Tag Archives: animal behaviour

Back to the Rock!

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Happy to be back at Race Rocks for my second stint this year!

 

Ecological Notes:

  • 1 female Elephant Seal landed, still in the upper ramp area

The Sea Lion appeared to realize that while I chase the Sea Lions off the ramp area, I don’t chase the female Elephant Seal. Normally when he see’s me coming, he quickly moves behind her now.

  • all Birds thinned out, potentially sensing the upcoming storm
  • still finding deceased birds daily
  • working continuously to encourage sea lions to avoid the main ramp area

Visitors:

  • work crews working on the student/science center

Facility Work:

  • daily repair and updating fencing
  • battery fluid top ups
  • fuel transfers from fuel shed to generator building

DND events:

  • flags were up 2 days, but lots of Humpback whales right off the normal blast area …. did not notice any blasts

Noted Vessel Traffic:

  • 4 to 5 Ecotourism vessels a day

 Noted Infractions:

  • overall, very good behaviour

Weather Events:

  • Saturday, November 02:
    • Sky: overcast with occasional sunny breaks
    • Wind: Variable winds, rotating back and forth from  E to W 5-10 kts
    • Sea: rippled to 2′ chop
    • Temperature Low 8 oC, High 10oC
  • Sunday, November 03:
    • Sky: high overcast
    • Wind: westerly 15-25 kts
    • Sea:  1 meter waves
    • Temperature Low 8 oC, High 10oC
  • Monday, November 04: Blow out storm!

    • Sky: mist fog , not dense though, good vis for a couple miles around the lighthouse
    • Wind: W 50kts gusts to 60K
    • Sea:  very high storm waves throughout the day
    • Temperature Low 4oC, High 8oC

 

** All wildlife photos taken at the furthest distance possible, and may be cropped to improve detail! **

 

Weather – Current:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/current.php?id=72

 

Weather – Past:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php?

Sea lions are returning

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Wildlife notes:

I returned after 10 days away to find two notable differences. The male elephant seal is not here and there is an explosion in the sea lion population. It seems every time I look there are more and they are coming closer to the electric fence. I thought the gulls had a lot to say to each other!  It will be interesting watching them. The weather is the same as when I left and I am back to wearing long underwear, sweaters and a toque.

Unlike the elephant seal, this California sea lion is using its hind flippers for scratching.

 

Facility work:

  • Cleaned solar panels
  • Topped up battery fluid

Vessels:

  • 25 Ecotourism

Weather:

  • Fog with visibility less than 1/4 mile in the morning, lifting by 12:00 and clear skies by 14:00. Strong westerly breeze most of the day. Near gale westerlies in the late evening. Daytime temperatures: low 11, high 18.

Ordinary day

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Wildlife notes:

Nothing extraordinary to report with the gulls, just the normal level of excitement and aggression towards each other and me!

The gulls spend a good amount of time preening. They are precise about it and are able to isolate single feathers. The young chicks learn this very early, focusing at first mostly on their chest area.

Preening

Preening

The chicks near the house that hatched on June 28 are now two weeks old. They are starting to explore moving their little wings and are learning to hop and jump.

Two weeks old

Two weeks old

Facility work:

  • cleaned solar panels
  • topped up battery fluid
  • cleaned and weeded around Energy building.

Vessels:

25 ecotourism, 4 private

Weather:

Sunny day. Gentle westerly breeze in the morning, fresh breeze in the afternoon. Temperature range: low 11, high 15.

Hiding in the shadow

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A panting parent (they do this to dissipate heat) with their young chicks hiding in the shadow.

Wildlife notes:

Many new chicks have hatched. I was happy to see the relatively calm “sidewalk” gull has a new chick. This gull has had a hard time of it right in the favourite path of the male elephant seal. He mostly enjoys the grassy hollow these days but previously he crossed the walkway daily. The nest is close to and several inches below the walkway, which has saved her last remaining egg from being crushed – the other egg disappeared in mid June.

Sidewalk gull’s new wet chick.

Two purple martins investigated the fog sensor pipes protruding half way up the south side of the lighthouse tower.  Gary will bring a purple martin nesting box to the island. Hopefully they will find it to be a suitable home.  A hummingbird was spotted but moved too quickly for a positive identification or photo.

