the ceanothus silk moth a few weeks ago, but this time it was an eyed sphinx moth (Smerinthus cerisyi). It took me a while to ID it because in most of the field guide images it has its hind wings extended showing the "eyes" it flashes to scare predators. I guess I wasn't scary enough.

Wednesday I went down to Fourth of July Beach and did a COASST survey. As per usual, no stranded sea birds, but I did turn up a respectable 28 living species in the hour I was there. Northern rough-winged swallows, cedar waxwings, a gadwall, American goldfinches, and a few surf scoters were on the list, but the most cooperative when it came to taking pictures was a pair of killdeer. I've never seen a killdeer jump before, but that's just what this one was doing as it went from log to log:

Thursday night after work we headed out to Lime Kiln for another sunset. The colors were a bit more subdued than some other recent ones but it was still a beauty:

For some reason we've gotten in the habit of seeing how many of these four species we can find on every trip to the west side: killer whale, harbor seal, bald eagle, black oystercatcher. Only once this year have we gotten all four! On Thursday evening we only got one - bald eagle - but that was okay because it flew right past the crescent moon, giving it bonus points:

On Friday afternoon we went for a walk at Third Lagoon at the south end of the island and saw and heard another 23 bird species. Some highlights for me were a pair of hairy woodpeckers that looked like recent fledgling and also a pair of band-tailed pigeons, not a species I see too often here on the island. At the edge of the lagoon a line of colorful kayaks were laid out on the gravel:

On the drive back to town I had to stop at the pull out above South Beach to take some photos of the California poppies that have just exploded into bloom all over the hillside there:

I wonder what sights this weekend will bring?

Getting to Know Third Lagoon

The San Juan Island Trails Committee has been hosting a series of Know Your Island walks where naturalists, historians, and others share information with locals during a guided hike at one of our island's numerous recreational areas. Last Saturday I went along on the hike exploring Third Lagoon to share information about birds. Third Lagoon is probably one of the least visited trails on the island, despite being a beautiful access to both deep forest and the shoreline of Griffin Bay. I was surprised how many islanders I told about the hike said, "Where is that?"

It was a rainy Saturday, but we still had 20 people show up for our hike. In addition to birds, others talked about trees, lichens, and mushrooms. I definitely learned a thing or two!

Shaggy mane mushrooms

My friend Kari knows quite a lot about mushrooms, and had a sharp eye for finding them too! She collected a whole basket of chanterelles - all of which I probably would have walked by without seeing.

Kari with a chanterelle

There is an amazing variety of trees at this part of the island, and we saw a couple of species I'm not that familiar with that I didn't know we had here - quaking aspen and Douglas maple.

Douglas maple (Acer glabrum)

Our two youngest participants got particularly excited over this tiny tree frog found among the detritus. I thought it was pretty cool, too.

The rain held off for the first part of our hike, but it started an earnest as we headed out into the open near the lagoon itself, which was where the best birding was. As a result I don't have any pictures of that part, but we saw lots of harlequin ducks, red-breasted mergansers, and horned grebes, along with a couple of black oystercatchers, common loons, and a great blue heron.

It was supposed to stay rainy all weekend, but Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous (if chilly) day. I went back to the south end of the island again, and had to pull over when I noticed these California poppies in full bloom - at the end of October! This looks more like the type of photo I would take in July:

One final sighting to share is that last week we heard and then saw two barred owls right from the deck of our houseboat! I couldn't believe it. Their call is accurately described as "Who cooks for you?" but that doesn't really capture the booming quality when you hear it, especially in the middle of a cold night. Get a feel for it by listening to the audio recording from Bird Web here. It sounds so cool.

Common Birds and L-Pod Returns

When I was going through my bird photos to pick some of my favorites to feature in my new Zenfolio bird photo gallery, I realized that there are a lot of bird species I see all the time that I don't have great or even decent pictures of. Today, I decided to go out and focus on photographing some of these species.

White-crowned sparrow - the tip of the beak usually isn't that dark!

Brown-headed cowbird - a whole flock of them were down near the tidepools at Cattle Point, which was odd...you're more likely to see them in a farm field

One of the four brown creepers I saw near Third Lagoon

As is usually the case when you go out looking for one type of animal on San Juan Island, I ended up seeing a lot more wildlife than just birds today. I saw harbor seals, red foxes, and my first deer fawns of the season. These twin babies were running away from a fox. The fox wasn't interested in them, and mama deer followed behind at a more leisurely pace.

And, of course, orcas! Some L-Pod whales were seen coming down the Inside Passage on the east side of Vancouver Island yesterday, and as expected they made their way as far south as the Salish Sea today. At about 7:30 PM the 20 or so whales started passing Lime Kiln Point State Park on the westside of San Juan Island. The seas were a bit rough and they were moving quickly, so it was hard to track them let alone get IDs. I was able to identify L27 Ophelia, L47 Marina, and L53 Lulu. Here is L47 bursting through the surface:

It didn't look like these newly returned whales were going to stay around very long....they looked ready to blast out west the Strait of Juan de Fuca back to the Pacific Ocean. This was the first time L-Pod has been spotted in the San Juans in 2011. Last year, some L-Pod whales did the same thing in May: came down the Inside Passage, sped through the San Juans, and disappeared out west again. It was a few more weeks before they started spending regular time here. We'll just have to wait and see what these Ls do this year!

