Tag Archives: census

January 10th Census

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Weather: Overcast, but mostly sunny over the last few days. winds 15-20knots.

This feels like we got more sun in January 2021 all of 2020.

Visitors/Traffic: Pretty quiet week, a few fishing boats driving by.

Ecological Notes: Newest Elephant Seal pup was born today. This makes 3 pups total, with the oldest nearing the end of his nursing period. His mom is looking VERY depleted, with 3 more days estimated until the end of her nursing period. His mom has also had a large behavioural change: previously she would ‘fight’ with the Beachmaster when we attempted mating, but over the last 24 hours she’s now much more receptive to his advances. 13-14 times a day receptive.

Cheermeister at 19 days. Looking fat and healthy as his mom gets more and more depleted. In 2020 we saw the pups nurse for 23 days, so he’s getting close to the end of ‘free food’.

Census:

Gulls: 259

Cormorants: 719

Eagles: 6

Turnstones: 22

Elephant Seals: 8 [2 bulls, 3 females, 3 pups]

Steller Sea Lions: 160

California Sea Lions: 121

Harbour Seals: 10

Proof that I take photos of other animals than Elephant Seals. SE Steller Rookery going strong.

Mothers seem to have lots of aggression shortly after a pup is born. Every pup we’ve seen get born here coincides with a bought of mom-on-mom aggression. Although Courtney has pointed out that this is my interpretation of their behaviour, and this could just be a ‘welcome to the fraternity of motherhood’ moment.

Mating looks rough. In larger rookeries this often results in pups getting squished. Here, Cheermeister just needs to avoid getting pinned and he should be good. He’s repetitively gotten in the middle of that mating between his mom and the Beachmaster and hasn’t died…. yet.

Peace descends. As with all things Elephant Seal: the chaos doesn’t last long. After 30 min of excitement everyone rolls over and falls asleep until tomorrows moment of activity,

 

December 23 Wildlife Census with a new baby Elephant Seal

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Weather: A bit of light sleet/snow, light winds ~15knots.

Visitors/Traffic: 2 Whale watching boats, and a supply run by Gregg.

Ecological Notes: Baby Elephant Seal born last night! Around 22:00 at night our resident female (pink tag #2, also referred to as ‘Beverly’). The Beachmaster was present for the birth, and initially I thought he might be looking to kill the pup to force the female into estrus. Nope, just an observer, sniffing and mouthing the newborn pup, but no damage caused.

Newborn Elephant Seal Pup, which we’ve taken to calling ‘Cheermeister’.

Lots of eagles present in today’s Census,  which may be related to the reduced number of birds counted.

Census:

Gulls: 164

Cormorants (mostly Brant’s): 430

Eagles: 13

Elephant Seals: 5

Steller Sea Lions: 329

California Sea Lions: 464

Turnstones: 22

Green Wing Teal: 4

Long Tailed Duck: 5

Canada Geese: 2

Steller Sea Lion haulout to the SE of the lighthouse.

It’s a Cormorant party.

Eagles on the island mean that a lot of the birds are choosing to be elsewhere.

Any space without Sea Lions and eagles mean the birds can really stretch their wings.

Elephant Seals pick the weirdest spots to sleep. Sometimes it’s inconvenient for maintenance, and sometimes it just looks gross. Soaking your wounded nose in a poopy puddle? Gross.

 

Clear Skies + Elephant Seals! (census)

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Weather:

  • Visibility 15+ NM
  • Sky mostly clear, overcast in late afternoon
  • Wind 0-10 knots N
  • Sea state: calm, glassy!

Visitors: A small number of pleasure crafts trickling through. Only a handful of tourism vessels over the weekend and a few through the late week.

Ecological Notes: 

  • This week has brought some of our favorite visitors to Race Rocks: elephant seals! We’ve been joined by two huge male elephants seals as well as two younger pups that look to be only a year or so old. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any tagged elephant seals yet so that’s all we know for now.
  • We’ve still been spotted seagulls displaying odd behavior. We’ve noticed a total of 7 over the past month.
  • Whale sightings have slowed down now, seemingly as the weather gets colder and salmon runs slow. We have still been seeing around one per day but the sightings are less consistent.
  • Today we noticed a tiny sea lion pup nursing! We mostly only see male sea lions on race rocks, but recently we’ve been noticing very small sea lions arriving. It’s hard to tell the sex of sea lions from a distance so this was the first female we’ve identified in the crowd.
  • The bald eagles have continued to visit to fish and hunt gulls in the early to late morning. They particularly like to sit under the tower containing camera 5, sometimes up to 10 at once! The color variation throughout their different life stages is particularly striking.

