Spring Bird Photos and Year List Update

Spring hasn't just been a time for whales, it's been a time for birds, as well! I've neglected to post updates here, but I've still been diligently tracking my year list. When I last left off, we had just come home from Southern California where my last year bird of the trip was a wandering tattler in La Jolla Cove, year bird #138 (listed on the blog as 137, off by one because I realized I had missed counting the purple finch way back in February!)

It took only a day after getting home to add some of our local spring migrants to the list, the orange-crowned warbler (139) and rufous hummingbird (140). Some wildlife viewing trips out on the boat also turned up a small flock of Bonaparte's gulls (141) in Spieden Channel, where the eagle viewing has been great too.

An adult bald eagle changes an immature away from its territory on Spieden Island

And I can never pass up the opportunity to get multiple species in one photo:

Black oystercatcher and Canada goose at Spieden Island

This is about the birdiest time of year, because while spring migrants like tree (142), violet-green (143), and northern rough-winged (144) swallows are arriving, some of the winter residents, like these long-tailed ducks in Mosquito Pass, are still here as well:

Three Meadows Marsh is where I saw all the swallows, and it's also where I added the Hutton's vireo (145), sora (146), and wood duck (147). My dad was up for a quick visit and hadn't seen a California quail yet either, so I thought we'd try looking for one at American Camp - and it worked! 148. As we were driving around the island that day I also added brown-headed cowbird (149).

One morning before work I heard my first black-throated gray warbler of the season (150). Later the same day I also saw my first barn swallow (151) of the year. Next, an unexpected and quick trip across the country to Washington, DC - more about that in my next blog post - led to me adding common grackle (152) to my list, but that would be the only bird back east as I didn't get a chance to leave the city.

Back home, birding in my yard has turned up my next five year birds: American goldfinch (153), Pacific-slope flycatcher (154), Townsend's warbler (155), chipping sparrow (156), and Wilson's warbler (157). But it hasn't just been the year birds in the spotlight on the home front, as a couple of times we've had up close and personal visits from our local barred owls:

A new visitor to our bird feeders on April 12

An even closer barred owl encounter happened this afternoon, May 8th!

The weather has been so fantastic, that one afternoon when the lighting was right I spent some time just sitting by the bird feeders until all the regulars felt comfortable enough to return. Here are some of my resulting pictures:

Hairy woodpecker

Rufous hummingbird

Spotted towhee

Pine siskin

Chestnut-backed chickadee

Finally, yesterday at work I heard my first olive-sided flycatcher (158), so that's where the year list tally sits at the moment. In my friendly year list challenges, that puts me a few species ahead of Dave in England who has 153 and well behind my dad who on a trip to Florida and the Bahamas jetted up to 194. On the more local front, I've got 112 species in San Juan County compared to my friend and fellow birder Phil who's at 97.

T49As and T49C in Moresby Passage

I have two or three other blogs I've been meaning to write about other topics, but the whale encounters always seem to take precedence! Yesterday afternoon the sun was shining, the winds were calm, and the waters were flat - too tempting not to get out on the water. We knew transients had been seen in Haro Strait earlier, so decided to go look for them. On a few such excursions we've come up dry, but this time after a bit of searching we found them east of Coal Island heading north towards Moresby Passage.

The T49As

It was the T49As - a mother and her offspring. But where was her son, T49A1? After a time I noticed another blow in the distance - he and another male, his uncle T49C were a ways ahead of the others.

T49A1 - this picture just called out to be switched from color to black and white

The whales were in travel mode for a while, but all of a sudden after a long dive the two groups surfaced all together and started circling around. It's possible they made a kill - often Ts can take down a harbor seal with little evidence at the surface. It definitely seemed like something in the area had caught their attention, and perhaps they were circling and sharing prey with each other.

Surprise direction change!

It was interesting that even though all six whales were in the same spot, the whales were still surfacing separately from the others.

T49C

Several times the two males seemed to be on a collision course with one another - in fact I'm pretty certain they gently ran into each other two or three times.

