Monday, July 14, 2014

7/13-14/14 A Wild Day In the Whale World!

Sunday, July 13th

...it was another mixed up day - mixed up in the way of finding who was where...
...but first I had a hunting Kingfisher encounter...I caught an image of her as she began to descend...
...but she aborted the dive and moved over in my direction and hovered...
...and then moved over closer, into great lighting and hovered and hovered...
...waiting for the whales can sometimes be rewarding in other ways...
okay, back to the whales...
...K pod, minus K-21, K-16, and K-35, came up island past the lighthouse...
...and a short while later they came back down island...
...close to sunset they came back up - I heard them briefly over the hydrophones...
...earlier in the day the J16s were located coming down Boundary Pass, but instead of coming all the way down here, they turned at Turn Pt. and went up Swanson Channel...
...Granny  J-2, Onyx L-87, and the J14s weren't even found until late in the day near the Vancouver airport...were they planning on taking a trip?
...I think I need a map to keep track of them!...and it gets even better...

Monday, July 14th
...3:40 a.m. I am awakened to K pod calls over the Lime Kiln hydrophones
...okay, not unexpected, because they were down island late in the day...
...BUT, it wasn't until about 5 minutes into listening that I realized something was different (at about 35 seconds on this audio clip - a call's tone is lower - that's a J pod call! - than the K pod 'kitten calls'...then at the end of this clip more J pod calls)...a more experienced person might be able to pick out other J pod calls...but for me these signature calls were all I needed to get quite curious...


...could the J16s have changed direction and come back down?
...did the rest of the J pod whales who have been gone since July 8th come back in?...
...lots of questions and no answers until the whales showed up coming down island this morning, and they were moving really fast!
...there was Shachi J-19 and Eclipse J-41 - they were back!
...they hadn't been here for 5 days, so I was quite excited to see them......those J pod calls that woke me up in the early morning hours were from some or all of Shachi J-19, Eclipse J-41, Blackberry J-27 and his brother and sister, Princess Angeline J-17 and her family  and Oreo J-22 and her family, because they weren't here the day before...

...the only whales of J or K pods who I didn't see were Cappuccino K-21, Opus K-16 and Sonata K-35...
...when I heard there were L pod whales at the south end of the island, maybe the 3 unaccounted for Ks would be with them...it was late in the day when I learned that one of the Vancouver whale watching boats found those three K pod whales somewhere near the Fraser River!

...all the whales who were down island finally made their trek north late in the afternoon...they were not in close to shore and back lit in the afternoon sun...I could see members of most of the L pod whales, and I already knew that all of J and K pods were here...


...while working on this post this evening I began hearing Transient calls over the Lime Kiln hydrophones - it was about 8:30 pm and have been fading in and out for almost one and a half hours...I did see one of them about a mile+ offshore...but now it's too dark...I bunched these calls...they actually occurred about 15 seconds apart...

...then at 10:27 pm I heard Resident calls over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...did someone come back down last night?...
...Haro Strait - it's a busy place these days!

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