Tag Archives: glaucous-winged-gull

Pictures

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Clear skies. Moderate West in the am, Force 3. Strong West this evening, Force 6.
Barometer rose until 1600, then dropped. The daily West wind cycle continues, light in the am and picking up in the pm.

3 tour boats

The Race Rocks website says that there are typically 6 Oystercatcher nests on Great Race, I have only found two. Tomorrow I will see if I can find more. The Oystercatcher nest next to the jetty no longer has eggs in it. A bird was sitting on the nest yesterday when I showed the nest to my Mom. If I had to guess, I would say that the River otter ate the eggs because it lives under the walkway very close to the nest. I am curious to see if the pair tries another nesting site. I saw two Oystercatchers poking around the rocks on the West side of the jetty so maybe they will try again. There has been a lot of Eagles around lately. Juveniles and adults. My Mom saw one empty the eggs out of a Gull’s nest. Apparently Glaucous winged Gulls can learn to recognize particular people, to a point where they will allow familiar researchers right up to their nests. My new plan is to befriend the Gulls that are nesting next to the tank shed and maybe they will stop flying at my head whenever I walk past.

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Compost Freedom

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Clear skies. Light, variable S-SW winds.
Barometer dropped a little, and the levelled out. Forecast continues for daily afternoon blow outs.

6 tour boats
3 recreational fishing boats on the edge
1 boat jigging for rockfish in the reserve off of West Rocks. I radioed them on 68 and 16, they didn’t reply, just put her in gear and left the reserve in a hurry.

All of the Canada geese have abandoned their nests, including the mean-spirited pair by the compost pile. Yeah! No more aerial assaults while taking out my food scraps. Sadly however, the timing is terrible because the Gulls are now starting to fly at me in a few places. If they would just make their nests a little further from the paths neither of us would have a problem. I spent the afternoon chopping firewood next to the crane platform. I turned the saw off after a while to get more logs and two curious elephant seals came up the walkway. The went over to and scoped out my pile of freshly cut firewood, and sniffed at the saw. Then one of them rolled around in the saw dust for a while.

-3 transects done on the West side of the island
-Firewood in the afternoon.

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

Elephant seal tag: green 7688

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Clear skies.  Light Easterly wind all day. Beaufort Force 2-3
A beautiful day in the Reserve, but the barometer is falling and there is a front forecasted for tomorrow.
[I’m trying to learn the Beaufort wind scale off the top of my head, and get into the habit of checking the barometric tendency so that will be part of my weather log from now on]

I was sitting on the South edge of Great Race when an Elephant seal popped up to look at me and had what appeared to be a radio transmitter on its back. It promptly disappeared, but came up the boat ramp an hour later. I’m keen to find out if the researchers retrieved the transmitter and have the track of this seal. I am really curious about where these Northern-living Northern Elephant seals go when they are not in the reserve.

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Calm Saturday

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Light variable winds most of the day. Four brief periods of rain, clear skies in between. Very low West swell. Rainbows.

6 tour boats
2 dive boats

I spent some time today trying to learn to use the Nikon DSLR that lives out here at Race Rocks. The zoom on the big lens is awesome, but I still have a few technical issues to work out. My mission was to get a photo of a Pigeon Guillemot flying away from me with its red feet sticking out, but I wasn’t happy with any of my attempts. While wandering around looking for things to photograph I saw 10-15 Turnstones. They are spending most of their time in the middle of Great Race. There was 4 Western Sandpipers, 1 Sanderling, and 2 Dunlins all feeding in the muck-puddles on Great Race.The Elephant seal that has been next to the tank shed left this morning, but there are still two out on Middle Rocks. There are a few monster Steller Sea lions among the group out on South Rocks. There are now three Canada Goose nests, all with eggs in them.

tafoni

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Clear sky. Light winds.
My shift of nearly-perfect-weather continues.

I was almost finished my animal census (I just needed a couple picture of areas with lot’s of animals) when a Coast Guard helicopter did two circles of the tower. A lot of Gulls took flight the Sea lions on South Rocks took to the water. I guess I’ll try again tomorrow.

The Gulls have been capitalizing on the low tides during daylight hours and have been foraging on green urchins. They leave the broken urchins on walkways, the jetty, and rock outcroppings. This time of year the urchins are full of roe (gonads) which, by Sea gull standards, is high is calories and nutrients.