Facility work:

  • cleaned solar panels
  • weeding brick walkway by Energy House.
  • house cleaning

Vessels:

28 ecotourism

Weather:

Clear skies, winds light and variable most of the day, switching to a moderate westerly breeze late afternoon, high of 25 degrees.

All in the day of a gull

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The elephant seal typically spends his mornings sleeping the grass near the east-west walkway leading from the Jetty to the Energy house. In the afternoon he moves to the east side of the house perhaps seeking the shade. He often moves in quick short bursts and with no regard to the gull nests in his path.  Today I watched him place himself on top of a nest near the house.

The gulls go to have a look for their nest which is mostly beneath him.

His first warning

The gulls try to persuade him to move

and try

and try

 

 

The seal reaches but can’t manage to grab the gull out of the air.

 

Eventually the seal moves a bit and the gull can take a look

One broken egg, one undamaged

They remove the shell pieces…..

and they eat the rest!  A few minutes later, she back on the nest as though nothing happened.

Facility work:

  • cleaned solar panels: from 12-1 pm generated 7.1kW !
  • thistles
  • chopped kindling

Wildlife notes:

Several eagles visited throughout the day causing great commotion. The oyster catchers seem to be the first to raise the alarm.  The California sea lions were notable absent from their regular spot near the Jetty. The four Canada geese are still here.

Vessels:

7 Ecotourism boats

Weather:

Another sunny day, winds WNW 10 in the morning building to W 30 midday.

Seagull Stones and Census

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Weather Today: 

  • Visibility 10 NM
  • Sky overcast
  • Wind 10-15 knots SW
  • Calm seas earlier in the day, rougher later on – swells 1-2m high

Visitors and traffic: 

  • Some old equipment is being moved to land, so there have been a couple of runs back and forth to the college.
  • The usual 5 or so whale watching vessels daily, very few pleasure craft as the weather gets worse.

Ecological Notes: 

  • We have been seeing whales every day, both humpbacks and orcas!
  • We thought the sea lions were beginning to move along for good but they came back – it has been interesting to observe how suddenly it can go from a couple hundred hauled out to perhaps only 50. They must leave in the night as we have yet to notice it as it happens.
  • Unfortunately we have another sea lion hanging around that has plastic around its neck.
  • While doing some work on the jetty today I (Kai) noticed an interesting pile of small stones piled up in a corner of the railing. We often see seagulls, especially the ones that look younger, playing with rocks of the same size. They are usually together in a group of 2-4 and they’ll take turns moving a rock around, holding it in their beak, and trying to take it away from each other. It seems plausible that the seagulls placed the rocks there, we haven’t seen other animals interacting with each other and objects this way.

Some photos from the last couple of days:

Census:

65 Harbour Seals

457 California Sea Lions

737 Cormorants

4 Eagles

17 Geese

4 Oyster Catchers

13 Black Turnstone

3 Humpback Whales

221 Seagulls

184 Stellar Sea Lions

Elephant seal behaviour

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I received this email from the ecoguardian about interesting elephant seal beahviour:

A few weeks ago we saw a E-seal pup from Ano Nuevo (see the pictures attached). When it encountered some difficulty in getting off our docks, one of the larger E-seals was behaving very motherly. It was quite panicked and monitoring the pup closely swimming from one side of the dock to the other, reaching up to see it. In the photo I’ve attached you can see her peering up to see the pup, which she was doing over and over again. I have since seen these two around together in the water as well.

The research says that mothers are only with pups for 4 weeks – so I’m intrigued by this behaviour as this pup must be about 9 months old or so…maybe some mothers stay around for longer? Or there is other behaviour that I’m not aware of……

Angry birds

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Clear skies. Moderate to strong West wind. Force 5.
The barometer has levelled out around 1007.0 hPa. The forecast is for the moderate to strong West winds to continue.
Big tides and currents these past few days: Low tide is 0.3m and high tide is 2.3m today, and the current is running -6.1kn and +5.6kn.

17 tour boats
6 recreational boats
3 boats fishing on the edge of the reserve

There could be two Cackling geese on the island, or it might just be two small, scruffy Canada Geese, it’s pretty hard to tell. I saw a Canada goose attack a Gull today and break the Gulls wing. I also saw a Gull chase a Canada Goose away from its nest. Lots of antagonistic birds with all this nesting. Judging by the disaster that I have to wash off the solar panels every day, the Gulls are capitalizing on these low tides and catching lots of small fish. I find entire fish skeletons and lots of scales among all the poop on the solar panels. The Elephant seals spent most of the day in the water by the jetty. There are 5 super fat and healthy-looking California Sea lions hanging out on/making a mess of the jetty. I saw the river otter sneak up from the water by the crane and hang out under the crane deck. I think it has a hole/home somewhere under the walkway between the crane deck and the tank shed. I have only ever seen a single otter, but I wonder if it is two and I just never see them together.

