September 2007 · 3 November 2007, 13:21 by Julie Loyd
Sept 1Laurie G: heard whales go around Sandy Point past her beach at night.
Plankton tows happened at five beaches around the island, and some were counted. Here are the results from North Beach (Idiot savants among you will note that everything is divisible by eight. That’s because we divided the sample three times, thus counting only 1/23 of the amount of critters that were in the undivided sample. I then multiplied by eight to get the final figures):
Calenoid Copepods: 3,472Copepods fill the insect niche in plankton.
Harpactecoid: 1,704A copepod.
Poecilostomatoids: 14,536A copepod.
Copepod nauplius: 3,496A nauplius is the larval form, before the final adult form.
Barnacle nauplius: 136Barnacles have five nauplius forms, or instars.
Barnacle cyprid: 800Barnacle cyprids don’t eat, but look for a place to settle.
Zooea: 16Larval crabs
Cladoceran: 3,008Predators
Gammarid amphipod: 48
Isopod: 8
Spionid: 56
Polychaete: 72
Veliger: 136Teeny weeny snails.
Bivalve larva: 632Eensy weensy clams and scallops.
Single eggs: 520
Egg mass: 16Sometimes you see copepods carrying them around. Aww.
Larvacean: 2,384
Jellyfish: 16
Chaetognath: 24A predatory worm.
Trochophore: 96
Ostracod: 32
Terrestrial insect skeleton: 8
06.sep.02David L: 7:30 am President Channel 2 miles North of Jones saw an Elephant Seal. One mile North of Jones saw a weird mammal – size of small seal but not harbor seal. Otter? Sea otter? Tail looked wrong as it rose half out of water to dive. Other seal variety. Small and slender, agile.
07.sep.03Glen R: Saw ten murres a mile offshore of North Beach, looking through John R’s telescope.
07.sep.04Glen R: Hazy, no wind. Temps upper 60’s, foggy in morning. At 10:30 am Barry Martin said he saw a school of several jumping fish by the buoys in front of the Farm Beach, about 6 -10 pounds each. He saw an elephant seal about 11:30 this morning, about a mile off in the middle of a rapid flood tide. He watched it for about three hours, real far out, came way out of the water, snout bobbed up and down, getting lower in the water with each bob, then disappeared for 15 minutes or so, then came back up. Head as big as a buoy. (others saw it around Sandy Point). Barry saw a salmon at Van B’s buoy, and Bill C saw salmon at his buoy. There must be a run of salmon going through right now.
At 14:00, Glen boated from the Farm Bay landing round trip to Pt. Hammond. He saw 100+ Heermans Gulls on beach and on Mike C’s raft. Also 30 unidentified gulls. Saw 2 kingfishers by Otter Point. 3 Double-crested Cormorants. 3 Harbor Seals. Very few signs of forage fish. High tide 3pm. At 3 pm saw small school of 3-4 salmon 6-10 pounds on surface about 50 yards offshore in front of landing. Also saw approx 6 Dalls porpoises in point rip by Point Doughty.
07.sep.05Chris W: This time of year, there used to be lots of grebes and oldsquaw off of Sandy Point.
Hallie A: 13:00, A’s Beach, calm, sunny, 65º, rising tide. On the water, a mixed flock of sea gulls: ca. 30 Glaucous-Winged, of which half are young ca. 35 Heerman’s, mostly young though some adults Six Cormorants of which two appear smaller (Pelagics?), all low in the water. ca. 15 black and white birds – Murres? Further out, a small tight raft of 25 or so little birds that appear to be black all over, with visible necks – ?? Several grey-winged, black tipped gulls, smaller: Thayer’s? One seal, one Harbor Porpoise.
18:00 Julie L: At TNC beach, lots of dried up bullhead heads, ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches across. Found two feathers of about 12” long, with a white quill, grey at the bottom, and black all the way to the top where two white spots are about an inch below the tip. A flock of about 20 Canada Geese and a separate flock of about 100 gulls plus about 10 little white sandpiper shorebird thing alternated between sitting on shore and swimming out by the mooring buoys.
07.sep.06 Julie L: Thomas A showed me the dead trees along the north side of Sandy Point. There was also a mummified Red-Tailed Hawk in a bush and a fallen Bald Eagle nest.
Stan W: Don H said that 5 – 6“ fish were jumping off their rocks. Also lots of gulls.
07.sep.07Julie L: Today KWIAHT sponsored Bob Gara, an enymologist, to visit and give a workshop on insects. He gave a lecture in the morning and led a field trip to the A’ in the afternoon. We found water striders, dragonfly nymphs, codling moths, etc.
Tent caterpillar behavior is cool! Three types hatch out–one is hyperactive and runs around to the tips of things and builds messy nests. The second are conservatives, who follow the trails of the explorers and build properly traditional tents. The third are the sacrificial idiots, who wander around and thrash their heads, thus luring predators and parasites away from the productive caterpillars.
