End of 2014: J-Pod Visits, Year List Recap

As another calendar year winds to an end, I thought my bird and whale sightings had about wrapped up for the year. While in Portland for Christmas I did have a nice walk at the Crown-Zellerbach trail that turned up about 30 species including the likes of sandhill cranes, cackling geese, western scrub-jays, and ring-billed gulls that aren't common species on the island. On our way back north, a very chilly walk at Nisqually NWR turned up the usual duck species, three bald eagles, a peregrine falcon, and this great blue heron, who we watched eat a salamander:

Turns out that would be the end of the birding for the year, so let's take a look at the year list totals:

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Total # Bird Species	233	203	222	192	201
Dave's Total	237	206	275/205*	192	179
Dad's Total		230	204	222	250
# States/ Provinces	6	4	5	4	5
# Life Birds	23	3	6	3	11
# SJ County Species	133?	157	145	149	142
# Species by Month
January	87	114	105	110	86
February	19	13	52	6	57
March	25	12	3	14	8
April	21	25	12	20	13
May	37	17	24	10	9
June	24	2	14	5	6
July	1	4	0	1	1
August	2	4	3	2	0
September	3	5	0	1	5
October	2	1	6	0	11
November	4	4	0	22	5
December	8	2	3	0	0

* World total/ Europe total

I just barely snuck into my target range of 200+ species this year. After an astonishing tie last year, this also feels like the first earned "win" in my annual year list challenge against Dave in England.  Not surprisingly, I got trounced again though by my now retired and free to travel a lot more Dad. :) The high totals on my list in February and for life birds were boosted by the trip to Southern California and Mexico, with another unusual spike in October when I made it east of the Cascades for my birthday trip. I'm actually surprised that with the Baja trip I didn't end up with even 10 more species than on last year's list. In 2015 the target will be the same 200 species mark, and we'll kick it off for the second year in a row on San Juan Island instead of in Oregon.

Surprisingly, the holidays didn't mark the end of my whale-watching for the year. My first full day back on island, December 30, included a visit from J-Pod! My boat is out of the water for the time being, but luckily a friend let me tag along as he headed out to look for the whales. We met up with them off Stuart Island, heading north.

J34 Doublestuf and J22 Oreo

The whales were SUPER spread out, with just ones and twos over at least 5+ miles. We were out there for over an hour, and probably saw 6-8 different whales during that time, when all of the 25+ members of J-Pod were out here somewhere.

Luckily, one of the whales we got to see was J27 Blackberry, who had been satellite tagged two days prior.

J27 Blackberry passes the Turn Point Lighthouse on Stuart Island

You can read more about the tagging project and follow his latest tracks on NOAA's website here. From the tag, we learned that earlier in the day, around 4-5 AM, Blackberry went waaaay up into Eastsound on Orcas Island, very unusual for the residents! But they've been taking lots of unusual travel patterns lately, as they've been spotted near Orcas Island and in Spieden Channel quite a lot this year.

The satellite tagging issue remains a controversial one, but I'm a strong supporter of it in hopes that the data it yields about winter travel patterns of these endangered Southern Residents leads to the increased protections they need. Data from whales tagged in previous years are the driving force behind a current petition to NOAA about expanding the Southern Residents' critical habitat range to include the outer coast from Washington to California. You can read more about why I support tagging on a previous blog post here.

J27 Blackberry with satellite tag visible as a bump on the right side of his dorsal fin - click to see a larger view

While for the most part the whales were in foraging/traveling mode, we did see one huge breach from Blackberry! I only caught the blurry end of it, but love the arcs of water off his pec fins so much I wanted to post it anyway:

It was such a beautiful day to be on the water - very cold, but flat calm waters and bright sunshine. And as we say in the Pacific Northwest, "the mountains were out" :)

Mt. Baker and the Turn Point light station

It's always a pleasure to see J2 Granny, and she spent some time hanging out near us too:

J2 Granny

Just about when it was time to leave, we saw a nice big spyhop:

We didn't know it at the time, but nearby the Center for Whale Research was getting their first looks at a brand new baby: J50 was born to J16 Slick sometime in the last couple days! Check out their website at the link above to see some awesome photos of the new calf. After a very difficult year for the Southern Residents in which their numbers dipped to 77 and no successful births for over two years, I can't help but hope that J50 is a good omen going into 2015. Slick has certainly been a prolific mama as this is her sixth known calf. She's tied for the oldest documented mother at age 42. Her other living offspring are J26 Mike, J36 Alki, and J42 Echo.

Thank you all for continuing to follow my whale and wildlife adventures, and I'm sure there will be plenty more in store for 2015!