Category Archives: Bird Notes

Sooke Christmas Bird Count

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Weather:  Continued west wind up to 30 knots in the morning and some lingering swell, sunshine for a change.

Ecological:

Guy brought Kim and Jim out in the morning for the annual “Sooke Christmas Bird Count”.  They surveyed the island and surrounding waters from the top of the tower and walked around the island. Guy took them around the reserve in the boat on the way back to get a better view of the pelagic zone.  Apparently the Snow Bunting they saw here was one of the highlights of the Sooke count this year.

12 Canada Goose
10 Harlequin Duck
4 Surf Scoter
3 White-winged Scoter
2 Red-breasted Merganser
24 Black Oystercatcher
38 Black Turnstone
3500 Common Murre
90 Ancient Murrelet
4 Rhinoceros Auklet
800 Mew Gull
150 Iceland Gull (Thayer’s)
250 Glaucous-winged Gull
1 Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (hybrid) — 95% Western
1 Red-throated Loon
40 Pacific Loon
1 Common Loon
50 Brandt’s Cormorant
75 Pelagic Cormorant
20 Double-crested Cormorant
10 Bald Eagle
2 Common Raven
1 Snow Bunting — Photos taken
1 Song Sparrow

Number of Taxa: 24

See this index of past years Bird Counts. https://www.racerocks.ca/race-rocks-animals-plants/bird-observations-at-race-rocks-3/christmas-bird-counts-starting-in-1997/

-4 tankers passed by today: The STI Battery, and oil/chemical tanker on its way to Quintero, Chile; The Florida, an oil/chemical tanker heading to Anacortes from Nikiski (USA); The Unique Developer, and oil products tanker coming from Topolobampo (Mex) en route to Port Angeles; and the Valrossa, from Cherry Point to Manzanillo (Mex)

Vessels:

-Second Nature

-one private/sports fishing

-3 tour boats

-1 little red zodiac going over the requested speed limit.

Maintenance:

-fixed firewood cutting jig

-sharpened chainsaw

-cut firewood

-Tidying in tank room

Vessel traffic

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Weather: good visibility, light wind, overcast, calm sea

Vessels. After a couple fairly quiet days traffic increased today. Several of the boats appeared to be within 100 meters of sealions. A couple appeared to be going over the 7 knot speed limit within 400 meters of the rocks.

-1 Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue boat

-4 private/sports fishing boats

-2 rental boats from Peder Bay Marina. I called the Marina to let then know their rental boats were in the reserve and that one was quite close to marine mammals.

-4 tour boats

-Hyaku from Pearson College, Cory with 2 guests stopped in for a short tour on the island

Maintenance:

-continued work on energy system assessment, writing report.

Census

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 10-20 NW
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Choppy under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • Not a lot of visitors lately, the ecotours are still going by but not as frequently

Maintenance

  • Running the generator more lately as is there is less sunlight

Ecological

  • Slightly less sea lions than last week
  • 1 large male elephant seal, I’m hoping its the same one as last year because that one was very protective over the pups, and 1 much smaller male, no females that I can see but there have been a couple small ones coming and going
  • The large male does seem to have a gash in his back and many scars as well
  • haven’t really seen any neck banded sea lions lately, they might have left by now but I’m still keeping an eye out for them

Census

  • California Sea Lions – 431
  • Stellar Sea Lions – 356
  • Harbour Seal – 38
  • Elephant Seal – 2 male
  • Cormorants – 140
  • Gulls – 360
  • Fox Sparrows – 12
  • Canada Geese – 18
  • Black Turnstones – 33
  • Eagle – 4
  • Raven – 1
  • Snow Bunting – 1
  • Oyster Catchers – 12
  • Harlequin Ducks – 8

Birds and Rescue Efforts

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Some swells this morning, now its more choppy but under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A team from DFO and the aquarium came out yesterday to try help out a couple of the neckbanded sea lions, the sea lions were uncooperative and left before the team got here, so hopefully next week the sea lions will be where we want them to be there is one here with fishing line around his head and it looks awful, i hope we can help him soon
  • An advisee group is here for the night with their advisor Clint
  • also the electrician came today, hopefully get that automatic start on the generator soon

Maintenance

  • Ran the desalinator a bit but its still not operating very well, makes less water in a longer amount of time
  • would like to do more pressure washing but need to be able to replace the water being used

Ecological

  • Sea lions are still slowly making their way out
  • There were quite a few oyster catchers around today
  • Ravens and eagles around as well
  • Also a single snow bunting has been hanging around