T49C (age 17) and T49A1 (age 14)

It was awesome to just cut our engine and sit watching as the whales circled for about 20 minutes. We were also the only boat on scene, which made it so quiet that the sounds of the blows were very impressive.

Another boat - 4 Ever Wild from Victoria - showed up right when the whales seemed to decide it was time to move on. After another dive they surfaced between our two boats, giving us a close pass while we still had our engine off.

One year old calf T49A4 peeks over mom's back

A nice "ID shot" of T49A4

T49C (male) and T49A3 surface between us and 4 Ever Wild

At this point we let the whales continue on their travels north, and we started up and headed back to our home port. It was another fantastic continuation in what has been a spring full of great orca encounters!

Now hopefully this weekend I'll be able to post some of my other updates - because it's never just whales around here! I've got lots of bird and flower photos to share, plus a report on an unexpected trip I took across the country.

April Southern Resident Visits

Today, May 1st, all of J-Pod was doing the westside shuffle off San Juan Island. It was great to see them, and to hear that all three J-Pod babies were present and accounted for. 

J41 Eclipse and her less than three month old son J51

It's been an amazing spring for killer whale sightings - both residents and transients. Historically, we expect J-Pod to be around a fair amount in April and May, but in recent years, that hasn't been the case. Today's May Day sighting was already my seventh encounter with J-Pod of the year. Looking back at my notes, amazingly my first encounter with them last year wasn't until May 31st. In 2013 it was May 15th, and in 2012 April 22. (If you're wondering if having a boat has increased my odds of seeing the whales, I just noticed that there wasn't a single day I saw J-Pod only from the boat yet this year - I always also saw them from shore.) All or part of J-Pod was in inland waters (east of Sooke, by my definition) for 14 days this April.

In 2009 and 2013, no residents were seen in inland waters in the month of April for the first two times on record. For all the other years since 2007, the number of days any Southern Residents have spent in inland waters has been well below the historical average going back to 1990. It's no coincidence that 2009 and 2013 are four years apart - that's the average Chinook salmon life cycle, so if 2009 was a poor year for spring Chinook, it's not so surprising 2013 was as well.

Similarly, perhaps by looking at historic whale sightings, we could have predicted that the whales would be around more this spring. This year's 14 days of residents in inland waters is the most since 2007. This 2015 peak corresponds with another four year trend, looking back at 2011 and 2007:

So, what do I predict for May? More of the same! 2007 and 2011 were also the most recent peaks for resident orca days in inland waters in the month of May at 23 and 28 days of whales, respectively. (Contrast that 2010 and 2014 which were just 8 and 3 days of having whales in inland waters in May.) Fingers crossed that I'm right, and that this means there's enough salmon to feed our new baby orcas!

April 19th: J-Pod and Playful Dall's!

On the morning of April 19th, still riding the high of the amazing transient killer whale encounter from the night before, I heard that J-Pod was on the west side hydrophones! By the time I heard about it, I thought I had probably missed seeing them from Lime Kiln, so I headed for our boat Serenity. Turns out the whales were super spread out and moving very slowly, so some were still south of Lime Kiln, but we met up with the J19s north of the lighthouse near County Park.

J19 Shachi

When J51 was first seen on February 12th, it looked like J19 Shachi, at age 36, was the mother. Amazingly, as the Center for Whale Research has had more encounters with the whales since then, they have identified Shachi's not quite 10 year-old daughter as the mom - making J41 Eclipse the youngest ever documented mother in the Southern Residents (she'll be 10 at the beginning of June). The center has also determined that J51 is a male.

J41 Eclipse with her son J51, just over two months old

Eclipse is my favorite whale, in part because I had an amazing encounter with her right after she was born, so it's exciting for me to see her become a mom herself (although I'm a nervous "auntie" because she's such a young mom!). It's also special to me that I was on the water the day her first offspring was seen back in February. It was great to be able to spend some quality time with this little family of three on this Sunday morning.

We could see some other whales towards the other side of Haro, so we started heading out that way when we saw Jim Maya aboard the Peregrine had some bow-riding Dall's porpoise.

