Tag Archives: snow goose

Getting ready for the cold

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Ecological Notes:

  • Still no Elephant Seals
  • Snow Goose is still here

  • Daily visits from Eagles hunting Gulls
  • Smaller sea otter reported to me by an Eco-Tourism vessel

Visitors:

  • Greg and Richard from shorefront team
  • Service Tech
  • Students from Pearson College each weekend

Facility Work:

  • Another clean up of dead birds…… mostly Eagle predation, but a couple of “healthy looking” birds as well
  • Service Tech came out again for the hot water system in the main house
  • Some weeding accomplished in the hollow in front of the water tank
  • Ongoing fence repairs
  • Battery fluids maintained
  • Delsalinator run when ever the generator was running during the day
  • Students from Pearson College helped with the animal census and laying out the hose to fill the cistern with salt water

  • more firewood split to stock it up for the colder weather coming! Thank you Richard for the platform for the wood splitter, up off the floor and now able to keep face away from the mechanism while using

  • Set up, flushed, and then ran the water pump to start filling the cistern, will need more as the tide ran low

DND events:

  • a few blasts earlier in the week, disturbing the Sea Lions and birds

Noted Vessel Traffic:

  • Some Eco-Tourism and educational vessels
  • Some private vessels, including Kayakers, and a small dinghy

  • 1 Spill Response Vessel transiting 

  • All behaved responsibly 

Weather Events:

  • Thursday, November 27:
    • Sky: Overcast, with very brief sunny periods
    • Wind: NNE 25-30kts
    • Sea: 3-5 waves, hitting the pier heavily 
    • Temperature Low 8.1oC, High 9.6oC
  • Friday, November 28:
    • Sky: Clear in the morning,gradually becoming high overcast as the day progressed, tempest system report slight rain during the night
    • Wind: NE winds, 5kts in the morning, rising to 18kts by mid afternoon 
    • Sea:  remained light chop as when the wind rose, it was tide with wind
    • Temperature Low 8.1oC, High 10.4oC
  • Saturday, November 29:
    • Sky: High overcast
    • Wind: NE 10-15 kts
    • Sea:  light chop 
    • Temperature Low 6oC, High 8.2oC
  • Sunday, November 30:
    • Sky: Clear all day
    • Wind: ENE 15kts, dropping to 5kts mid afternoon
    • Sea:  light chop 
    • Temperature Low 6oC, High 8oC

 

 

** Any wildlife photos taken at the furthest distance possible, and may be cropped to improve detail! **

 

Weather – Current:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/current.php?id=72

 

Weather – Past:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php?

First week back

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Ecological Notes:

  • Difficult to count without disturbing them, but observations from the rock, and previous observations from the water show many more female sea lions, and nursing pups present
  • Elephant Seal female was seen on the outer rocks for the first couple days, not been seen since
  • Although there were 2 when I first arrived, now there is just 1 Snow Goose present

Visitors:

  • 2 Education classes from Pearson College stayed here, 1 set each weekend
  • Shorefront crew delivered me, and supplies to the reserve
  • IT tech, and 2 contractors to service the propane systems

Facility Work:

  • Students from the college helped with the animal census
  • checked battery levels, checked overall fuel levels
  • added some fuel to the main house furnace tank
  • IT person reset the switches on the starlink system to give direct internet access (it has been running through the original college system)
  • Crew serviced the propane valves and hot water systems  on both the main house and the student/science house
  • Shorefront staff helped moved fuel and cut firewood blocks
  • Used the Hydraulic woodsplitter for the first time 
  • Currently, the propane water heater in the main house is not firing up…. working with shorefront coordinator and techs to solve

DND events:

  • A few blasts Monday, scheduled for ongoing this week … noted more disturbance from the sea lions than I have noted in the past (maybe as it it earlier in the season, there are more “new” ones here)

Noted Vessel Traffic:

  • 3 Eco-Tourism vessels
  • 1 education program vessel with a few visits ( these are run by one of the Eco-Tourism companies, but separate from the regular tours)
  • Various private vessels, including kayaks, and a small dinghy, have visited the reserve, all behaving properly

Weather Events:

The standard mix of fall weather no extremely high winds, minimal rain over night, mostly clear with cloudy patches

  • Saturday, November 22:
    • Sky: clear with light haze, overcast later in the day
    • Wind:  W 25 kts 
    • Sea: rippled  with very little chop, becoming 1-2 ft chop later in the afternoon
    • Temperature 10oC

 

 

 

Weather – Current:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/current.php?id=72

 

Weather – Past:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php?

We have WATER!!!

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Today was a very PNW day… a slow steady rain all day.

I know it gets old quick, but I really love a nice, cozy, rainy day at Race Rocks!

But also because of the rain, most of the sea lions spent the day in the water, making the census counts low.

