February 12: Meeting J50 and J51!

Some faint calls were heard on the Lime Kiln hydrophones on February 12th, and when they didn't get louder some friends and I concluded the whales were probably heading south into Puget Sound. WRONG! Luckily someone gave me a head's up they were close to shore along San Juan Island and I got to Lime Kiln just as the first whales were passing by.

First Southern Resident breach of 2015!

It's been interesting to follow J27 Blackberry's satellite tag these last few weeks. (It's still transmitting and you can see the latest reports here.) We're learning that J-Pod is using almost exclusively inland waters even this time of year - their ocean ventures are to just outside the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and not really along the outer coast much at all.

J27 Blackberry (and a cormorant drying its wings in the background)

It was great to see everyone - like catching up with old friends after several months of having not seen J-Pod.

From left to right J49 T'ilem I'nges, J37 Hy'shqa, and J14 Samish

J26 Mike

What was amazing was how much driftwood was floating around out there! The whales didn't seem to have any qualms about swimming right through it.

It's rare enough to see orcas from Lime Kiln this time of year, but I'd say it's even rarer to see them close to shore. This passby was short but sweet - it felt like summertime with the J17s coming by right off the rocks!

J17 Princess Angeline

J46 Star

The timing was perfect to jump out in Serenity again with a couple friends, and we met up with Js again a little further north in Haro Strait.

L87 Onyx

The whales looked like they had really spread out after passing Lime Kiln; we saw some more way offshore and decided to head out to investigate. As a side note, while motoring out there this freighter came by - look at how much water it's displacing off its bow!

Turns out the whales offshore were some of the J16s! That means I got to meet new little calf J50 was born in the end of December.

J16 Slick with calf J50

J16 Slick with calf J50

J16 Slick with baby J50

While watching this spunky little gal (sure seems like mom has her hands full keeping this little one in line), we got word from the Center for Whale Research that their boat was with another new calf!!! It was too tempting not to go and take a peak. J19 Shachi is the mom of J51, and Shachi's daughter J41 Eclipse was right there as well.

Tiny orca! J51 swims after older sister J41 Eclipse

This is a distant blurry shot, but I love it because it shows the close formation this little family group was keeping. Mom J19 Shachi is on the left and the little bump just to the right of her is the new calf J51. J41 Eclipse, Shachi's daughter, was on the outside, so the little one was safely tucked between them at all times.

J19 Shachi, J51, and J41 Eclipse

The whales had been quite spread out for a while, but now a group of them formed up and started traveling north at a more steady clip.

This group included the J14s, J19s, and J11s minus J27 - all the J-Pod big boys were traveling together somewhere else. We ended up getting a better look at the calf in this group:

Mama J19 Shachi with newborn

From left to right little J51, J19 Shaci, and J49 T'ilem I'nges

They were out in the middle of Haro Strait, and then started angling over towards Stuart Island. J39 Mako came a little closer to check us out on his way by:

J39 Mako

There was a lot of driftwood up here, too. Looking ahead I thought for sure this was a logging whale, but it was just a log! Very good dorsal fin impression, though.

A logging....log

We cruised over to Spieden Island on our way home, where the J17s were hanging out. Spieden was sure looking pretty, and quite different from its summer yellow/brown grass phase that's more common:

Spieden Island - looking green!

The birth of J51 brings the Southern Resident population back up to 79 whales after dipping to 77 a few months ago. Will Ks and Ls have any other little surprises for us when they next return? After over two years without a successful birth, we are all both excited and worried about these two little ones. The bottom line is these whales need enough salmon, and we've gone through some very thin years of Chinook returns recently. I'm working with a campaign to remove the four Lower Snake River Dams, which are largely obsolete and are costing tax payers money, but would be the most effective dams to remove to increase salmon to the Columbia River Basin. Learn more about our efforts from the Southern Resident Killer Whale Chinook Salmon Initiative.

A Transient Superpod - on February 10th!

My blog posts have fallen off in the last month, and that was directly correlated to our dismal weather (nearly three weeks straight of rain) and poor wildlife sightings. That's all turning around in a hurry, however, as I've had two amazing killer whale encounters this week, a real surprise and treat for February!

