Fall Colors

I went out to Hillsboro today in search of a rare emperor goose that has been sighted in the area. Unfortunately, it ended up being a "wild goose chase" - literally - but it was worth the drive just to see the beautiful fall colors out there. Here are a few of my favorite shots from walking around in the rain this morning. Tomorrow, it's back to the island!

Happy Halloween!

I'm down in Portland this week to celebrate my birthday with some family and friends, but from what I hear it sounds like the whales have still been around the islands quite a bit. K-Pod has been around pretty consistently, and Js and Ls showed up yesterday to make it two consecutive years there's been a superpod on my birthday (that I've missed, of course!) Oh well, you just can't see them all, and I've been having a fun time down in the city as well as getting a lot of "mainland" chores done that you just can't do on the island.

This photo is of some pumpkins we carved on the island last week. When we turned all the lights off with candles inside, it was amazing to see that the pumpkins themselves glowed bright, even from behind on the uncarved side! By balancing my camera on the back of a chair with a long exposure time I was able to get a picture that shows how eerie the effect was. I wonder if these pumpkins had a thinner rind than normal? I don't ever remember the pumpkins themselves glowing so much! In any case, I hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!

Northern Grasshopper

This past summer, this beautiful grasshopper held still long enough for me to take some cool macro shots. She (I learned you can tell male and female grasshoppers apart by the shape of the base of their abdomen) was perched on a bench, basking in the sun, something grasshoppers apparently like to do. By scouring through internet grasshopper field guides, I determined which of the hundreds of North American grasshopper species she is: she's a member of Melanoplus borealis, a species whose scientific name translates directly into their common name, Northern Grasshopper.

The Northern Grasshopper inhabits much of the northern United States, dipping down a bit in the central US, as well as occurring across a large portion of Canada. The bright red hind tibiae (lower portion of hind legs) are one of the characteristic field marks. I like this labeled sketch of grasshopper anatomy. I do a lot of bird identification, but it's always interesting and challenging to try and identify a species of a genus or family I'm unfamiliar with, whether it be a tree, insect, flower, or mammal. Some of my favorite labs in my college biology courses dealt with taxonomy and using or developing identification keys to narrow down species IDs. The true biologist and naturalist in me emerges, since thinking about species variation and taxonomy raises questions not only about evolution and species diversification and the processes that cause speciation to occur, but also about how we see and classify the world around us.

This grasshopper is just another one of the many inhabitants of the Mar Vista grasslands. The petition to preserve Mar Vista is only 19 signatures shy of our goal of 500, so please sign if you haven't already and encourage your friends to sign today so progress on protecting this special property can be made!

40% Off Zazzle Calendars

If you're waiting til closer to the new year to buy your calendars, here's a head's up for you: early bird buyers on Zazzle can get a 40% discount on their calendar order if they purchase between now and October 31st! Just enter the coupon code "CALENDARSAVE" at checkout. Here's a link to my 2009 Zazzle calendar, Wildlife of the San Juan Islands, featuring photos of whales, foxes, deer, and more, all taken this summer. They make great holiday gifts!

Wildlife of the San Juan Islands by Monika Wieland

When the Stars Align....

As a wildlife photographer, there's always certain holy grails you're after, or ultimate goals for that perfect photograph. Some common ones for local whale photographers are "double" behaviors, where you get two whales doing the same thing at the same time, like a double spyhop; a resting line of whales, where you get lots of dorsal fins all lined up in one shot; or, that perfect breach shot.

One photo I've always dreamed of getting is an orca breaching in front of Mt. Baker. The circumstances have come close several times, where I have my camera and I'm on the boat in a place where we see the whales between us and Mt. Baker in the distance, but the breach has never happened....until now!

The last time I was on the Western Prince, when we figured out K42 was a boy, I was so excited about the rambunctious youngster that I decided to dedicate my post fully to that. But, the stars also aligned so that we saw a whale breach right in front of Mt. Baker - not once, not twice, but four times in a row! Here's one of my favorite shots from the sequence:


It's exciting to finally have the "Mt. Baker breach" photo checked off my goal list after years of hoping for everything to come together at the right time. It's an awesome image....but the mountain is a little faint from the haze that afternoon. And it would be more dramatic if shot from a closer angle. So, really, the Mt. Baker breach will stay on this photographer's wish list, because I'll still be hoping to refine it and capture an even better shot of the same behavior. But that's kind of what keeps us going back as photographers, isn't it? Always in pursuit of that perfect photo.

