Wildlife notes

The unwell California sealion has left the boat ramp. I searched the area from the top of the lighthouse but couldn’t locate him. I can’t imagine he could have swam far in his condition.  The little chick with the injured leg is still with us. I thought it would go the other way around but it is hanging on, determined to learn how to walk/move around and get to its siblings and supper.

I saw another harbour seal mom and her pup so we are at three pairs now. The shallow and sheltered water on East Beach and the rocky beach to the south of the Energy Building are two areas the moms spend time with their pups.  Their nose touching is so precious. It is a delight to watch them. I can’t adequately describe their close interactions and bond so here is a video I found of what a pup is able to do in its first hour of life and another video showing a mom with her one day old pup trying to get it on land to nurse, ending with some nose touching.

Harbour seal mom and her young pup in the sheltered waters south of the Energy Building. The pup still has a section of umbilical cord attached so it is between one and 5 days old.

Young harbour seal pup resting in the water.

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• battery maintenance

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 13
• Private: 1

Weather

Skies with scattered clouds. Winds SW 18 to NW 30 knots. Daytime temperatures 12 to 14 degrees.

Wildlife notes

The unwell California sealion has been here for 5 days. Its rib and spine bones are visible. It goes for a short float at least once a day but is only able to move its front flippers. He had the energy to haul himself onto the rocks this afternoon but does not look any better.  The gull chick with mobility challenges (shown yesterday) is likely about 5 days old. It is now noticeably smaller than its nest mates and spends most of its time exposed in the wind, all alone.  I would guess the sealion will be with us longer.

Some of gulls and pigeon guillemots are still sitting on eggs. For the gulls it may be around 20% of the total nesting population, for the guillemots I could not venture a guess, but more guillemots are seen with prey in their beaks.

Facility work

The generator and the desalinator ran this morning.  I hadn’t planned on it but I used all the water produced during the 5 hour run. The gulls were right on target this morning so I needed a shower (this is no place for a ponytail), did a load of laundry (was out of clean shirts) and used a lot of mopping and cleaning water in one of the side storage basement rooms that was cleared out recently. The solar panels were skipped today as the winds were strong and the generator was running.

Vessels (partial count today)

• Ecotourism: 13
• Private: 1

Weather

Skies with scattered clouds. Winds westerlies 23 to 29 knots.  Daytime temperatures 11 to 16 degrees.

Wildlife notes

There is so much new life here but not everyone makes it. And there isn’t much sympathy around for those that don’t.  The group of three chicks near the cistern photographed on July 5th will soon be down to two. One of them has an injured leg and moves with great difficulty. The left leg drags behind and it tries to use its wings as “legs” to propel forward but ends up flipping itself over. Its siblings don’t care and neither does its parent.  A parent will arrive with a belly full of fish, lower its head and give a long call for the chicks to come. The disabled chick can hear it and watch its siblings run in response. The parent will not go to the disabled chick and there is no way it can make it to the dinner table before the meal is over. They say animals don’t feel self pity but surely they feel the pain of injury and starvation. The California sealion, who is still on the boat ramp, is also likely suffering in pain. It is hard to watch.

Gull chick trying to walk with its wings and one good leg. Its injured left leg (purple arrow) is dragging behind.

Flipped over chick trying to right itself. Arrow points at its injured left leg.

There is both happy and sad news for the sidewalk buddies, the Canada goose and glaucous-winged gull nesting beside each other. When I arrived on May 25 the goose was already sitting on her addled egg. That was 45 days ago and she was likely on the nest for at least 50 days: twice as long as it would normally take to hatch her eggs. She gave up yesterday. Today her egg was broken and strewn about by the gulls. The gulls were successful and hatched their last chick today. All three chicks made it. Good for them, bad for me when I use the sidewalk.

The nests of the Sidewalk Buddies. The Canada goose nest is the larger one on the left, the gull nest is on the right. The gull nest has two hatched chicks with one starting to hatch. It takes a day for a chick to fully emerge from an egg.  Photo from July 7, 2026.

The last bit of good news to report is a second harbour seal mom and new pup were spotted today from up in the lighthouse. The pup still has a short section of its umbilical cord attached and is well fleshed.

Facility work

• cleaned the solar panels midday when wind speed dropped below 25knots

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 20
• Private: 0

Weather

Skies with scattered clouds. Winds predominately westerly 19 to 34 knots. Daytime temperature 11 to 15 degrees.