On Tuesday afternoon I jumped aboard the Western Explorer with a few fellow naturalists after hearing there was a group of orcas heading for San Juan Channel. We barely left Friday Harbor when we saw them. With initial reports of 10-12 whales, we weren't sure who we were going to encounter, but with the very first dorsal fin I saw I knew they weren't Southern Residents! This is the whale I saw, who turned out to be T100C:

13 year-old male T100C

This family group was the T100s, who I last saw in 2008. Interestingly enough they were involved the first time I saw a transient "superpod" of several family groups totaling over 15 whales.

T100C seven years ago in the Strait of Juan de Fuca....awww, he's grown so much!!

The T100s weren't the only ones present today, either, as while they were the leaders, we could see at least two more groups of whales behind them! The T100s were going up the middle of the channel. Further towards the east side of the channel we found the T124As.

31 year-old mama T124A followed by two of her offspring, T124A5 (a year old) and T1242 (14 years old)

Across the channel to the west were more blows illuminated by the sun (the sun! as rare of a sight as the orcas so far in 2015). The T124s and T86As!

16 year-old male T124E - look at the height on those blows!

If you're wondering about the matriline names, T124A is indeed the first offspring of T124. But since she's an adult female with her own offspring, she's split off and regularly travels away from the other T124s, which is not uncommon in transients. Today, though, the whole extended family was together!

In the wake of this western group of Ts we saw a huge oil slick in the water and lots of gulls actively picking scraps off the surface of the water. The whales continued north, so we drifted closer to investigate, and we could smell the remnants of the kill....it actually smelled like watermelon! I found out from a researcher friend of mine that this smell is associated with porpoise kills, and judging by the size of the oil slick I was pretty sure they had killed something larger than a harbor seal, so this all matched up!

Gull comes down to grab a meat morsel - the sheen you see on the water is oil from a harbor porpoise

As we moved to catch up with the whales, the groups were starting to converge. We caught sight of a beautiful line-up as a bunch of whales surfaced in synchrony:

From left to right: T124A1, T86A1, T124D, T124D1 (less than a year old!), T86A

Let's get a closer look at that little baby...

T124D with her first calf T124D1, and on the right is T86A

T124D1

As cumbersome as a name as T124D1 is, it contains his/her matrilineal history right in its name, which is handy for keeping track of transients who are more fluid in their social associations. T124D1 is the first offspring born to T124D, who was the fourth offspring (A, B, C, D) born to T124.

The lighting was just amazing for seeing the blows all day - this is another shot of T86A, T124D, and T124D1

In this whole group of over 20 Ts, there was only one adult male - it was almost all females and juveniles. In fact, at least seven of them were under 10 years old! Perhaps it was time for the little ones to learn about harbor porpoise hunting or maybe this is just what family meal time looks like, but all the whales converged and were prey sharing. There was lots of converging at the surface and surface activity - it was clear we were only seeing part of the picture as they tore up and shared the meat!

When we see Southern Residents in these roly-poly surface groups we sometimes call them "cuddle puddles" (sometimes social in nature, the residents are probably prey sharing in some of these instances too); in this case, where the surface activity was accompanied by the occasional splash of blood or glimpse of red meat, the name "carnage cluster" seemed more appropriate.

What's the best angle to get a bite....right side up? From the left?

Upside down from the right?

Or perhaps straight down from the top?

They were converging on it from all sides....

Look carefully in the middle - the pinkish red is porpoise meat (click to see a larger version)

Every once and a while amid the tail-slapping we'd see a tiny tail pop up. With two calves a year old or less, we thought at first it was a baby orca tail, til someone pointed out it was a little too small even for that. Turns out we were seeing the porpoise tail being waved up into the air by the whales!

The T124s, T124As, and T86As were all together in this group, while the T100s were on the opposite side of the boat. Again with the amazing lighting....

Turns out the T100s took out another porpoise of their own. This is one them (maybe T100B?) carrying a porpoise in its mouth - the blip you see at the front of its head is the porpoise fluke sticking out:

Oh, which way to look? (Such a problem to have, I know.) Maybe it was time to celebrate the kills?

The fun thing about days like this is that they only people out there are total whale fanatics like myself. In addition to my friends on our boat, there were three other boats on scene - all of them just captains, naturalists, and/or whale researchers.

Friends on another boat, doin' what we do

It was time for us to head back, and right before we left it looked like the whales shifted into travel mode as well. Given that they were headed to Spieden Channel I figured my whale-watching day might not be done just yet - my boat is moored not far from there! After returning to Friday Harbor I jetted over to the other side of the island where I met up with some different friends and we took Serenity out. We caught up with the whales again northwest of Battleship Island. The T100s were already several miles ahead, but all the rest were in one big group. No more hunting or playing - it was clearly travel time now.

