The morning weather went from still and overcast at dawn, to clear with a light west wind that brought the fog in for a few hours, then cleared to sunshine for midday. By sunset a high overcast had developed with high altitude clouds piling up on distant mountains and on the horizon at sea. The barometer continued to climb today and reached over 1016hPA.

Wind direction swung around a few times then settled on a blow from the west rising at times to 28 knots. A gale warning forecasts strengths up to 35 knots this evening. Sunday has a 70% chance of showers and the wind is expected to drop overnight to light winds by the afternoon.

Seven whale watching and one tour/party boat were observed working in the Ecological Reserve today. One vessel, Fantasea VI a party boat cum tour boat, according to the sign affixed to it, spent an hour in the Ecological Reserve feeding many, many loaves of bread to the gulls. They were still flinging bread out as they returned towards Victoria. BC Parks act as stewards of protected areas including BC’s Ecological Reserves and they note that feeding wildlife is illegal.

We found the killing ground for Pigeon Guillemots today with the remains of six adults in breeding plumage found near their nesting area. All of them had the neck skin inside out over the head and were the handy-work of the same predator that is feeding on juvenile gulls this week. This might explain the lack of nesting activity by Pigeon Guillemots. I will investigate further to see how many more corpses there are in the greater area.

Chores were routine maintenance and fighting entropy today.