Wildlife notes

Nothing out of the ordinary to report. More chicks have hatched and the sickly California sealion is still here. I found him in the grass with the gulls this morning and encouraged him to head back down to the boat ramp. I didn’t feel good about it and hope when my time comes, I am allowed a comfortable and safe place to lay.

Facility work

This January a summary was written about our power production on Race Rocks comparing what was produced from burning diesel and from the solar panels. For a summary of the amount of diesel burned and tons of CO2 produced here in 2025 see the January post.

Since it was so windy, I decided to stay inside and download the last 6 months of data from OpticsRE (the online software package that displays the data) before it was overwritten and update the summary graphs. I was reminded of this task recently when I discovered another corroded solar panel connector. Last year at this time to help recoup some of our solar production a technician came out and replaced all the connecters, which made a big difference. It is described in the post from June 18 2025 and can also be seen in Figure 1 below. The light blue bars are lower than they should be from February to June 2025 then jump back up in July after the fittings were replaced. We are experiencing the same thing this year – the dark blue bars are lower than they should be. Since the entire solar array and battery storage system will be upgraded in a few months, we will just limp along at reduced capacity until then and take advantage of excess power days when the generator is running.

Figure 1. Energy (kWh) produced from solar each month from 2023 to 2026.

Figure 2. Energy (kWh) produced by the generator each month from 2023 to 2026.

• data download and summary
• solar panels not cleaned due to high winds
• cleaned inside windows and organized

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 2
• Private: 0

Weather

Partly cloudy. Steady westerlies 29 to 34 knots, gusting 40. Daytime temperatures 11 to 15 degrees.

Wildlife notes

I watched a gull chick get eaten today. Shaken and whipped around for a bit, then swallowed whole, head first. I expected to see my first dead gull chick of the season any day now, maybe lying still on a walkway. I have seen chicks killed by neighbouring parents and have even seen a neighbouring chick join in on attack but once dead they are generally left there to slowly decay. This chick was killed and eaten by a gull who does not have a nest in the immediate area, in other words, it wasn’t defending its nest, territory or chick. It wasn’t the egg thief of 2025 or 2026. It looked like Grandpa gull!

Grandpa and Grandma gull have dark pigmentation around their eyes. They were named before I learned the pigmentation is not age related. They nested under the landing of north entrance stairs in 2024 and 2025. This year they are a few feet away beside the bottom step. In 2025 their three young chicks were all killed in their nest. There are only a few of these dark eyed birds on the island so I couldn’t help but wonder if he could have turned mean after his experience last summer. Would a gull even be able to remember a past act, past perpetrator or plan a targeted attack?

Grandparent gulls, July 2025

Grandparent gulls, June 2026.   Parent one on the left, parent two on the right on the nest. Details below.

Other wildlife notes. The purple martins were here for a short while yesterday and today. They visited the nesting boxes briefly. One of the two sea lions I chased off the boat ramp yesterday doesn’t have full use of its rear flippers.  He can’t move well on land or in the water.  I didn’t have the heart to chase him off today as he was the only one on the boat ramp and in his state he can’t move quickly or lunge at me when I walk past for the daily seawater readings.  When others start arriving, I don’t think I will be able to selectively encourage them to leave.  He has the same mobility issues but isn’t as skinny as the one that died on the ramp on Jan 30th and was pulled to sea on Feb 2 2026.

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• pulled some thistles
• transferred fuel
• cleaned outside windows on the Keepers House

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 12
• Private: 2

Weather

Skies clear. Winds W 11 to 24 during the day, increasing to 38 gusting 43 by evening.  Daytime temperature 10 to 13 degrees.

Wildlife notes

It was a calm day filled with butterflies and sunshine.  The English stonecrop is in full flower now and very scenic.  I can’t detect any fragrance but it has attracted painted ladies and a variety of different coloured flies.

I would guess that half of the gulls have chicks now. They are quick to strike and are less tolerant of my presence.  I was hit in the head twice today. Once it was just loud and startled me (wearing a helmet bucking up a log for firewood) and a second time it hurt a bit (wearing a baseball cap photographing the stonecrop and insects). Not nice! But the chicks sure are cute.

First chicks by the lid to the seawater cistern. It will be difficult getting there to inspect the water level.

