Big Group of Whales - Day 1

Friday when I got off work I heard killer whales on the hydrophones so I went out to the west side to see if I could see them. It was nice and sunny in town, so I was surprised when I got out there to see the morning fog hadn't burned off at all! Not only did I not see the whales, but I couldn't see much of anything with visibility of less than 100 yards:

I had better luck on Saturday, when I got to Lime Kiln just as J and K Pods turned around and started coming back south. They were traveling in one large group, and when they were still more than a mile away they started getting super active. I estimate that, through binoculars, I saw about 15 breaches in less than a minute! What an impressive sight, even at a distance. As they got closer, it was also impressive to see so many dorsal fins at once:

The whales weren't quite as active as they passed the lighthouse, but there were still some tailslaps, spyhops, and breaches:

One whale breached very close to this fishing boat! Just as a side note, this boat was parked there well before the whales were around, and remained stationary throughout the whole passby.

You can't quite tell in these photos, but the water was pretty rough out with some swells larger than we normally see in the summer. Some of the smaller whales were surfacing higher out of the water, presumably to make sure they were clearing the swells to breathe. Here's J41 Eclipse rocketing to the surface:

The whales quickly made their way south, and after a while I decided to go check out the birds at False Bay. I was amazed to see more than 500 peeps there! I put on some boots and went out onto the mudflats to take a better look. They were mostly western sandpipers with a few least sandpipers mixed in. If there was another rarity in there I'll never know. They were all spread out feeding, making it look almost like the mud was crawling with ants.

The patterns in the mudflats looked pretty neat in the outgoing tide, too:

While I was thrilled with my whale encounter for Saturday, little did I know it would be topped by another encounter with a big group of whales on Sunday. Stay tuned for my next post...

August Birds

I've never really thought of August as being a great month for birding. I mean, I know there's no bad month for birding, but at first glance it doesn't seem like there would be much going on in August. The breeding birds are long past the courtship phase and thus have returned to their more cryptic ways, and the fall migration has yet to really get going. Regardless, the birding this month has been awesome! Not only are there fledged young of all species out and about, but the weather has finally been great, and the first of the fall migrators - some of the shorebirds - have been showing up. Every time I go out I've been seeing something cool!

Last weekend when I went out early looking for whales, I also went looking for birds. I found this bald eagle perched right alongside False Bay Road:

A little further on, I found a California quail sitting in a bush. This is a species that's always eluded me photographically, so I was especially thrilled to get a photo like this!

Down at American Camp, I went looking for and found some of the red-necked phalaropes (188) that are migrating through. I was surprised when a flock of bushtits joined me on the rocks by the shoreline.

There has been a lot of shorebird activity at Fourth of July Beach, with lots of least and western sandpipers and some greater yellowlegs hanging out. With many shorebird species looking so similar, and all the various plumages within a species given winter/summer and juvenile colorations, I spent a long time trying to figure out just what species I was looking at.

Western sandpipers - black legs, drooping bill, rufous scapulars

Least sandpipers - a little smaller, yellowish-green legs, mottling on chest

Western sandpipers in flight

Today I stopped by Jackson Beach to check out the shorebird activity. The first thing I saw when I stepped out my car, however, was an American goldfinch feeding on their favorite plant: thistle.

The shorebirds were also there: three greater yellowlegs, and a flock of thirty killdeer. In with the killdeer were three semipalmated plovers - cool! The semipalmated plover is on the left, and a killdeer on the right:

I wonder what the rest of the month will bring??

Whales I Haven't Seen in a While

This weekend I got the chance to see some members of L-Pod that I hadn't seen yet this year. While the L12 subgroup has been in inland waters for a while, the "big part" of L-Pod has been scarce until the last few days, when all the members of the Southern Resident Community of killer whales have been traveling together. The whales have been very spread out so it hasn't quite been the exciting social superpod you might be imagining, but it's still awesome to know there are that many whales (88 at last count) in the area.

On Saturday all three pods made their way down from the north, and passed by Lime Kiln between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. J2 Granny was in the lead, followed by the J14s, K13s, and K12s. Most of the other whales were way (read: several miles) offshore, but then after a half hour gap another group came by close enough to be identified. In the lead of this group was L47 Marina and her youngest calf L115. It's exciting to see L115 still going strong. Marina has two adult female offspring in L83 Moonlight and L91 Muncher, but her next four calves after that (L99, L102, L107, and L111) all died within a few weeks of birth. This led to speculation that maybe Marina wasn't able to lactate or was having some other type of difficulty, but L115 has now made it for a whole twelve months! 

