10-29-19 Humpback On the Hydrophones Again!

Tuesday, October 29th
...Monday ended with plans to get certain things done on Tuesday...
...oh, well...
...interrupted by some whales !!

 ...it was only 24 minutes into the day...you know, like in the middle of the night, when something woke me up!

...below are some of the vocals as shown on a spectrogram, which shows the structure of the vocalization...
...I haven't heard that many humpbacks but I more look for the vocal to be on the low section on the sprectrogram (lower tone), 

 ...so when I saw some that were quite high and looking somewhat similar to Southern Residents...hmmm

...well, I began to wonder...where there two species of whales I was hearing?
...after listening and re-listening to the recording, etc. I decided on humpbacks...

~~~
...little did I know I'd be listening to some more unusual sounds, midway through the day...from other whales - the Southern Residents !!  - Yes !! ...they came back down from the north today and came past the park and down Haro Strait...
...I imagine they'll be in Puget Sound or headed west in the morning...
...but since they like to 'make a liar' out of me...just maybe they'll be on the west side - ha!  ha!

10-27-19 A Bald Eagle Adventure Today

Sunday, October 27
...at this time of year it is not common to see the Southern Residents, but that doesn't mean one doesn't continue to listen and watch...cause you just never know...
...it was early this morning when I heard some unusual sounds over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...sounded like a humpback!   That would be the first one heard, this fall.  
...since hearing the first one in October of 2013, my ears get keen to hear when the first one will show up on the hydrophones each fall...it's proved to be either late October or sometime in November.  It wasn't much and the few sounds were spread out over about an hour, so I clipped them together for a 22 second listen (cause that's all there was in total)...the humpback was somewhere in Haro Strait, but I wasn't ever able to visually locate it...

...while looking for the HB, a friend commented on the squawking gulls...and so here's how that went...pretty amazing by the end of that!

             (note: whether male or female I don't know)

...bit the fish in half!!

10-21-19 If Whales Had been Here We Might Have Missed...

Lots to see...that is except for whales on the west side...

...J Pod was in the Strait of Juan de Fuca a few times and then came all the way into Puget Sound where they stayed for several days...
...I heard L Pod calls, though brief and distant one evening...
...not sure where they went, but possibly up toward the Fraser River area...
...if so, then maybe they'll come back this way...
...would like there to be plenty of salmon for them, no matter where they go...

 

10-3-19 What's Been Going On with the SRKWs

catching up from the last few weeks...

...things were pretty quiet, so seeing 'anything' was a treat...how about an elephant seal...

 

9-21-19  some K and L Pod whales came in...got to see them on 9-21...

 ...some Ls went north late in the day and some of the whales stayed down island...they were seen again from Lime Kiln on the 24th and 25th...late in the day, far from shore...challenging to ID who had come up, then a u-turn and back down island again...

 ...there's a whale in there...

 ...it just kept getting more and more stunning...

...J Pod plus the K13s and Onyx (L-87) had already been in Puget Sound for many days...they went up Rosario Strait on 9-25 and somewhere and at some time they met up with the L Pod whales who had gone up on the 21st...they all came down on September 30...
...they were spread out and many were chasing fish...

10-2-19
...on this day Ts were present...they had been seen coming in from the west on 10-1...then in San Juan Channel in the morning on 10-2...it was a surprise that after they went west through Spieden Channel they turned south and came past the lighthouse...it was very far to the south when they turned and came back north (but much farther offshore than when then had come down)...always great to see this family of T18s - T018, T019, T019B and T019C...here are the two males...

.

...T19B has a huge dorsal fin...it is much taller than it looks because it leans