2-6-17 A Snow Day and Whale Day Too!

Monday, February 6th
...catching up on what J Pod has been doing...that large group of transients had gone up island on February 2nd (previous post)...
...J Pod came down the next day (Feb 3rd), down San Juan Channel at about dark...it was about 01:15 on February 4th that J Pod woke me up over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...but they weren't coming up they were heading west...
...on February 5th at about 11:00 pm I heard some extremely faint 'somethings' for a few minutes but could not determine what...
...so when I heard those same 'somethings' this morning (Feb 6th)...hum...it took a while longer and then (see if you can hear it right at the beginning of the audio...

...so it was J Pod and it was a day that basically hardly anyone went anywhere - A snow day on San Juan Island?  What?

...their vocals were quite interesting...they would fade off of the hydrophones, so you might assume they were coming up island (how we get into 'our' thought routine) but they were actually spread way out...
...some were vocalizing and echolocating near the Lime Kiln hydrophones and at times you could hear others in the distance vocalizing...
...thinking they were coming up I kept scanning, as little as I could see...and then I saw two coming up...and looking more saw one more up ahead...
...grab my stuff and walk gingerly up the road (no driving today so I didn't go too far) but visibility was actually a bit better...I waited and waited...nothing...
...just about ready to walk back and see if they were still coming up, a dog barks. "That dog hears the whales!"  And sure enough :)  about a mile offshore I got a glimpse.  Thank you doggie :)

...and a minute or so later I saw some whales coming down from the north of where I was...that's how I was able to determine such a spread...of course these, looked to be about 6 or 7, they had been on the Orca Sound hydrophones but that would not have determined how many or their direction...

...still far from shore...

...to have been stuck at home because of the snowy roads ended up being quite fun...hearing the whales was fabulous...so much echolocating and high speed clicks too...and a call that is unusual to me...I'm making a list of calls that I am hearing that I'm not accustomed to hearing...so far I have 2...
...don't know if there is any relationship to all the change that has occurred for these whales or not...
...well they kept on going down...
...was hoping someone would show up in the webcam...

...now that was fun...saw whales on a snowy day and didn't even get cold!

adding to all that:  yesterday and again this morning some burp (fish) sounds on the hydrophones and also today saw some Dall's porpoise and lots and lots of harbor porpoise foraging.  Might be that the whales followed some salmon, that were following some little fish that the harbor and Dall's porpoises were after.
...the food chain at work...