Wildlife notes

Two banded gulls were observed late yesterday afternoon and reported to the Salish Sea Gull Project.  The researchers with Environment and Climate Change Canada are studying gull movements over time, their location preferences or site fidelity, and survival.  The gulls I reported in 2024 and 2025 didn’t stray too far from home but this year we have a long distance traveler on Race Rocks who came all the way from Haida Gwaii. He was banded as a adult in 2024 so is now at least 6 years old.  We also have a banded gull nesting on Race Rocks! This male is 7 years old and is probably in his 2nd or 3rd mating season.  I found him on a nest with two eggs.  This area will need to be checked again next season as they generally return to the same nesting site. To learn more about this project and how to report a banded gull see this post from June 2025.  Below is a summary of the gulls reported in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

The location of the banded gull’s nest on the east side of the island just beyond the mudflat. This location should be checked next summer.

Also the blue egg laying gull has returned to the exact same spot beside the CODAR installation and like last year, has laid two pointy plain blue eggs.

The CODAR gull’s nest

Facility notes

Regular tasks were completed in the morning (solar panels, a short attempt at water making which was aborted, water sample, etc).  The afternoon was much more varied. Richard came with his bucket of tools and a number of jobs were tackled: bunker door repaired, new propane tank hold fast added, blinds and a smoke/CO2 alarms hung, measured distance of run from cistern to the Jetty for replacing the fire hose system with a permanent hard piped system, made plans to replace the fraying flag halyard, drained oil from the last remaining piece of Old Lister, moved the used oil drum to the Tank Shed and moved another enormous pile of old wires and broken equipment from the island. We spent some time trouble shooting the pump issues and on Monday he and Greg will return with a coupler for the cistern draw pipe to simplify accessing and replacing the check valve.  Hopefully that will fix the issues with pump cycling on and off and I can get back to filling our fresh water tank.

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 7
• Private: 0

Weather

Clear skies. Westerlies 7 to 18 knots. Daytime temperatures 9 to 16 degrees.