Add Oregon-grape berries to color apple jelly nicely.
Stan W: We have this crazy band of band-tailed pigeons. They come in to the feeder 20 at a time. They’ve been eating us out of house and home! They land on each other. Day before yesterday, I heard the tremendous flutter they make when they flee. A hawk struck and missed and went up into a tree looking embarrassed. It looks like an accipiter, it’s brown with a dark buff breast with stripes going vertically. A Northern Harrier? Then I checked Birding in the San Juans. It’s a goshawk, it hangs around Band-tailed Pigeon roosts. The bird I saw was an immature Goshawk.
Hallie A: Yesterday we found an adult otter, skull broken into yesterday, the rest was still intact, adult teeth. It’s fairly fresh dead. Not obviously injured. It’s down by Cowlitz dock along the beach towards the west side, just under Skip Lauridsen’s house. It would be a beautiful skull. Last week another one washed up on the beach in much worse condition, but it was probably a juvenile because it had fewer teeth than the other one. We found this one because of a turkey vulture, the otter was pretty far gone.
We haven’t seen many otters this year at our place. We usually have at least one family.
Thomas A: Carla L saw a minke whale off of Point Hammond last week.
David L: Small fish on the surface in the usual spots at Cowlitz. A few of the big, thick reddish jellyfish Lion’s Mane Jellies after a near absence through this rainless summer. Now gone.
Hallie A: 13:30, sunny, warm (60’s), no wind, calm, mid-tide. Kelp wrack. Just south of the farm at the North end of College Camp in the shallow water at the edge, small adult or nearly full grown seal’s body, still intact, being rolled by the waves. No injury visible. Some of the summer residents at that end are known to take pot shots at birds (crows). Don’t know if they bring anything bigger than a shotgun to the island.
Laurie G:18:30 – 19:30 at Cowlitz: Thousands of flashing fish – small, maybe three inches. A few feet below the surface, few surfacing to feed along the surface. Located in the moorage to the west of the dock.
07.sep.10Phil Green saw a coot swim over from Shaw to Yellow. Tony saw it on Yellow.
Julie L: 14:00 Cowlitz with the schoolkids. Everything still; water, wildlife, everything. Oh, and Ryan collecting seaweed. A kingfisher did chatter briefly but mostly it was dead calm.
Jannik R: He showed us a marbled murrelet that had been netted. It looks like a very small spotted penguin. It was molting, with little pinfeathers showing on the wing.
Laurie G: 22:00 ish Heard whales come around Sandy Point and past her beach.
David L: 22:00 Severson’s Cove, clear night, dark. He heard (but it was too dark to see) whales go between Skipjack and shore. There was a constant sound of breathing with occasional short pauses, they were going from East to West, there were a lot of them, and there were occasional slaps.
07.sep.11Hallie A: 16:00, clear, calm, ca 70º, water flat, current going South, tide high. A’s Beach. Sometimes a kingfisher comes at dawn or at dusk to fish from a pole on their beach, if the tide is high enough. Today it was there around 4 p.m. She saw it dive, submerge completely, rise to surface flapping, sink again, and pass out of sight behind a tree. She heard a chittering, but saw no sign of it. Went down to water’s edge, saw some feathers floating but no kingfisher, alive or dead ir in between. At 7 p.m. a kingfisher was back on the pole.
Pam M, Bill C: Sunset, Fishery Point Beach: Clear, mild, calm. High tide, with a counter-tidal eddy. They saw four inch silvery fishes jumping out of the water. Initially, they saw little circular ripples where small fish were dimpling the water surface. Then they noticed them leaping out of the water six to thirty feet from shore. The display went on for about 40 minutes.
Julie L: Our cat brought in a baby rat which promptly oozed peanut-sized bots. Rats have been walking around the island, grossing people out.
07.sep.13Julie L: High wind last night. G’s beach has a new 12” drop in the sand near the high tide mark. Don H and Linda E walked by and said this Northwest wind did not affect Otter Cove. There, they are seeing schools of fat bodied greenish fish, 2 – 3” which are new, and lots of six inch jumpers. The rocks have had a flock of 2 – 300 gulls, which they haven’t seen in four years. Birds are fishing the ebb tides, going in turn from the smaller birds and then the larger gulls. From three to six Harbor Porpoises feed at the egg tides. The seals and eagles are gone from that bay.
07.sep.14David L: Lots of fish near the dock. Some kind of major plankton hatch, probably copepods.
Julie L: 14:00, sunny and cool. Took the school kids to C’s Beach, where a school of 5” fish clustered at First Point, possibly herring, though they weren’t flashing silver. We saw nucella on the barnacles, shore flies, and a fat bumblebee who wandered around on our hands.
07.sep.15Julie L: Plankton tow at Cowlitz in the evening, calm, water murky with what turned out to be absolute zillions of zooplankton, much appreciated by schools of small fish.
