Visibility: 15 miles for most of the day with the Washington coast as clear as I’ve seen it so far, until early evening when fog came in from the east covering downtown Victoria from view.
Wind: Little to no breeze during the day with it picking up to 14-18 knots by 7pm.
Sky: Mostly cloudy with some sun
Water: calm throughout the day, a bit choppy at times
Boats/Visitors
Boat traffic was fairly minimum today with the usual commercial vessels in the distance and one or two whale watching boats.
No visitors today
Ecological
There seems to be more stellar sea lion pups on the island, especially on the south rocks in the last few days, though I may just have not noticed them among the “piles” of bodies as they tend to lay all over each other.
Still lots of Black Turnstones, Cormorants, Eagles, Canada Geese and Gulls around
Only saw one of the male elephant seals around today
Other
Chopped some bigger logs into kindling for the woodstove this afternoon and cleaned up a lot of rocks of varying sizes that have been falling from the paths and bank walls between the lighthouse and science house.
Pretty chilly today, had frost on the ground and frozen puddles for the first time.
Visibility: low visibility this morning but cleared up by noon
Wind: very calm until early afternoon then picked up to high 20s
Sky: cloudy with a bit of sun
Water: calm and flat until the wind picked up then it got rough
Boats/Visitors
had one whale watching boat cruise by the island
Kyle came by with fuel and food. Thanks Kyle!
Ecological
The large brown raptor I saw yesterday was more likely a young 2-3 year old bald eagle. Saw three of them today playing in the wind and picking at something on the ground.
Visibility: 10 Miles, a bit foggy this morning but burned off by noon to partly cloudy
Wind: 10-15 NW got continuously more calm through the day
Sky: partly cloudy throughout the day
Water: stayed consistently calm
Boats/Visitors
A lot of ecotours came through today
Had a couple visitors, come by with Kyle this morning and then had Kyle and Guy come back this afternoon to help me out with a couple things
Ecological
Census day!
Steller (Northern) Sea Lions: 35
Harbour Seals: 44
California Sea Lions: 23
Elephant Seals: 13
Seagulls unspecified: 291
Pigeon Guillemots: 152
Cormorants unspecified: 29
Canada Geese: 14
Savannah Sparrows: 0
Harlequin Ducks: 8 (2 female, 6 male)
Black Oystercatchers: 8
Bald Eagles: 2 (2 adults, 1 immature)
There are 2 more elephant seals than usual! so thats exciting, they stayed scattered today on the path from the lighthouse to the jetty
As you can see there have been a decrease in sea lions, they are no longer on the southern rocks and have moved to the main island one group on the north side and another group on the southside
There have been an increase in gulls, pigeon guillemots and cormorants, also the harlequins are back, I did not see them last week
There has also been an increase in harbour seals, when I counted them they were mostly all on the Middle Rocks but have since scattered about the South Islands as well