Birding for Dad's Birthday

Monday was my dad’s birthday, and we got to spend part of the afternoon birding around San Juan Island. It was sunny out, but windy, which left a chill in the air.

The first highlight of the day turned out not to be avian, but mammalian. On the trail towards Third Lagoon at the south end of the island, we spotted a mouse. Much to our surprise, it didn’t seem skittish at all. It soon became apparent that there must be something wrong with it – it seemed like it was blind, and possibly deaf as well. It was moving around all right and feeding, but surely its days (hours?) were numbered. It did provide a unique opportunity to observe one of the island’s small mammals up close, however, and after getting home I was able to identify it as a white-footed mouse. Here’s a photo of it, clearly unafraid with the feet of other human observers in the background:

Next stop was Cattle Point, where I was delighted to find a mixed flock of shorebirds. It was mostly black turnstones, but mixed in were a few surfbirds (year bird 144) and dunlin. Nearby was a pair of black oystercatchers, and out in Cattle Pass were the expected horned grebes, red-breasted mergansers, bufflehead, harlequin ducks, and surf scoters.

On the road back towards town we were delayed by an adult and immature bald eagle that were scouting out some road kill at the side of the road. The immature, as some young bald eagles do, had an amazing amount of white on it:

After a stop for something warm to drink, we went to Jackson Beach where we succeeded in finding what my dad considered a birthday present: a greater yellowlegs to add to his year list, which now stands at 137. We made one more stop at Turn Point County Day Park on Pear Point, hoping to find some interesting seabirds, but the highlight was a displaying male rufous hummingbird. These guys get very territorial, and indeed it buzzed us, our car, and another hummingbird while we were there. He also perched atop a tree long enough for me to get some photos. I was happy for the opportunity, because while the hummingbirds have rediscovered my feeder a couple of days ago, they are always backlit. It was nice to photograph this one in a better light:

Next up, a short trip to Seattle includes a side trip to twitch a rare bird for the area. Find out what I went looking for and whether or not I was successful in the next post!

Snail City and Crab House

Finally back online, yay! One doesn't really realize how often e-mail gets checked or how much fun blogging is until you can't do it for eight days. I'm glad to be back in action, with lots of pictures to share in the next few days!

First of all, the intertidal creatures seen at Third Lagoon as mentioned in the last post. It was very bizarre, there were no snails to speak of along the beach, then as some seemingly imaginary line was crossed they speckled the rocks everywhere! I couldn't detect any difference in micro-habitat, but there must have been something that made this end of the beach a better place to hang out for a snail. Look at them all!

Here's a close up. Luckily they were all below the high tide line so it was still possible to walk along the beach without crushing them.

What would compel me to do something like lift this huge cement block that found itself in the middle of the beach? (Okay, I'll be honest, I recruited Keith to heave it up - that sucker was heavy!) Why, to look for critters underneath, of course!

We were rewarded with the sight of five little crabs that were taking shelter in the moist shade underneath. We made sure to carefully replace their house after snapping this picture of one:

Next up, some of the spring wildflowers blooming here on San Juan Island!

Third Lagoon and More

I'm still, ridiculously, without internet at home. Here's a post I wrote yesterday and am posting from the internet cafe. I hope I'll be back in regular action soon! Then I can catch up on all your comments and blogs as well as post more often.

The other day I said it seemed like we had been experiencing all four seasons in the span of a couple weeks. Here’s a photo that demonstrates the meeting of winter and spring: some blossoming purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) half-buried in the results of our torrential hail storm :

In my recent post about wildflowers at Cooper Mountain I misidentified purple dead nettle as self-heal (Prunella vulgaris), the same mistake I made last year! Whoop! I blame the deceivingly similar photos of them in my primary plant field guide. I did, however, succeed in identifying the mystery purple wildflower. I should have taken the four petals as a clue it was in the Brassica, or mustard, family – it’s oaks toothwort, also known as beautiful bittercress (Cardamine nuttallii).

The weather has remained windy every day, and cloudy every day except one. I took advantage of that afternoon to head down to Third Lagoon near the south end of the island. On the way there, I had to pull over to take a photo of this impressive cloud formation looming over Vancouver Island.

It was beautiful at Third Lagoon, where we were partially sheltered from the breeze.

There were some neat plants and intertidal creatures that I’ll feature in my next post, but the bird-watching was pretty good as well. Several small flocks of bufflehead still in the bay, and some green-winged teal in the lagoon being watched over by a belted kingfisher. Check out this photo of a foraging great blue heron with a feeding sub-adult bald eagle in the background. A black oystercatcher was nearby with a limpet in its beak, but I couldn’t quite line all three up in the same photo!

Here’s a closer look at the young bald eagle:

On Tuesday it was back to being overcast and chilly, but I still wanted to get out a bit to bird watch. I went to South Beach hoping to see a loon, grebe, or duck species I hadn’t yet picked up this year, but what I found was even better! As soon as I set foot on the beach three black-bellied plovers (135) flew by – a bird I have only seen once before, and that was 10 years ago in California! I followed them a way down the beach in hopes of getting a better look. I did, and much to my surprise right with them were also three sanderlings (136). Those two finds, as well as the northern shrike I saw later on my drive around the island, made for a more than decent hour of birding despite the weather!