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• cut and split firewood

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 12
• Private: 1

Weather

Fog in the early morning then clear skies. Winds mostly westerlies 3 to 18 knots. Daytime temperatures 9 to 13 degrees.

Mammals:

• California sealion: 2
• harbour seal:  144

Birds:

• gulls: 598
• cormorant: 30
• black oystercatcher: 14
• pigeon guillemot: 63
• Canada goose: 2
• bald eagle: 1
• harlequin duck: 8

Pigeon guillemots are underrepresented. Wildlife seen this week inside the reserve but not observed today include: Caspian tern, Stellar sea lion, barn swallow, dark legged shore bird and a female elephant seal last seen July 3.

The events are probably unrelated but the first day here without the endearing elephant seal and I am immediately chasing the only two barking California sea lions off the jetty and the boat ramp. How quickly things change!

I spent three hours in the lighthouse looking for black oystercatcher chicks and harbour seal pups. Success on both accounts but with the high winds I was limited to taking very lousy photos through the lighthouse windows.  I found one young harbour seal pup.  The mom looked as if it was trying to encourage the pup onto the rocks for a rest. It tried to get up on the rocks but gave up and turned around.  The mom went after it and together they swirled, twirled and touched noses – an incredible thing to watch.

The Keepers House oystercatcher chicks are three weeks old. They are big and strong enough to be taken to the water edge and shown how to forage. Their legs are pink, beaks half orange and their pin feathers are starting to grow.  The Coast Guard and the East Beach parents haven’t moved their young chicks close to shore yet. At times when the foraging is good, they return every two minutes with a food delivery for their little chicks.

Keepers House black oystercatcher parent and their three week old chick.

ALL THE WAY TO ZERO

What a nicely painted ship, such beautiful colours, worth a photo!  It turns out this ship,  the Tauranga Maersk, is the second of Maersk’s six midsized dual fuel (methanol) ships launched in 2026. According to the Maersk’s All The Way to Zero webpage, the shipping of 11 billion tons of stuff around the world accounts for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions and they are committed to net zero by 2040.  Maersk says the duel fuel ships are one of the ways to reach this goal, with hopes of other technologies on the horizon.  Unfortunately, one of the companies trying hydrogen just went bankrupt :(

The container ship Tauranga Maersk left Vancouver at 9:48 am today, was photographed here at 3:30pm on route to Yokohama Japan with an ETA of July 21, 15:00.

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• general cleaning

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 9
• Private: 1

Weather

Scattered clouds. W 20 to 25 knots in the am, WNW 33 in the pm. Daytime temperatures 12 to 14 degrees.

Wildlife notes

There are a few more chicks each day.  They are hard to spot but that is by design.  The change in behaviour of the parent (more territorial and quick to charge) is the signal to start looking for their well hidden/camouflaged chicks.

Photos of three well hidden chicks: in the open, in the vegetation and in a crack.

The pigeon guillemots are also starting to hatch more chicks, though theirs are much harder to photograph.  Parents are bringing food back and are very cautious about it.  They mill about and thoroughly survey the area before they approach their burrows. What they catch for themselves they eat underwater. What they “show off” on land is for their chicks.

Pigeon guillemot with a meal for its chick.

Facility work

• cleaned solar panels
• topped up battery fluids
• produced 154 L fresh water
• more vacuuming (stairs, floors and shelves in second bedroom, pantry, bathroom, closet)

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 16
• Private: 3

Weather

Skies cloudy. Winds westerly 10 to 20 knots. Daytime temperatures 12 degrees.

Wildlife notes

It was a wet day.  This dirty gull caught my attention today. Normally gulls keep themselves sparkly white and don’t even appear wet or disheveled.

Dirty bird

Facility notes

I thought the muddy bird was cute and affectionately named it Dirty bird. There is nothing amusing about the dirt in the corners, on the baseboards, under the bed or in dresser drawers and in the furnace vents that I found today. Furnace vents are not normally cleaned that often but the last person who slept in this particular bedroom left it a filthy mess, which I spent time cleaning today.  I would have rather cleaned the solar panels but the rain did it for me today.

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 21
• Private: 1

Weather

Overcast with periods of light rain, clearing in the evening. Winds variable 7 to 12 knots. Daytime temperatures 11 to 13 degrees.