A Good Old Fashioned "Whale Chase"

When I went to work in the Western Prince office this morning, I heard that K-Pod had last been sighted west of here heading west, looking like they were heading back out to the open ocean. I was invited to go out on the boat, and I was tempted because it's one of our last trips of the season, but I had some things to do in town so I declined. As soon as I got home from my errands, however, I got a text message saying that you could hear K-Pod over the Lime Kiln hydrophones! Sure enough, as I tuned in I could hear the characteristic high-pitched S16 and S17 calls of K-Pod. Knowing I might be too late, I quickly gathered my stuff, rushed to my car, and drove to the west side of the island to try and see them.

Big adult male Lobo (K26). As the rest of the pod grouped up, he broke off and started traveling parallel to the group but further offshore. We often see another big adult male (Ruffles J1) do this same thing.

As I reached Land Bank, I pulled over to scan Haro Strait. Nothing. As I stood there with binoculars however, another car pulled over, then two, three, four! It turns out I wasn't the only one who had gotten word on the whales! I ended up being joined by a local homeowner and whale lover, a research scientist, a whale watch boat captain, and a couple on vacation from Idaho. As we talked about where the whales could be, we got word that they had already traveled quickly north. So, most of us decided to caravan in our cars up to San Juan County Park further north to see what we could see. This, by the way, is exactly how I define a whale chase - driving from point to point along the island to try and catch up with the whales!

At San Juan County Park we could see the whales in the distance heading away from us. "Oh well, at least I got to see them at all," I thought. But then Jim Maya, the aforementioned whale watch boat captain, offered to take us out on his boat for a short visit with the whales. How could I refuse?!

As we met up with K-Pod, the first two whales we saw were Georgia (K11) and Onyx (L87), a male who has been traveling with K-Pod this year. Soon after we arrived the whales grouped up. and started heading back south. The lighting was perfect and I got a chance to get some great ID shots, so I figured out we definitely saw most of the K-Pod family groups including:

• Mom Lea (K14) with son Lobo (K26), 5 year old Yoda (K36), and little K42
• Mom Sequim (K12) with daughter Sekiu (K22), grandson Tika (K33), and 5 year old Rainshadow (K37)
• Mom Spock (K20) with her little one Comet (K38)
• Brothers Scoter (K25) and Cali (K34)

Noticeably absent was Cappuchino (K21), the biggest adult male in K-Pod, but he has been known to travel with L-Pod at times and I suspect that's where he and his sister Raggedy (K40) may be. The only other K-Pod whales I didn't identify in my photos are, coincidentally (haha), some of the ones that are most difficult to identify with fairly non-descript solid saddle patches - so I suspect the other four of them could easily have been in there.

I love seeing whales in October! We even got to see three breaches in a row before we headed back to the harbor:

Autumn on the Island

We don't quite get the spectacular fall colors they do in some other parts of the US, but autumn is still a beautiful time of year here. The big leaf maples in places like British Camp National Historic Park, where I went for a walk today, are at their peak of vibrant yellow. I took the above photo from the little dock in Garrison Bay, looking back towards some of the historic British Camp buildings. It was a pretty gray day so a lot of my photos were turning out dark. In order to use some longer exposure times to brighten the pictures, I decided to use some "natural tripods" by resting my camera on logs, fences, etc. One of my favorites is the one above, where I ended up really liking the effect of seeing the wood from the dock where I was resting the camera.

It turned out to be a very peaceful walk. I didn't see anyone else on the trail, and the only sounds I heard were of the birds all around me: the peeping of golden-crowned kinglets flitting around in the bushes, the rattling sound of an irritated kingfisher, the high-pitched cry of a bald eagle perched atop a tree, and the guttural yelling back and forth of the ravens.

Before I left, the sun even poked through the clouds, casting a beautiful golden light and long shadows over the landscape: