Category Archives: Bird Notes

Goslings

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 NE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • No visitors but quite a few tour boats

Maintenance

  • Just trying to fill up the water tank before guests come to stay in the guest house for a few nights

Ecological

  • The eggs hatched a little sooner than planned, so I missed addling that nest, but the goslings are pretty cute, there are a total of 8 nests this year, as far as I have seen
  • still 13 elephant seals here, the male pup is still around too and most of the elephants have started molting

Rainy day

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • No visitors but quite a few tour boats came to look at the otter in the north kelp bed

Maintenance

  • Its been very cloudy all day so I’ll run the generator and desalinator tonight

Ecological

  • still 13 elephants around, the male pup is still here
  • have to walk around with a broom because the geese can get pretty vicious when walking by
  • plenty of sea lions and harbour seals around and a lot of gulls
  • there has also been quite a bit of eagle activity, they like to chase the seagull’s around

13 Elephants

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • Had a few visitors this morning, and some help addling goose eggs

Maintenance

  • Haven’t had quite enough sunlight lately so I’ve ran the generator a couple of times but I haven’t had to run it too much

Ecological

  • 13 elephants seals, only one has molted and about 4 of these elephants are young males, between 1-3 years old
  • Nemo the male pup is still here, Dory left a little while ago
  • There are at least 5 or 6 goose nests around that need addling, which we do here as population control of the geese

Cameras are back up

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-5 SE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • Had a few visitors this morning

Maintenance

  • as many of you noticed the cameras were down, that is because there was an issue without the router on Saturday, we just got replacement parts today and everything should be up running this also includes my internet which means I can post on this blog again

Ecological

  • A lot of elephant seals lately, there are 7 females and 4 males, this includes the pup
  • The males are very small, no big noses yet, they must be 2 or 3 years old, one of them has a green tag D018
  • the female pup left two days ago but the male pup is still here, he will probably leave any day now
  • only one of the females has been molting so far, the other 6 will probably start soon
  • I have counted 6 goose nests so far, I haven’t been able to addle them because I do need someone to help me fend off the geese while one takes the eggs. We do this is a population control method and have a permit to addle goose eggs

Molting

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 10-20 NE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: A little choppy

Boats/Visitors

  • a few boats out today
  • had someone out here to look at the desal, hopefully solving that issue soon

Maintenance

  • we’ve been getting a lot of solar but today is cloudy so I’ll run the generator and desal for a few hours

Ecological

  • the pups are having fun splashing around
  • there are 3 females altogether, one of them is quite young probably 2 or 3 years old the other two are much older and they will be molting soon, we should be expecting more females within the next couple weeks
  • no more male elephant seals around just the pup
  • not  a lot of sea lions but there are plenty of harbour seals on the outer rocks
  • I have not spotted any goose nests yet but I’m sure it’ll happen soon, not looking forward to that, looks to be at least 8 nesting pairs on island

Beautiful weather

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • a few boats out today, fishing sailing and ecotours

Maintenance

  • Ran the desal for awhile, tank is topped up, hopefully, no more running it for hours every day

Ecological

  • It looks like the female pup might have gone in today, if she didn’t then she was very close, I will check again tomorrow morning if the pups are in the water
  • the male pup has been beside the house all day, so I know he didn’t go in
  • still one other male elephant on island, Bernard, the alpha
  • closer to 200 sea lions today, maybe due to the nice weather we’ve been having, also a lot of harbour seals on the south rock
  • the number of gulls is slowly increasing, at least from the noise level it seems like it

Still on land

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 SE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • Some ecotours out today

Maintenance

  • The desal quit on me a couple of times last night so I’m trying for a longer run tonight

Ecological

  • The pups still have not gone into the water, haven’t even gone near the jetty, they are both still beside the main house, they have been chewing on the grass a bit
  • the pigeon guillemots are back, looks to be a couple hundred of them
  • still around 100 sea lions, and about 50 harbour seals all together on the surrounding rocks
  • there are about 16 geese which I’m sure are starting to look for good nesting spots, there is also an increase in seagulls, I can tell from how noisy they are

Still not swimming

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 SE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • A couple of small tours from the college the past few days
  • there have been some ecotour boats out there as well

Maintenance

  • Lately, I’ve just been trying to get that water tank filled

Ecological

  • The pups still have not gone into the water at all other than day Nemo was in the puddle
  • the alpha is still here but no other males that I’ve seen
  • not very many sea lions, I would say around 100
  • quite a few geese, they will start nesting in a couple of weeks so I’m not looking forward to that
  • there has also been an increase in seagulls

Pigeon Guillemot

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 SE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Calm for the most part

Boats/Visitors

  • Guy and Alex came by today along with a couple visitors to collect the body of the deceased pup

Maintenance

  • I have barely scratched the surface with pressure washing, so much still needs to be done

Ecological

  • The third did not make it, it just never figured out how to nurse
  • the other two pups are doing great and are getting quite large
  • the pigeon guillemots are back, some of them even still have a bit of their winter plumage
  • still plenty of eagles around
  • will update census tomorrow and hopefully, the pigeons will still be around, sometimes they are here one day and gone the next and back the day after that, I would like to get some better close up photos of them

Pigeon Guillemots, winter plumage

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Weather: mostly clear sky and light wind from the West.

Ecological: 

-A flock of Pigeon Guillemots with winter plumage (photos) were in the foreshore by the jetty, these were the first PGs I have seen on this shift.

-The Snow Bunting was out and about (photo)

Vessels: 2 tour boats and 1 private/sports fishing boat

Maintenance:

-cut firewood

-moved fuel barrels

-stocked up firewood in basement

-continued to look in to energy system issues.