L47 Marina and calf L115, who turns 1 year old this month

Following L47 was a big group with lots of females and juveniles who I believe was the L55 family group. This is another group of L-Pod I don't get to spend much time with, and that combined with the fact that they are fairly nondescript when it comes to individual markings means they're a challenge to identify. I'm fairly confident I identified L82 Kasatka and her first calf L116, who is one year old as well, and the rest of the group seemed right given the number of adults/juveniles in the rest of their family.

This morning I woke up and immediately felt like I should head out to the west side. Following my intuition turned out to be a good idea, as when I got out there whales were already passing by heading north past Lime Kiln. The first whale I saw was L2 Grace, the mother of a family group I hadn't seen yet this year!

L2 Grace, estimated to be 51 years old this year

The whales proved difficult to track this morning as they were going on long dives and were again spread out. In fact, I only saw Grace on this one surfacing and not again! Well offshore I did see her younger son L88 Wavewalker.

The K12s were around again, as I saw K22 Sekiu and her nephew K37 Rainshadow. L79 Skana was swimming with his mom L22 Spirit - those two seem to have a really close bond:

L79 Skana and L22 Spirit

Finally, I saw the L54 family group, another part of L-Pod I hadn't seen yet this year. It was a little confusing to have both K22 Sekiu and L54 Ino in the same vicinity as one another because they have very similar saddle patches on their right sides. Only Ino has a one-year old calf, though, and L117 was right in there beside her. One of the other whales traveling with Ino (perhaps her oldest son?) breached:

Breach - perhaps by L100 Indigo?

And then, can you believe this? The sequence of shots of the above breach resulted in this image:

Breaching whale upstaged by immature gull

What are the chances of THAT happening?! That immature gull crossed in front of the camera right as the whale was the furthest out of the water. Despite all my years of taking whale photographs nothing like that has ever happened before!

Scenes From the Last Week

On Saturday, July 31st the K12s, K13s, and K14s of K-Pod headed south past Lime Kiln. They later met up wtih the L12s, J-Pod, and the other four K-Pod whales off the south end of the island. Here's K25 Scoter with his nephew K38 Comet:

On August 1st I was at the redoubt near American Camp when I came across a pair of "teenage" foxes. This one hopped up on the fence to get a better look at me over the tall grass:

Prints of this photo available here

On the way home, I had to pull over to snap a shot of this amazing rural scene with Mt. Baker in the background:

Speaking of Mt. Baker, it was looking especially striking in the evening of August 2nd. I went up to the deck above our marina to take this shot:

Today I went birding down at American Camp. I heard a young bald eagle making a lot of racket near the visitor's center, but it took me a while to locate him - a dark bird hidden in the shadows of the trees. I wonder what all the fuss was about?

Another pair of birds making some noise nearby also caught my attention. They turned out to be a pair of western wood-pewees - cool!

I made another stop at Jackson Beach to look for shorebirds, and I wasn't disappointed. There were 13 killdeer out on the spit. A small flocks of peeps was also foraging nearby. I crouched down and they slowly approached me. Just when I was ready to take a photo, they all took flight! This was the result:

There were 5 western sandpiper and 3 least sandpipers in the mix. I also found six greater yellowlegs. This time the "sit and wait" method was a little more successful, as a pair of them were feeding in the shallows and got close enough for me to take this shot:

They're almost hard to see in the above photo (except for the legs), but the pictures where there was gravel in the background they were almost completely camouflaged! There was also a flock of about 20 mew gulls on the sand spit, and I was surprised to see a pair of Caspian terns hanging out with them! I occasionally see a tern flying overhead at Jackson Beach, but this was the first time I've seen them on the ground there.

As you can tell from all the above photos, the weather has been pretty nice this week! We're finally getting some summer weather now that it's August. Here's hoping it continues through the weekend so I can have some more sunny wildlife encounters.

Barred owl

Barred owl on Mt. Young last Saturday evening

A solemn moment

In the presence of an owl

Who is looking at whom?

Catching Up on Birds and Insects

Just because most of my recent posts have been about fantastic whale sightings, it doesn't mean I've stopped paying attention to birds or the rest of the natural world! Here I'll play catch-up by posting some bird and insect sightings from the last month.

When we had family in town a couple weeks ago, we went to see the place they were staying up on Cady Mountain. It was a spectacular sunset that night.

While we were outside enjoying it, I saw and heard three common nighthawks flying around high up above.

The same evening, a band-tailed pigeon (186) called and then flew by, helping the year list slowly trudge along towards my goal of 200 species. I also went out birding yesterday after reading some reports of migrating shorebirds starting to show up. Out at False Bay I found 2 killdeer, a flock of 20 western sandpipers, and 2 semipalmated plovers (187) - nice! That leaves me behind but within reach of Dave, who sits at 192 :)

Also yesterday I went to Fourth of July beach to do a COASST survey. No beached birds, but the highlight was this barn swallow nest with three chicks that must be close to fledging. They won't have any choice but to leave the nest if they get much bigger! This one was basically sitting on top of the other two:

Now on to the insects!

