Tag Archives: red knot

Animal Census-July 28, 2021

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Weather: west wind 15 knots, fog cleared by 8 a.m. visibility good

Tide .8 m at 12 noon

Elephant Seal 1 male, 1 female
Orcas 4
Seals 68 (13 pups?) on south and south seal rocks
Sea Lions both Stellar and California 60 on middle and west rocks
Gulls

While I was counting these gulls there were 2 “feeding flocks” just off the island with about 1000 gulls so there may have been fewer gulls on the islands than usual
660 on rocks below generator shed western and glaucous winged gulllls
110 on island “nesting” mostly glaucous winged gulls but several western/hybrid gullls nesting as well
estimate of between 80 and 150 chicks

Cormorants 14
Pigeon Guillemots 56
Surfbirds 8
Black turnstones 58
Black Oystercatcher 18? they are hard to count as they move around so much 1 new chick!

Bald Eagle 1

Western sand piper 4

can you identify this bird? red knot ?

Sea Lions are arriving

Aside

More and more California Sea Lions are showing up. There are about 10 on the rocks beneath the winch house as I write this. This photo however is of two Stellar’s enjoying the sunset after they cleared the rock of Californians.

I noticed three more Red Knots on the foreshore, and a corvus caurinus (crow) made it out for a visit. North-western crows are rare visitors here and I have only observed solitary excursions.

Work this week has comprised of painting the railings around the main house and walkway. We got the water desalinator working again, and some of the old computer equipment was removed from the student house.

Several dive groups have made underwater excursions just off the dock in the last week. We continue to see a lot of tour boats in the reserve.

This afternoon I noticed the first Glaucous-winged Gull egg in a shallow grass nest a few feet from my doorstep. I will have to stick to the sidewalk for a few months while the nesting and hatching play out.

Weekend Tallies

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I lost track of the number of visits by tour boats this long weekend. It was at least 50. An orca pod hard been somewhere off Sooke so all the boats went through and visited on the way back. Sunday afternoon the pod transited the edge of the reserve heading East towards Trial Island and Victoria. Consequently there have only been about 5 boats here today (the rain and fog might be contributing to that number). I had to phone one of the operators as one of their new operators was oblivious to the guidelines here in the reserve. They apologized and promised to have a word with him.

I asked a pleasure fish boat to cease fishing in the reserve, and he was happy to comply. Ignorance is so often a factor in issues of conservation and human impact.

I was lucky enough to see, but not photograph a Red Knot. This unusual shorebird is an infrequent visitor to our shore and is likely migrating to above the Arctic Circle. Several other unidentified solitary shorebirds have also been seen, and more California Sea Lions are showing up. The rain is much appreciated as no more than a few millimetres have fallen in almost 2 months.

Calidris canutus: Red Knot- The Race Rocks Taxonomy

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This shorebird which is listed by COSEWIC as a Species at Risk has a long distance migratory route of 20,000 miles. It nests on the Canadian Tundra and uses both the Atlantic and Pacific flyways. It has made almost annual stop-overs at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve in the month of May last few years. It was first photographed there by Ecoguardian Raisa Mirza in May of 2010. You can see her other  photos on her Flickr site.

raisa2flyredknot

red knot Calidris canutus photographed at Race Rocks by Raisa Mirza on May 9, 2010.


Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom :Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class :Aves
Order :Charadriiformes
Family: Scolopacidae
Genus :Calidris
Species :canutus
Common Name: Red Knot

See other posts tagged with Red Knot
Other Members of the Class Aves 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.

 

Diversity of Bird Life

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‘The diversity of bird life has increased greatly with the improving weather this week. Rock sandpipers, Western sandpipers, Red Knots, and Greater Yellowlegs have all been seen in the intertidal zone. Yesterday evening a juvenile brown pelican spent a number of hours on Great Race before heading towards Port Angeles just after sunset. Today around noon a peregrine falcon zipped by Great Race and scared most of the small bird species away for the day. The Black Oystercatchers are becoming very territorial with one another, and the nest above the cove on the E side of Great Race now has 2 eggs.’, ‘Ryan’, ’17:42:48 ,

Mammal census:

‘Elephant Seal’, 8, ‘8 females remain on Middle Rocks, still in various stages of their moults. The tagged female X201/X202 recently left Great Race Island after completing her moult, but was photographed yesterday on Middle Rocks with the other females. This year is a pattern reversal compared to last year when it was the sub-adult male -Misery) who completed his moult on Great Race and few if any female elephant seals were seen here during this time.’, ‘Ryan’, ’17:45:02 ,