I will go as far to say that two recreational fishing boats almost wrecked on the South seal rocks today, but they probably don’t even know how close they came to doom. Two rental boats from Pedder Bay marina came ripping East to West between Great Race and the South seal rocks (which is about a 30m gap). It was pretty close to max flood with the water moving at about 5kn. By sheer luck, they both made it past the rock slab of the South Seal rocks, but I heard one of the boats bottom out on a rock turning around the South-West corner of great race. Thankfully that made him turn away from Great Race because he was headed straight for a very shallow, very sold rock that sits just below the surface. I reported it to the Pedder Bay Marina since they have asked that we contact them when their rental boats are in the reserve. Boating tip from Race Rocks: if there is a patch of ocean that looks like a river, with standing waves and whirlpools, go around it not through it.

-started spring cleaning the Keeper’s house
-pulled nails and tacks from walls, puttied, and did some paint touch ups in the Keeper’s house
-painted upstairs door frames in Keeper’s house

Eumetopias jubatus , The Northern Sealion : The Race Rocks taxonomy

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Male, female and pup at Race Rocks .Sept 27,2011. Photo by Ryan Murphy

Male, female and pup at Race Rocks .Sept 27,2011. Photo by Ryan Murphy

Irmsept27mafeedpupn the fall of 2011, a female northern sea lion (Steller) and her pup appeared at Race Rocks. This is the first such pair that we have seen there. Link to Ryan Muphy’s Flickr site for a set of pictures of the sealions at Race Rocks. rmsept27maandpup2Ryan captured some excellent pictures but noted that due to blasting by the DND on the neighbouring Bentinck Island, the pup was injured and the mother disappeared. See below.. Commentary here is by Ryan Murphy : “Steller or Northern sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus) are the largest sea lion species in the world and are listed under Canada’s SARA (Species at Risk Act) as Special Concern.” rmsept27maandpup4“The Race Rocks archipelago south of Vancouver Island has long been a haul out for Steller sea lions, and we know from Lightkeeper Kurt Cehak’s accounts from the 60s that these marine mammals came to Race Rocks even when locals were encouraged to kill them to collect bounties. “ rmsept27maandpapup“Today, Steller sea lions are a year-round attraction for a multi-million dollar ecotour industry based in the Capital Region District of Victoria, BC. With the arrival of this pup and its mother to Race Rocks, the Ecological Reserve now protects the reproductive ecology of this threatened species.” rmsept27pup“However, this pup is at risk because of activities of the Canadian Department of National Defence. The island in the background is Bentinck Island and it is used by the Canadian military to dispose of ordinances and explosives training. Their rapid succession blasting during the last two days has caused rmsept27pup2repeated stampedes of sea lions and this pup may be crushed tomorrow.”     See the logs on this website posted by the ecoguardians which include mammal census and observations of sealions.           Northern Sea lion VIDEOS:

lionblasts dndblasts eye-1
EFFECTS OF DND BLASTING at Bentinck Island Sea lion disruption on middle island by DND blasting
Video Clips of Sea lions by Cam Wilson In October of 1998, Cam Wilson of Victoria made an Hi-8 video of Northern and California sea lions while diving off West Race Rocks. Clips are included here.
radiolion flasher2northern-1 RMdetail_20090823s
Tracking devices on sea lions This Northern Sea Lion was photographed with fishing equipment swallowed in September 2003..also see other photos of flashers and boat collisions. This link shows the conflict of motor boats and marine mammals in the reserve.

Posts on Entanglement of Sea lions in fishing gear

Domain Eukarya
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Sub Phylum Vertebrata
Class Mammalia
Order Carnivora
Family Otariidae
Genus Eumetopias (Gill, 1866)
Species jubatus (Schreber,1776)
Common Name Northern or Steller Sea Lion
climb

This sequence was taken in August 2008 by Pam Birley from the remote camera 5.