T124A (left) and T124C (right)

Four year-old T86A3 with the Turn Point Light Station in the background

It was such a beautiful sight to see them all traveling in such a tight group that it was hard to leave, but they were cruising at such a fast pace all too soon it was time to let them continue on into Canada alone. One last nice look:

T124C - regular blog readers may remember this was the lone male (kinda a short guy for an adult male) I saw in Georgia Strait in May - see more photos of him here.

I went home grinning and with over 700 photos to sort through, ready to ride this whale "high" for several weeks if necessary til my next encounter, because this time of year especially you just never know. Little did I know at the time that I was just 48 hours away from another fantastic whale afternoon, this time with Southern Residents!

Birding Griffin Bay

The only bird I added to the year list last week was a pileated woodpecker (83). When I found out our boat was done getting some work done on it, I decided Saturday would be a great day to go for a spin before taking it out of the water again. Since it was in the water on the other side of the island, it was a chance to explore new territory in Griffin Bay, where I got to be on the water side of some of my favorite birding spots like Fourth of July and Jackson Beaches! Even though I've done pretty well on all the expected local sea birds between January 1st and my last ferry trip off island, I was hopeful to add another species or two. During the hour and a half we puttered around the bay, we turned up over 20 species, which I thought was pretty good! They included....

Bald eagle

Ancient murrelets - we saw about 30 of them!

Brandt's cormorants

Common loon

Long-tailed ducks

Other non-photographed highlights included marbled murrelets, common murres, rhinocerous auklets, surf and white-winged (84) scoters, and Pacific loons. 

If only we had been a couple days later - today there were both resident and transient orcas right where we started birding! Soon enough.... :)

Birding on the Mainland

Yesterday we took a day trip to the mainland and got to spend some time visiting some birding sites I've been wanting to visit for a few weeks. I had been slow in adding any species to my year list on the island this week, with the lowly rock pigeon (67) being my only addition. I knew some off-island bird-watching would help me reach my goal of reaching 100 species before the end of the month, and I started off on the ferry ride adding rhinoceros auklet (68) and common murre (69). Then driving along Highway 20 I added a rough-legged hawk (70).

Our first birding destination was along the Nooksack River near Deming, Washington. Several friends have taken phenomenal photos at the Mosquito Lake Road Bridge, so that's where I wanted to go. I heard eagles right when I stepped out of the car, but my first focus was on all the other bird around: black-capped chickadees (71), a pair of American dippers (72), Steller's jays (73), and American crows (74). Okay, now on to the eagles!

There were about a dozen perched in the tree right alongside the bridge, with more eagles visible basically anywhere you scanned. They congregate along these rivers in large numbers from December-February to feed on the dead and dying salmon that have just spawned. The eagles are most active feeding in the morning, then spend the rest of the day roosting in nearby trees. With the ferries, it was hard for me to get there too early, so they were mostly all roosting. But there were a lot of them - I counted more than 70 - and even if some of them were this far away, it was still an impressive sight:

Every so often an eagle would decide to change positions, at times giving us a nice flyby on the bridge, and then causing some commotion as the ranks got reshuffled at the new perching site.

I was very thankful that one eagle did come down and land on the river bank close to where we were watching:

He/she proceeded to walk along the shoreline (I don't think I've ever seen an eagle walk before - it's more of a swagger!), then wade out into the shallows, presumably looking for a fish carcass.

We spent about an hour watching the eagles until heading to our next stop down in Stanwood, WA. Of course I was birding from the car along the way and added Eurasian collared-dove (75), American kestrel (76), and Brewer's blackbird (77). Also many more eagles, easily putting our tally for the day at over 100 birds!

There have been lots of fantastic reports coming from Eide Road in the last few weeks, and despite the weather being misty and foggy I was hopeful when we parked and I could see several people with cameras set up on tripods nearby. Sure enough, my most hoped-for bird of the day was not only there but perched right out in the open - a long-eared owl! Not only year bird #78, but North American life bird #362!

Long-eared owls are widespread across most of the country but are considered rare west of the Cascades. Even where they are found, they're in small numbers and sightings are sporadic. They're nocturnal hunters that roost during the day in dense thickets, often buried so far in the bush they're highly camouflaged. There was actually a second owl just a few yards away, and if someone hadn't pointed it out to us, I'm pretty sure I would have missed it, even if I had been looking hard for it - even after he pointed right to it, it took me a minute to see it!

