I’m back for a short stint on Race Rocks, and it feels strangely like home–with some improvements.  I much appreciate the upgrade to the composting toilet! Yesterday, I  conducted a simultaneous seawatch with Daniel Donnecke at Beechey Head.  He always seems to have higher numbers of most species and more diversity, but we definitely had some overlaps yesterday. If you would like to see our respective lists for the first two hours of decent light, here are the links:
Beechey Head hour 1
Race Rocks hour 1
Beechey Head hour 2
Race Rocks hour 2

Many of the birds that appeared on yesterday’s list weren’t on today’s, as seawatch counts extend well beyond the boundaries of the reserve.  On a seawatch, you can count a bird clear across the strait, if you can identify it!

The gulls and the guillemots have been very “busy” this week. There have been a lot of double-decker moments and cloacal kissing going on. There should be a bumper crop of chicks in the next few weeks!

One surprising sightings is an apparent Western Gull nesting on the east side of the island. Although they do breed as near as the Columbia River area, they are not usual breeders in the Puget Sound/Salish Sea area.  She may well have some Glaucous-winged Gull genes in her lineage, but nothing obvious from her appearance.

Western Gull

The two highlights for me this week have been the continuation of the Barn Swallow pair.  It seemed to me that suitable mud for their nest might have been a limiting factor, but they appear to have chosen a storage cupboard on the outside of the generator building as their potential location. This is very exciting!!

Barn Swallows

The second was a great encounter with Ollie, the sea otter. Today, during census, I found him out of the water on one of the exposed rocks on the west side of Great Race.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see a sea otter in Victoria waters, but that bucket list item was checked off when I met Ollie several years ago.  I never even dreamed I would see him on land!  He came out to roll around in some seaweed, straighten some fur, have a little scratch, and then returned to his normal environment.

Ollie the sea otter