Tafoni: The blocks of sandstone out a Race Rocks are leftover from building the tower stairs. There are a hand-full of rectangular blocks on the beach by the jetty. These blocks have the signature patterns of pits and holes that are cause by chemical erosion. Because the stone is permeable, saltwater infiltrates throughout the block. As the sun and wind dries the outer surfaces, the water moves outward, dissolving the clay that binds the sand particles together resulting in the surprisingly organized patterns of holes. Another driver is the physical weathering that occurs as salt dries and puts pressure on the rock particles forcing areas to exfoliate and flake. Although the science of tafoni isn’t fully understood, it is thought that there are also biological drivers, particularly in the intertidal region (Tafoni also occurs in deserts, no urchins there). Univavles and Urchins can chemically dissolve and abrade the the surface of the stone and hasten the dissolution of the pits.

-Worked on DFO boat count report
-grease gun scavenger hunt
-washed solar panels
-ran firepump and wiped it down with fluid film
 

eagle

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Moderate NE winds all day. 3 ft wind chop. Cloudy but no rain.
The students left yesterday, and some volunteers from the college made a brief photo stop when Chris came to pick them up.

There was a boat fishing illegally in the reserve this morning. It left before I could try to make radio contact.

raven

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Overcast, scattered showers. Moderate NE wind all day.

I finally figured out what moves the dead sea gulls around at night: Ravens. Because I rarely see them out here I had been wondering what moved the dead birds back onto my pathways night after night. They must live nearby on the big island (Vancouver Island) and come out here to forage and feed.

Female elephant seal and a dead gull on the boat ramp.

Female elephant seal and a dead gull on the boat ramp.

California "See" lions!

California “See” lions!

[Daily Marine Conservation Link]
My Salish Sea Marinipedia is a citizen science project created by our local aquarium, the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre. It is a database (for kids) of species found in the Salish Sea, but the information comes from anyone. Their slogan…”Join us in discovering the biodiversity of your ocean, share what you learn and inspire others to make a difference.”

-electric fence around student house
-diesel to student house

storm warning in effect!

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Light SE wind in the morning. 3ft East swell.
Midday it switched to 25 kts West.
Late afternoon it was blowing 45 kts West. With a 5ft+ West swell.

Bird Count
26 Canada Geese spent the day sheltering from the storm on Greater Race Rock
670 Adult Gulls + 96 Juvenile Gulls = 766 Gulls total
20 Oyster Catchers
136 Cormorants
I don’t know where the Turnstones and Sparrows hide during bad weather

Screenshot 2013-11-03 09.43.35

How I counted Birds: The nice thing about bad weather is that it forces all the birds to come to Greater Race Rock because of the waves surging over the outer islands. They also tend to sit in organized groups when it’s really windy. So I took photos of all the groups of birds and using a ‘cell counter’ macro in a great free program called ImageJ I counted all the birds and tallied the results.

 

[Daily Marine Conservation Link]
Sea stars up and down both coasts of North America are experience a mass die-off event now called Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. In recent years the populations of sea stars has been extremely high in the Salish Sea, and in September 2013 reports of mortality events started coming in from divers. A collaborative research effort is now underway and the Vancouver Aquarium is hoping that divers start to participate in some Citizen Science.
The Howe Sound Research and Conservation team is tracking this event by mapping observations of healthy and sick sea stars  but they need data! So if you see any sea stars while diving report it to this website

 

 

 

birds

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Morning fog. Moderate East wind. Sunny the rest of the day.
Tour boats: 4

It seems that, as the sea lions are leaving, more gulls and birds are moving onto Greater Race Rock. There have also been a lot of dense groups of gulls and diving birds on the water in and around the reserve.

The juvenile elephant seal with scabby molt (aka ‘Cranky Pants’) has returned to the boat ramp. Her skin has healed up a bit since she was last here a few weeks ago.

Kayakers next to South Rock

Kayakers next to South Rock-This kind of approach regularly scares birds and the seals and sea lions form the rocks.

-took the boston whaler in, traded it for a zodiac
-loaded the boat dolly onto Second Nature with Erik
-ran desalinator
-cleaned and scraped the zodiac
-tidied basement