Census:

  • 54 Harbour seals
  • 177 Stellar sea lions
  • 233 California sea lions
  • 4 Elephant seals
  • 275 Brandt’s + pelagic cormorants (too far away to distinguish)
  • 6 Double-crested cormorants
  • 5 Surfbirds
  • 3 Dunlins
  • 25 Black turnstones
  • 12 Harlequin ducks
  • 7 Bald eagles
  • 290 Thayer’s gulls

A Big Storm + Lots of Birds! (census)

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Weather Today: 

  • Visibility 14 NM
  • Sky partially overcast
  • 30-55 Knots SW
  • Sea state: swells up to 2m, otherwise 3-4+ ft chop

Visitors/Traffic: Nothing other than a few fishing and shipping vessels in the strait.

Ecological Notes: 

  • We found another apparently healthy gull dead today; this is the fourth one since the beginning of the month. We now have two preserved for necropsy, which we hope to transport to land soon to be investigated. They have all displayed the same odd symptoms: weakness in the wings progressing to unable to move, wings dropping to the sides, and unable to make any sound.
  • This week there have been an incredible number of cormorants in the reserve! An underrated bird, they are very fun to watch as they waddle, preen, and fish.
  • We’ve been noticing some fungi popping up around the island now that we are into the rainy season! Photos below. These are in addition to the shaggy mane mushrooms we found last spring fruiting beside the composters.
  • Last week we spotted another “neck wrap”: a california sea lion with some kind of pollution material embedded into his neck. Unfortunately it seems that he is no longer present in the reserve, making a rescue improbable.

Census:

  • 4 black oystercatchers
  • 1 dunlin
  • 1 ruddy turnstone
  • 9 black turnstones
  • 3 surfbirds
  • 500 Thayer’s gulls
  • 17 Canada geese
  • 1550 Cormorants (wow!)
  • 2 bald eagles
  • 100 stellar sea lions
  • 502 California sea lions
  • 2 harbour seals

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

Whales, Harlequin Ducks, and Eagles!

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Weather Today: 

  • Visibility 1-5 NM
  • Sky overcast, moderate fog cover
  • Wind 10-25 knots W
  • Waves up to 0.5m

Visitors and traffic: 

  • On Sunday we had a burst of whale watching activity, some around North Rock but primarily south of the reserve near the Rosedale Reef marker.
  • We have had some supplies (water, etc.) delivered over the last couple of days.

Ecological/Weather Notes: 

  • We woke up in a fog bank on Monday and the fog has stuck around, although with periods of clarity. It sounds like Vancouver Island is going to continue getting wet weather over this week.
  • As mentioned above, on Monday there were 2 minke whales (?) in the general area of North Rock and some time later 2 or 3 humpbacks south of us. A good handful of of whale watching/eco tourism vessels came by to get close to the action.
  • Over the last couple of days we’ve been seeing whales daily, usually out about a kilometre in the strait but once or twice they’ve come in closer to Rosedale Rock.
  • Mara spotted some brightly coloured Harlequin sea ducks in the water just off the shore south-east of us.
  • This afternoon two large bald eagles visited. Going off of the stray seagull leg and patch of feathers near the house, they were resting after a snack.
  • As the census shows below the sea lion numbers reflect the colder weather moving in and them moving out!
  • Yesterday on the jetty, we spotted a pile of what we think are regurgitated squid quills and eyeballs.
  • Garry Fletcher kindly gave us a tip about the ‘mystery berries’ from the last log post. He suspects them to be from a Strawberry Tree (Arbutus Unedo) and was even able to share pictures of a tree and its fruit. Thank you, Garry!