 

entangled2-1 rmmar09acipenser-1 tumor
Entanglement of a sealion on Middle rocks and video of release by Vancouver aquarium and DFO personnel White sturgeon images This is a link to the white sturgeon file where images taken by Ryan Murphy show predation by a Northern Sea lion on a white sturgeon at Race Rocks. In early November 2007, Mike Slater took this picture of a Northern Sea lion with a large tumor like growth on the side of its face. The animal was not sighted again at Race Rocks, however on August 22, 2009 it was photographed at Mittlenatch Island.
sealiontower brand632may706s uwsealion
Northern Sea lions peak in numbers in the fall. Branded Sea lions at Race Rocks :  Sea lions underwater, photo by PC Diver Natan.

This is the largest of the Otariidae or ‘eared seals’ family.

Habitat: Northern Sea Lions are found on North-Pacific coasts; in Russia, Alaska, Japan, Canada and the USA in particular. They spend most of their time on rocky shores and in coastal water. During bad weather they stay under water. At Race Rocks , the peak in numbers of these mammals is in October to January , upwards of 400 may be reported at Race Rocks. They mix freely with the Californian Sea Lion which may number well over 1000 individuals between October and February.

See the references on Sea Lions in our RREO Index

Description: The Sea Lions at Race Rocks are mainly bachelor bulls or juvenile yearlings. Since this is not a breeding colony, mature females do not usually come here. There are clear differences between males and females. The males are larger in size and weigh more. Whereas the average sea lion male weighs 566 kg (1,245 pounds) the average female weights only 263 kg (579 pounds). Moreover, the average male has a body length of 288 cm (10 2/3 feet) while the average female has a body length of 228 cm (8 2/3 feet). Most females are yellowish or creamed color and most males are dark.
The average life span of a Steller sea lion is about 20 years for males and old females can even reach 30 years. The breeding season is between May-June and each mating produces a single pup.p10graphSteller sea lions are marine carnivores. They feed on wild fish (salmon, herring, rockfish, flounder, and Pollock) as well as on invertebrates such as squid and octopus. The Steller sea lions feed at night, usually about 15-20 km. from shore. This relatively selective diet is one of the causes of the sea lions’ decreasing numbers since they compete with humans for this food.

An Eastern Alaskan population is now on the endangered species list due to severe declines in numbers over the past decade. They are now a threatened species included in the ‘Red List’ and protected in the USA and by the Commonwealth Independent States ( CIS).

Although they dive and spent s lot of time under water, Northern Sea Lions are also known for their ‘sunbaths’ and are often watched catching sunlight on the rocky shores. Male Northern Sea Lions are generally aggressive and territorial.

References cited Dec. 2001.
http://www.wc.adfg.state.ak.us/index.cfm?adfg=wildlife_news.view_article&issue_id=40&articles_id=229

See also:

The stellar sea lion: Two distinct stocks, Thomas Louglin, NMML

Other Members of the Class Mammalia at Race Rocks.

taxonomyiconReturn to the Race Rocks Taxonomy
and Image File
pearsonlogo2_f2The Race Rocks taxonomy is a collaborative venture originally started with the Biology and Environmental Systems students of Lester Pearson College UWC. It now also has contributions added by Faculty, Staff, Volunteers and Observers on the remote control webcams.
Dec 2001-Nufar.

 

Sea lion Behaviour after DND Blasting at Bentinck Island

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Two videos are presented here showing the effect of DND blasting on Bentinck Island on the sea lions at Race Rocks. The first is from October 7 and the second was done by student s on the project week on  November 8, 2002, (not Oct 7 as stated in this draft version of the video) . The students from Lester Pearson College who were out for a project week were able to catch the images of the impact of these blasts on the first day from the science centre window and on the second day from the top of the light tower. In the tower, they interviewed Mike Demarchi of LGL who is currently doing a $50,000 contract for the Department of National Defence to monitor the impact of these blasts and to compare them with other disturbances at Race Rocks.

See also before and after images of effects of blasting on sea lion behaviour

 

See the index of Human Effects on Animal Behaviour at Race Rocks

The following pictures were taken on November 7,2002 from the site zap camera at Race Rocks. The top set of pictures was taken at 9:30 AM . The DND started blasting at 11:00 . The bottom set of pictures were taken at 12:00 noon, after 5 blasts when most of the sealions had jumped off the rocks, They remained off the rocks mid afternoon.

Image from before a blast
and then the Image from after the blast