He was nice enough to "share" them with us, and we had them briefly bow-riding on Serenity! It's quite an experience to be so close to them in our low to the water boat - the porpoise are nearly half as long as the vessel!

When we continued on towards the other whales, we found J27 Blackberry:

J27 Blackberry

Blackberry's group was heading back across Haro towards Henry Island, where all the whales seemed to be converging. As we followed them over there, we also saw some of the J17s.

J17 Princess Angeline wows some shore-based whale watchers

As the whales grouped out, we left them heading north and turned back to our home port. It was so great to have this encounter with Js, because the next day I would be heading off to do some lobbying on their behalf!

April 18th: T65As, T65Bs, and T75Bs

It's been a busy month, which means I've gotten way behind on blogging! I've got so many photos to share, so I'll see if I can't catch up a bit this week. I'll start back on April 18th when in the evening we got out on the water on our boat and met up with the T65As, T65Bs, and T75Bs (a total of 10 or 11 whales) in the northern part of Haro Strait.

A friend of mine had spotted them from shore on the west side of San Juan Island and thought she had seen close to 10 whales, but when we got out there we could only see four - members of the T65As.

From left to right T65A, one year-old T65A5, and four year-old T65A4

They were cruising north at a good clip, but all of a sudden something caught their attention. And just like that, the other whales appeared too:

Right off Kellett Bluffs, they started pursuing something with huge surface lunges:

We could see some splashing that wasn't coming from the whales, and soon I could tell that it was a Steller sea lion that they were after:

Sea lion (left) and lunging orca (right)

It's amazing to me how small the Steller sea lion looked next to a whale! I'm usually impressed with their size, weighing it at up to 2000 pounds.

Interestingly, it was the T65As that I saw briefly harass a Steller sea lion off Lime Kiln a few weeks ago. With so many young whales in this group, it seemed to be a training exercise as they all played cat and mouse with the sea lion. There was a lot of white water throughout the very dramatic pursuit!

I got so close to getting an amazing photo on this next one where one whale breached as another one simultaneously cartwheeled, but it turned out blurry!!

At least the breaching whale did so again, and that photo turned out:

The young whales were definitely enjoying the chase:

The little calf in the picture above is T75B2, probably only about two weeks old in this photo. It's nice to see a killer whale baby boom across ecotypes (residents and transients) this spring!

Two week old T75B2

I was surprised they let this little one get as close to the action as they did - while it seemed to be "play" for the whales, the teeth of that sea lion can cause serious damage, especially to a little whale! The sea lion was dwarfed by the adult whales, but the calf looked smaller than the sea lion.

Another blurry shot, but enough to show that the calf and the sea lion are about the same size, with the edge likely going to the sea lion

After about half an hour, the game was suddenly up, and the whales all at once decided to move on and let the sea lion go. A couple of them passed closer to where we were parked as they continued north, including T65B:

A nice cropped "ID shot" of T65B, the younger sister of T65A

I thought this amazing evening with the whales would be my "whale fix" for a while, but little did I know that the very next day all of J-Pod would show up in Haro Strait! Stay tuned with my next post, which will cover my "checking in" with one of the J-Pod calves :)

April 9th: The J16s

After missing out on seeing the J16s on the previous couple of days, they were doing the west side shuffle on April 9th, and with sunshine and calm waters it was just too tempting not to head out in our boat to go find them. We met up with them off of False Bay where they were slowly heading north.

It's a bit unusual for just one J-Pod matriline to be around, but not unheard of. We wondered if the fact the J16s were in inland waters by themselves had anything to do with the fact that two of the four new Southern Resident calves are in their family group: J50, who was born in December to J16 Slick, and J52, who was born less than two weeks ago and whose mom has now been identified by the Center for Whale Research as J36 Alki. We'll never know for sure, but both the little ones seemed to be plenty energetic!

Mom and calf off False Bay...that monstrosity in the background is the new house being built on the Mar Vista property

The females and juveniles were pretty close to shore all together, so it was a little bit hard to tell who was who. Big brother J26 Mike was a little further offshore, occasionally doing some lunges and breaches.