Western sheep moth, Hemileuca eglanterina, larva - about the size of an index finger!

Garden silphid, Heterosilpha ramosa, a beetle that feeds on decaying organic material

Rose leaf gall wasp, Diplolepis polita, found on Nootka rose

A tattered swallowtail butterfly, probably the pale tiger swallowtail, Papilio eurymedon

Finally, we came across an ant hill the other day, and it was pretty amazing to watch these guys at work. I accidentally disturbed their structure before I realized what it was, and they immediately poured out of the holes and set to work rebuilding it. These part-red, part-black ants are western thatching ants (Formica obscuripes) and build large nests out of dead plant material. It was impressive to see the size of the pine needles and twigs they were carrying and maneuvering as they climbed across the ant hill and the rocks it was built up against. It was worth kneeling down and watching all the drama play out in their little world, and after a while I had to pull out my macro lens, too.

Western thatching ant picking up a pine needle

A Whale of an Afternoon

On Tuesday right after I got out of work my friend Katie gave me a head's up that there were whales heading towards the lighthouse. I made a quick stop at home to pick up lunch and my camera bag and off I went! I got there just in time to see the first whales from J and K Pods heading slowly south against a strong flood tide at about 12:30 PM.

K25 Scoter and his mother K13 Skagit porpoising south - prints of this photo available here

The whales were super spread out, both north-sound and east-west, so they took a long time to pass by. Some were way out in the middle of Haro Strait, but a few others were much closer to shore. The groups I spotted closer to shore started with the K13s, K12s, and K14s. I'm not sure which whale this is, but she veered off and started heading right for the rock where I was sitting. As me and other onlookers waited for her to come to the surface again, I spotted her underwater, gliding by just off the kelp bed not 20 feet from where I was sitting. She surfaced just past me, continuing to head south. This full frame shot is uncropped - nothing in the world like being this close to a wild killer whale!

Prints of this photo available here

Around 3:30 PM there were still whales to the north of us in addition to all those that had passed by heading south, but now they all started going every which way. Many whales went north again further offshore, but one group with lots of juveniles and calves just hung out in front of the lighthouse for a while. I found this moment especially touching - the two youngest K-Pod whales, from different matrilines, with their moms. All four of them surfaced together several times before veering a little offshore and playing for about 15 minutes.

From left to right: K12 Sequim, K43, K44 (barely visible above mom), K27 Deadhead

Here's another shot showing silhouettes of just K27 Deadhead and her son K44, who is about three weeks old now:

There were lulls between groups of whales passing, and I was very close to leaving after it looked like they had all gone north. I was even halfway up the hill when I turned around and saw a whale surfacing directly off from the lighthouse - so back down to the rocks I went. Sure enough, they all came back south again. It was well worth the wait, as around 5:30 the last big group of whales came by. Included in this group were a bunch of males - J27 Blackberry, J34 Doublestuf, L41 Mega, L79 Skana, L87 Onyx, and at least one other.

Two tall male dorsal fins close together

It was hard to count whales when they were as spread out as they were, but I saw or identified in my photos whales from every family group in J-Pod and K-Pod plus the L12 subgroup of L-Pod, so there were probably about 60 whales out there!

L79 Skana

The males were having a very good time together, tail slapping, rolling at the surface, and swimming upside down.

A big male orca lunging upside down at the surface - prints of this photo available here

They were clearly enjoying themselves, as I saw several "sea snakes" (orca penises) extended. It's not unusual for orcas, or other species of dolphin, to engage in sexual behavior for fun rather than just for breeding, and that includes sexual behavior among individuals of the same gender which is definitely what was going on that evening!

An upside down male orca with his "sea snake" visible, with a second male swimming towards him from the left

After that big group of whales passed I had to leave, already late for somewhere I was supposed to be by 6 PM. But as I drove south past Land Bank, I had to stop again because the whales were going slowly and were even closer to shore. It was impressive to see such a large group together, and it was kind of neat to see them from the road rather than down on the rocks where I usually am! It was more of a perspective from above:

J28 Polaris and another female surface inshore of the kelp bed off Land Bank

I was on the west side for five and a half hours, with whales in sight the entire time I was there - definitely a whale of an afternoon! It reminds me of some of the epic passbys we had during some of my first summers here, where a superpod would just go back and forth on the westside for hours at a time.

Three adult male orcas - the one in the middle is throwing a little tail slap as he dives

A photo gallery of all the photos in this blog post can be seen here, where any of them can be ordered as prints.