Of note today, Greg came out to the island, and we fired up the Desalinator after more than an entire year of issue after issue. Greg was jubilant to say the least :).

Facilities Work

  • Checked and filled battery levels
  • Fixed fence
  • Ran the desalinator (300L)

Weather

  • Sky: Rainy (12mm)
  • Wind: NNE 5.2 Kts
  • Sea State: Calm
  • Air Temp: 9C

Census:

  • Harbour Seals – 5
  • Stellar Sea Lions – 79
  • California Sea Lions – 99
  • Seagulls – 353
  • Cormorants- 515
  • Turnstones – 15
  • Oyster Catchers – 12
  • Canada Geese – 3
  • Snow Goose – 1
  • Elephant Seal – 1

 

Entangled Sea Lions

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 20-30 NE
  • Sky: Partly cloudy
  • Water: Waves about a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours and fishing boats going by

Maintenance

  • ran the generator and the desalinator, now that we had a good rainfall the cistern is filling up, hopefully start pressure washing more soon
  • The fence hasn’t needed to be repaired in awhile but the sea lions are starting to gather more around the lighthouse which can be an issue

Ecological

  • unfortunately still no elephant seals, they should be showing up any day now
  • the snow goose is still around
  • there are two entangles sea lions, it doesn’t look like the usual plastic packing tape but this time looks like fishing line, two of them have it tightly wrapped around their heads, I have notified marine rescue and will keep an eye on these sea lions and hopefully we can help them out

The Snow Goose

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-20 NE
  • Sky: Dense fog to partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours and fishing boats going by
  • Guy and a new Pearson Staff member came by today, gave him a tour and filled up on diesel

Maintenance

  • ran the generator and the desalinator, now that we had a good rainfall the cistern is filling up, hopefully start pressure washing more soon

Ecological

  • unfortunately still no elephant seals, they should be showing up any day now
  • the sea lions are starting to gather around the lighthouse more, need to back them up a bit a few times throughout the day
  • the little snow goose is still around

Busy Week

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • the past week was CAS week at the college so I had two groups of students drop by, the first group were marine scientists that came for 5 days and helped out with cleaning up garbage, collecting driftwood, doing a daily census and stuff like that
  • the second group were divers that unfortunately did not get to dive while they were here but have been diving around race rocks before, they stayed for two nights

Maintenance

  • What a week, the fence had to be repaired quite a bit, the students helped me with it one day, and I did not properly show them how to repair the fence so the wire ended up being grounded which the sea lions took full advantage of and completely messed up the fence
  • The electric pump in the crane house is working but is kind of slow going, it also takes a lot of priming
  • the fire pump is out of commission at the moment, there were a lot fo issues with it probably due to the fact it is not a saltwater pump and has been sitting by the ocean for 3 years
  • the desalinator is not cooperating either, it will work for maybe an hour before it shuts itself off, I can restart it but again it will only run for another hour and only desalinates half the water it used to in the same amount of time

Ecological

  • I personally have seen about 8 humpback whales a day for the past week
  • there was also a pod of about 6 killerhwhales that one of the students saw from the lighthouse which we found out later were transients and were actually hunting sea lions
  • There have also been some interesting birds around, there was a robin here, which I don’t typically see and there was also a snow goose, which I personally have never seen here before, its been hanging out with the Canada geese other birds include oyster catchers, killdeer, ravens, and eagles
  • the neck banded sea lions seem to come and go, they are very difficult to keep track of, I believe there are two at the moment and I see them about once a week, since there are over 1000 sea lions at the moment they easily get lost in the crowd, even the group of students I had here only saw them once

Chen caerulescens : Snow Goose –Race Rocks Taxonomy

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Snow Goose

Lesser Snow Goose, Chen caerulescens

Domain Eukarya
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Subphylum Vertebrata
Class Aves
Order Anseriformes
Family Anatidae
Subfamily  Anserinae
Genus Chen
Species caerulescens
Common Name: Snow Goose or Blue Goose

 

This is the first observation and photo we have of a snow goose at  Race Rocks. Ecoguardian Courtney Edwards took this photo on April 21, 2014. These geese migrate in great numbers through the lower mainland area at this time of year.

Cackling goose and Snow goose

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Light Wind in the morning, String Westerly in the evening. Cloudy with scattered showers. Rain in the evening. Tour boats:8 1030 flyover by a small float plane The Cackling Goose and Snow Goose (note — a new record for Race Rocks ) are still foraging on the grass on Great Race. The Canada Geese often chase these two smaller geese. The Sea lions all moved to the East side of West Rocks this morning. Up until today, they had been on South Rocks since I got here in the middle of March. Eagles are regularly flying over Great Race and making all the Gulls take flight, but I have yet to see an Eagle grab a Gull.

-Ran the fire pump -Cleaned all the fire hose fittings -Fixed tank shed storage door latch -Worked on SOPs