Tag Archives: glaucous-winged-gull

Eagle chase

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Rare summertime north-easterlies today, increasing from 0-35 knots throughout the day. Barometric pressure dipped to a weekly low this morning but is on the rise now. There has been some rain and the sky has been mostly cloudy. Showers are forecasted for tomorrow.

tour boats: 2

Several times a day a bald eagle or juvenile will come and cause a raucous for all the gulls who all lift into the air and chase the predator from their nests. For the past few days, the oystercatchers have been doing their part and one or two will chase the eagle out of their territory. (The oystercatcher eggs near the jetty have yet to hatch.) More often than not, the eagle leaves empty handed but occasionally it will grab a gull or a chic.

There was a female elephant seal on the jetty this morning but this evening only the two larger males remain on the island.

The sea lion is still in the same spot on the south islands, although he has moved into the water at least twice since yesterday.

Went off the island today (from 1130h-1600h) to collect a ladder from Wayne and do errands.

Did the monthly check on the derrick today.

Animal Census

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West winds around 10 knots for most of the day. Fog this morning and this evening. Barometric pressure has steadily decreased all day. Strong wind warning in effect for tonight and fog is forecasted to persist until late tomorrow morning.

No whale watching boats today. 2 recreational halibut fishing boats along the SE and SW borders of the reserve.

Animal Census
Elephant Seal: 3
Harbour Seal: 191
Bald Eagle: 1
Gull: 323
Pigeon Guillemot: 83
Black Oystercatcher: 10
Double-crested cormorant: 4
Stellar sea lion: 5
Harlequin duck: 4

Two of the large elephant seals were sparring in the shallow water by the jetty this morning around 1100h. I noticed a younger pup that has been here for the past week has small, fresh wounds on its backside that I think are from two days ago when I saw the second largest male attack the pup near the launch pad. Also, a lone stellar sea lion has been resting on the a small rock off the south islands for two days now. He has flesh wounds but they do not look recent as far as I can tell.

-Secured deck boards on winch loading pad.                                                                       -Chopped fire wood.

Six visitors from the college came today from 1200h-1500h.

 

 

Animal Census

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Clear skies. Light South early this morning and strong to Gale Westerlies the rest of the day. The barometer has been falling steadily all day. The forecast for light in the am, strong West in the pm continues. 6 tour boats 3 halibut boats Animal Census Elephant Seal: 7 Harbour Seal: 267 Eagle: 3 Gull: 332 Pigeon Guillemot: 30 Oyster Catcher: 7 It is now the season of the Gull and Harbour seal, with a few hundred of each using the reserve. There are two large male elephant seals on Great Race, and only one Elephant seal out on Middle Rock. There are no Sea lions left in the reserve, they have all gone to their breeding grounds. If the Oystercatchers are nesting, I can’t find their nests, although I am pretty limited with where I can go because there are so many Gull nests on the island. I saw the Caspian Terns again today, this time they flew really low over the East side of the island making their tell-tale squawking noise. The island is drying out and all the grass is turning brown. Despite the lack of rain, the cistern is still full. It will be interesting to see if we can make it through the summer without having to top it up with seawater from the fire pump.

Business as usual

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Fog in the am. Clear the rest of the day. Moderate Westerlies all day (Force 4), Strong Westerlies this evening (Force 8).
The barometer peaked around 1000 and then dropped. Forecast continues for calm mornings, strong West afternoons.

2 tour boats
3 halibut boats on the edge of the reserve
2 fishing boats passed through

Today was business as usual for the reserve animals. There were 4 California Sea lions and 1 Steller on the South seal rocks. The large male elephant seal wasn’t around. There are lots of eggs in the Gull nests.

-Max came out for some training for his stint next week as station relief while I am away
-We almost got the vhf antenna set up on the Science house, but had some ladder troubles
-Finished Keeper’s house bathroom painting
-Tidied Keeper’s house

 

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