07.sep.16Hallie A: 17:15, overcast, cool, rain, no wind, misty, water calm, clear. High tide, no wrack. A Beach: Five otters feeding together near shore. Nearly every dive resulted in fish larger than 6” in length. Some held in one or both paws as first bite or bites made, noses pointing towards sky. Feeding period lasted ca. 20 minutes as group moved slowly south.
One young Glaucous-winged Gull circled and left; otherwise no birds visible.
Note: These are nearly the first otters she’s seen in our area all summer – she did see one swimming by in August once or twice only.
Julie L: COASST walk to Hammond. Indian Paintbrush still in bloom, everything else wilted. Stinky remains of a baby seal at the Point.
07.sep.19Julie L: 18:00, Between TNC and Sandy Point Beach; clouds, light wind, 60º’s. Water a bit murky, rippled, rising tide, shallow a long way out. Two cormorants on moorage buoys. 25 – 30 Canada Geese swam by towards Sandy Point, ignoring the dog. Flock of over 50 gulls in front of TNC.
07.sep.20Julie L: 18:40, Between TNC and Sandy Point Beach; clouds, light wind, 60º’s, recent rain. Water clear, rippled, rising tide. Lots of fresh ulva and old eelgrass wrack. Two cormorants on moorage buoys. Flock of over 50 gulls in front of L’s on rapidly vanishing sand berm. Lots of shore flies, one wasp. 19:05: Cormorants fly away. Dramatic sunset, wind died.
07.sep.21Julie L: 17:00, Rain, dark day. At our driveway, a Rough-Skinned Newt was crossing the road. We met Brett Mc on the road, who said that he saw one five years ago on the Sawmill Corner shortcut, and that at that time, Duskin said their pond was full of them. The Audubon guide says they can be seen walking around on wet days in humid forests in the Northwest, including in mountains.
07.sep.22Julie L: Camilla and I went up to Disney, 13:00 – 18:00. It was a cool, sunny day with a magnificent cloud over Turtleback. Below us, some fishermen sat in an open boat. David, who talked to them kindly, said they’d caught and released a small orange rockfish (a Puget Sound Rockfish??), which died, and that he told them we’re trying to restore bottomfish by reducing fishing pressure on them. They left. There was a raptor claw in the moss. We saw yellow-winged cicadas and some kind of lbj bird, but neither swallows nor dragonflies. Ants crawled enthusiastically over us. Below, a pair of floating birds whistled on the water near the kelp, but those were the only ones we saw.
Has the kelp in that area moved around? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll map it.
07.sep.2407.sep.24Julie L: The school kids went to punch holes in kelp to see how the blades grow. The bulbs we pulled up were colonized by ulva or some other green sheet alga. Most of the blades were pretty raggedy, and many had spore patches on them. The carcass below Skip’s house is a seal, not an otter, see flippers in photo at right.
07.sep.26Julie L: At Zeo’s: Apples, blackberries, horse chestnuts. No birds or mammals seen at beach around 16:00.
David L at Cowlitz: Small fish on surface to Sandy Point and all the way across President’s Channel. Not sampled. Observable fish: “perch,” “herring (supple, distinct flash, not surface, approx 5 inches) – these are the same but bigger from one month ago – and 1 foot water one afternoon a school of two dozen 9: fish that looked like salmon at ramp.
Also in last three days, some throng of forage fish.
Thick morning and afternoon film on water, bubbly in places, particularly in the beach zone and fragmented. Continued “fish poo” – David L
07.sep.28Don H: There have been a lot of gulls near Otter Cove (north of Mail Bay). At the ebb tide, the gulls check it out, and Harbor Porpoises come in close. The seals and otters, however, haven’t been around the way they usually are.
07.sep.28Julie L: 17:30 at Cowlitz, breezy. A group
collected to practice seining. We caught lots of herring, between 70 and 100 mm long.
07.sep.29Julie L: Windy day. Lingcod workshop at L’s with Anne Beaudreau, and Salmon Identification workshop with Larry Moulton. Beach seine at Cowlitz in the late afternoon, at which we caught about 1,000 herring and shiner perch.
07.sep.30 Julie L: High wind at night, light rain. COASST walk to Hammond: thick wrack of green, brown, and red algae, greater variety of birds than usual (but I can’t ID them). A family of otters in C’s second cove, two seals in the water there. A very stinky harbor porpoise carcass on the sand close to Hammond. When I went back the next day it was gone. The sand has slumped off the cliffs significantly in spots, and the beach is sandier than usual.
Duskin D: Saw a big bald green caterpillar with blue markings (a tomato hornworm?) near pondweed today, also saw one last year this time, never before. Also in Mike and Carla’s yard at the quarry, saw vast amounts of black diamond-shaped insects that look like torpedos that neither Duskin nor Patrick recognized (possibly psocids?). Also, Ds had two turtles, a big one and a small one, and after four years, one of them reappeared. The crawdads and bullfrogs, however, seem to be fewer. The apple tree in the warmest spot had good apples, though many other trees on W seem to have had a bad year.
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