Head lift by J26 Mike

Always fun to see those big boys breach!

Mike breached three times in a row!

What was also nice to see is how respectful all the whale watch boats were being. At first, it was just us and one other boat, and we both hung back giving the whales extra space. As a few other commercial operators showed up, they did the same thing, voluntarily staying even further away than guidelines recommend out of respect for the two new calves.

I've gotta say that from the few times I've seen her, J50 is a spunky little whale. Not only is she covered in scratches and wounds from what researchers speculate was a difficult birth, but she's always bouncing all over the place instead of staying right in mom's slipstream. A few times she raced over to her big brother Mike. Mike has a strong bond with his sister J42 Echo, but hasn't seemed overly interested in the new calves when I've seen them....J50 may not give him a choice about it, though, forcing him to babysit sometimes.

J50 back next to mom Slick (left) after zipping over to her brother Mike (right) for a while

I knew that we were seeing two calves in there, but with the mom and calf pairs so close together I wasn't sure on most surfacings which calf I was seeing. Here's the fins of both moms and both calves all together:

When a few more whale watch boats showed up we decided to take off, and after getting back to port I went down to Lime Kiln on the off chance the whales hadn't passed already. Turns out they had stalled out and were foraging, and I got to the lighthouse at the same time the whales did! More spread out now, I could tell the two calves apart, so I knew when I was seeing the newest baby J52!

My first definitive look at the newest member of the Southern Residents, J52

J52 is the first known calf of sixteen year-old J36 Alki, also making J16 Slick a first time grandmother. For quite a while, we've been anxiously watching the young females in J-Pod waiting for them to start successfully reproducing. It's so great to see Alki with her first born!

J36 Alki and J52

Just like her three month old aunt J50, J52 looks to have a lot of spunk, regularly rocketing to the surface:

When you're a tiny whale, you gotta make extra sure you're lifting your head well above the water when you breathe! That's the baby's head on the left, and mom just starting to surface on the right

For those who might be concerned about the J16s having been the only whales here for three days, fear not - they weren't seen on the 10th, but by April 11th they had reunited with the rest of J-Pod Group A.

April 7th: T49As and T123s

Part of J-Pod turned up on the west side of San Juan Island on April 7th, but between work and doing some boat maintenance we weren't able to catch up with them. After getting the boat back in the water in the early evening, we met the news that there transients in San Juan Channel with excitement. Thanks to help from a friend, we found them just north of Yellow Island. It was the T123s and T49As.

The two teenage boys from these family groups, 15 year-old T123A Stanley and 14 year-old T49A1 seemed to be loving each other's company. (Only some transients have common names - the T123s are one such group. They're named by the Vancouver Aquarium's orca adoption program.)

T123A and T49A1

In my imagination, the boys liked the chance to hang out together and get away from their moms and kid siblings.

T123A and T49A1

T123C with T49A1 diving behind him

For those keeping score, the T123s are made up of T123 Sidney, her son T123A Stanley,  and T123C (age two). The T49As are made up of mom T49A, her son T49A1, eight year-old T49A2, four year-old T49A3, and one year-old calf T49A4. T49A2 is an interesting whale, because he often travels with his aunt's family group the T49Bs. But he was back with his natal family group on this evening! Did you follow all that? :)

A heavily cropped shot to show the presence of T49A2 (notice the notch), who often doesn't travel with his family

We followed the whales around McConnell Island when they made an abrupt turn to head to Crane Island. We cut the engine and let them pass in front of us.

Mom T49A with her two youngest: T49A4 on the left and T49A3 on the right

The whales then crossed Wasp Passage towards Shaw:

But here they stalled out and made a kill, I think of a harbor porpoise. As gulls swooped down to pick of the leftovers, the whales celebrated and shared dinner:

With that it was time for us to go our separate ways, as they continued east through Wasp Passage and we headed back west to home. The amazing spring would continue throughout the rest of the week, as transients and the J16s would both be around the next day....and then, on April 9th, I got to meet J52 for the first time! Stay tuned to the next post for baby pictures!