The Snow Goose

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-20 NE
  • Sky: Dense fog to partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours and fishing boats going by
  • Guy and a new Pearson Staff member came by today, gave him a tour and filled up on diesel

Maintenance

  • ran the generator and the desalinator, now that we had a good rainfall the cistern is filling up, hopefully start pressure washing more soon

Ecological

  • unfortunately still no elephant seals, they should be showing up any day now
  • the sea lions are starting to gather around the lighthouse more, need to back them up a bit a few times throughout the day
  • the little snow goose is still around

Busy Week

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • the past week was CAS week at the college so I had two groups of students drop by, the first group were marine scientists that came for 5 days and helped out with cleaning up garbage, collecting driftwood, doing a daily census and stuff like that
  • the second group were divers that unfortunately did not get to dive while they were here but have been diving around race rocks before, they stayed for two nights

Maintenance

  • What a week, the fence had to be repaired quite a bit, the students helped me with it one day, and I did not properly show them how to repair the fence so the wire ended up being grounded which the sea lions took full advantage of and completely messed up the fence
  • The electric pump in the crane house is working but is kind of slow going, it also takes a lot of priming
  • the fire pump is out of commission at the moment, there were a lot fo issues with it probably due to the fact it is not a saltwater pump and has been sitting by the ocean for 3 years
  • the desalinator is not cooperating either, it will work for maybe an hour before it shuts itself off, I can restart it but again it will only run for another hour and only desalinates half the water it used to in the same amount of time

Ecological

  • I personally have seen about 8 humpback whales a day for the past week
  • there was also a pod of about 6 killerhwhales that one of the students saw from the lighthouse which we found out later were transients and were actually hunting sea lions
  • There have also been some interesting birds around, there was a robin here, which I don’t typically see and there was also a snow goose, which I personally have never seen here before, its been hanging out with the Canada geese other birds include oyster catchers, killdeer, ravens, and eagles
  • the neck banded sea lions seem to come and go, they are very difficult to keep track of, I believe there are two at the moment and I see them about once a week, since there are over 1000 sea lions at the moment they easily get lost in the crowd, even the group of students I had here only saw them once

Students, pups, humpbacks and a dead sea lion

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-20 SW
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours
  • Guy came by with a little tour group this morning and then again in the afternoon with a group of students that will be spending their CAS week here

Maintenance

  • Fence maintenance, some pressure washing

Ecological

  • Counted at least 8 humpbacks throughout the day
  • there is a big dead stellar on the south west part of the island, I don’t usually go down there so I havent seen it until now
  • There are also about a dozen oyster catchers near the generator room
  • The sea lion pup is back and i got some great photos of it, even got some shots of it nursing which is very unusual to have such a young pup on the island

Census

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NW
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Calm

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours and sailboats going by

Maintenance

  • Fence maintenance, some pressure washing

Ecological

  • Haven’t seen the pups today but am sure they are around, there are quite a few sea lions on all of the rocks
  • also some harlequin ducks today and plenty of cormorants
  • the past few days I’ve seen maybe 4 humpbacks

Census

  • Elephant Seal – 0
  • Harbour Seal – 178
  • California Sea Lion – 281
  • Stellar Sea Lion – 344
  • Sea Otter – 1
  • Harlequin Duck – 5 male 1 female
  • Cormorant – 117
  • Fox Sparrow – 12
  • Gull -421
  • Geese – 10
  • Black Turnstone – 15

A lot of Whales

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-20 NW
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Waves under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • Plenty of ecotours around today
  • Guy also came by, we moved more of the old batteries out today

Maintenance

  • Ran the desalinator and the generator when the clouds came in, late afternoon
  • moved out some of the old batteries

Ecological

  • saw a small pod of killer whales around north rock, about 7 of them late morning, early afternoon
  • saw another pod around sunset, south of the island but not too far out
  • also saw humpbacks, one or two near both pods
  • there have been killdeer hanging around and the geese came back today

Blasting

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Weather

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

Boats/Visitors

  • Quite a bit of boat traffic, many ecotours, fishing boats and sailboats
  • Guy came by, we junked out the generator room a bit and he gave me a training session on the winch, soon I should be able to take the whaler out by myself

Maintenance

  • Had to repair the fence a couple times today, hope to extend the fence all the way to the helicopter pad as soon as I get more stick and pegs

Ecological

  • The Geese were around today
  • no elephant seals in sight
  • the blasting from the DND base was scaring the sea lions
  • also there were quite a few killdeer puttering around