Find the owl! No wonder they're so uncommonly seen...I wonder how many I've walked right by in my time?

I'm amazed at how approachable some birds are. The first long-eared owl was perched right beside the trail, no more than 10 yards away from where the people were, yet he could barely be bothered to open his eyes to glance at us as we ogled him (I'm assuming this was the male - someone else there said it was a pair and the one in the bush was the slightly larger female).

While enjoying the owl I heard an Anna's hummingbird (79), then when we walked further down the road we saw two short-eared owls (80) - another bird I love to see, but these guys weren't nearly as cooperative for photographs. By this time we had to go run some errands, but I made a detour through Fir Island where a flock of snow geese (81) flew overhead, just as I hoped they would. The birding day ended when we stopped to eat a late lunch at Bay View State Park on our way back to the ferry, where greater scaup (82) were in view along with some loons, common goldeneye, and great blue herons. There were rafts of thousands of other ducks on the in the bay, but they were too far away in the dimming light to identify.

I thought adding 15 species was pretty good on the day, but it's only helped me keep pace with Dave (84) and Dad (79). It's been a pretty dreary start to 2015 here in the San Juans, but with some sunshine forecast in the coming week maybe I'll get out to do a little more birding on the home front.

Kickin' Off the 2015 Year List

January 1st brought the beginning to another year list, and the New Year's Day tradition for birding for most of the daylight hours. Stepping out into the yard before breakfast, my first bird of the year was a common raven (1) followed shortly (and somewhat surprisingly) by a Pacific wren (2) and golden-crowned kinglet (3). The usual feeder species helped round out the list at 8 species before heading out to meet the rest of our family birding group.

Our first stop was Sportman's Lake, which turned up almost all of the expected waterfowl in a single stop! Some additional bonuses included a pair of bald eagles (19), a belted kingfisher (21), and a pied-billed grebe (24).

Next was a walk at Three Meadows Marsh - the moment documented by the one non-birder in our group, my mom :)

As you can see, it was frosty out, but we would definitely take the sunshine! The first year bird at the marsh was a surprising Lincoln's sparrow (25), one of the best species of the day. My pishing also turned up the hoped-for marsh wren (29), but we didn't have any success in getting a Virginia rail talk back, though Keith amazingly saw one!! But it's still a "miss" on my year list.

Next up, Jackson Beach turned out to be a fantastic stop for our first shorebirds and sea birds of the day including greater yellowlegs (33), common goldeneye (36), and another great find - a pair of long-tailed ducks (39). Along with a couple of the common grebes and loons, and a northern harrier (44) flyby, I was well on my way to my goal of 60 species on the day.

Cattle Point was next, where we spent almost an hour and a half. The first species when we got out of the car was another great one - peregrine falcon (45). We filled in the other expected seabirds by scanning with my dad's scope, including the hoped for but by no means expected marbled murrelet (50) and ancient murrelet (52), with decent flocks of both species!

I also had to pull my camera out for the first time of the year to photograph this pair of bald eagles, two of six we saw from Cattle Point!

Leaving Cattle Point I had 58 species on my list, and we went over to the Redoubt Road at American Camp. I was hoping for meadowlarks or a shrike, but there was hardly a bird in sight. There was yet another pair of bald eagles in the distance, and a small flock of golden-crowned sparrows (59), and that was it. 

On our way to False Bay I thought some birds we flushed off the side of the road didn't quite look like robins, and I'm glad we stopped, because they were varied thrushes (60)! That helped me reach my goal of 60, which I've managed to reach on January 1st each of the last four years.

These are likely my best-ever photos of a varied thrush, too, as they're usually skittish and/or hiding in the tree branches.

The light wasn't great at False Bay - there's no way we could have picked out a Eurasian wigeon among all the wigeon there, if there was one around. But we did still add northern pintail (61), dunlin (62), and western sandpiper (63). 

Dad scanning False Bay

The day still wasn't done, as a stop at the grocery store turned up the expected house sparrow (64), and then at home there was a downy woodpecker at the feeder just before dark (65). Not a bad total for the day!

Since the first, the weather has been gray, wet, and windy, and despite putting in a few more hours birding the only addition has been a ruby-crowned kinglet (66) in the yard. There's been several other great species reported on the island in the last few days, though, so as soon as it gets nicer you know I'll be out there looking! As of today, that puts Dave ahead of me at 73, but there's a loooong way to go yet!