Census:

412 California Gulls

68 Glaucus Gulls

9 Stellar Sea Lions

76 California Sea Lions

65 Cormorants

14 Black Oyster Catchers

10 Harbour Seals

7 Canada Geese

15 Black Turnstones

Saturday Census

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Weather Today: 

  • Visibility 10-15 NM
  • Sky partly cloudy, some blue sky and sun
  • Wind 25-30 Knots NE
  • Sea state: swells breaking up to 4-5 ft

Census:

  • 1 Bald eagle
  • 6 Black turnstones
  • 1 Savannah sparrow
  • 3 Harlequin ducks
  • 345 Brandt’s cormorants
  • 800 California seagulls (approximate)
  • 65 Harbour seals
  • 13 Canada geese
  • 1117 California sea lions
  • 234 Stellar sea lions
  • 1 Sea otter (Ollie!)

Sunday Census

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Weather Today: 

  • Sky overcast with rain earlier in the afternoon
  • Visibility 10nm
  • 25-30 knots NW
  • Swells up to 0.75 m, 1 foot chop

Visitors: Over the weekend we had roughly 5 ecotour vessels per day with a couple of pleasure craft daily. Today, a private vessel spent the late afternoon in the reserve supporting divers in the water near the jetty.

Ecological: 

  • Yesterday we were surprised by a humpback whale just off of the NE side of the rock. We spotted the whale, as well as two ecotour vessels just on the edge of the reserve, shortly after heading outside. It was huge!

Humpback Whale

  • Erica/GE103 seems to have moved along, we haven’t seen her in a few days now.
  • More sea lions seem to be hauling out, or maybe it’s just that they’re getting more comfortable! They’ve been very persistent about coming up onto the middle of the island but we’ve been able to keep them away from the burial cairns. It seems as though they are unable to read the no trespassing signs…

Census: 

  • 192 cormorants
  • 96 harbour seals
  • 1 humpback whale
  • 1 bald eagle
  • 950 california gulls
  • 75 glaucus gulls
  • 229 stellar sea lions
  • 1116 california sea lions
  • 3 canada geese
  • 26 turnstones
  • 1 sea otter

Storms on the Way

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Weather Today: 

  • Sky partly cloudy, intermittent rain
  • Visibility
  • 20-35 knots W- SW throughout the day
  • Sea state: Swells up to 1.5 m, 1-2 foot chop

Visitors: Few boats through the reserve today as the seas have been a bit rough. A few eco-tourism boats in late afternoon watching a humpback whale just outside of the reserve.

Ecological: 

  • Not many unusual bird sightings this week as it has been incredibly windy. Quite a few more cormorants this week!
  • Erica, or GE103 has been enjoying napping around race rocks still this week. Her favorite spot is the jetty, although if there are too many sea lions she will venture higher onto the middle part of the island for some proper rest.

Census: 

  • 69 Harbour seals
  • 23 Glaucous-winged gulls
  • 163 California gulls
  • 43 Brandt’s cormorants
  • 263 Stellar sea lions
  • 695 California sea lions
  • 2 Bald eagles
  • 1 Elephant seall
  • 1 Sea otter
  • 1 Humpback whale (just outside of the reserve)
  • 10 Black turnstones
  • 5 Savannah sparrows

Saturday Census, Storm Brewing

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Weather Today: 

  • Sky intermittently foggy, clear (dark clouds blowing in from W)
  • Visibility 10-15 NM
  • Wind 25-35 Knots NW
  • Sea state: white caps, 2-3 foot chop

No visitors today. A few eco-tourism boats , 1 pleasure craft, and a large group of kayakers in the mid afternoon passed through the reserve.

Yesterday we glanced a humpback whale outside the reserve in the early morning. We have seen far fewer whales inside of the reserve as compared to last year’s fall (none!).

Census: 

  • 1 Elephant seal (GE103)
  • 16 Canada geese
  • 127 Glaucous-winged gulls
  • 633 California gulls
  • 3 Savannah sparrows
  • 2 Black turnstones
  • 1 Black oystercatcher (spotted amongst a group of gulls!)
  • 49 Brandt’s cormorants
  • 1 Sea otter
  • 19 Harbour seals
  • 511 California sea lions
  • 128 Stellar Sea lions