On Thursday the forecast was calling for a return to wet grey skies after ten days of unprecedentedly dry December. We decided to take a hike out to a west facing shoreline to see the last of the sun.
December days are short, and after doing our errands in the village it was getting toward sunset by the time we got to the parking lot - at 3:45pm! It was still another 10-15 minute walk through the woods to get out into the open at Cattle Pass, a narrow channel between islands out into the Strait.
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The last of the sunlight was seeping through a cloud bank moving in from the ocean. When it’s like this it’s no longer daytime but it’s not nighttime either. This is a crepuscular time, when day transitions into night. Some animals do things differently during this interval.
On this day I learned about a new one.
We were sitting up on the cliff watching seals dozing on the rocks and listening to oystercatchers coming and going, their piercing cries audible over everything else, including the 8-10 knot ebbing current pouring like a frothy river between us and the seal rocks 50 feet away. The light was lovely shades of pink and orange, lightening and darkening through varied cloud layers.
A flock of 30 or so birds flew by, just above the water surface, heading south (leftward) through the Pass. In that light I couldn’t tell what they were.
Then more flew by, same direction, and more. I followed their passage to see where they were going using my zoom lens as binoculars. Turned out they were landing on south Whale Rock, a mile south of the Pass. Snapped a few photos, in which the birds are just barely visible:
A somewhat closer view shows more coming in, and settling wherever there’s room. Some circle around looking for a less crowded spot.
From zoomed up photos as they passed closest to us, I was able to discern they were cormorants. Not shorebirds, not gulls, not ducks, not alcids: fairly large, with long necks. Not geese — too thin. Can’t tell what kind of cormorant, but most likely they were Brandt’s. I see them on that Rock sometimes in the daytime when we pass by in the boat. In the past month, there have been very few perched there, maybe 40. At their peak, 300 or more crowd onto the rock.
Evidently, cormorants’ crepuscular behavior includes flying to a spot to roost for the night, and this Rock is a site they like.
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This is a daytime view of that rock when the cormorants are pretty thick.
We don’t go boating out there at night or even into the crepuscular interval. Too many chances of running into crab pot buoys or deadheads (floating logs) we can’t see to avoid.
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Sometimes animals are active during this time incidentally, like oystercatchers. As obligate intertidal feeders, they have to go out hunting when the tide is low regardless of the ambient light. They are nearly as good hunting for limpets and clams in pitch dark as they are in broad daylight. There were two pairs of oystercatchers we saw talking and hunting while we sat on the cliff on Thursday.
I don’t see oystercatchers as much in winter because it’s high tide most of the time during daylight hours here in the PNW. By happenstance, last night I did see RAy, the banded oystercatcher, feeding at sunset in my nearby bay where I regularly bicycle. He was by himself this time.
I also saw the Friendly Seal hunting in this same bay yesterday evening. FS does have crepuscular behavior. As it gets dark she moves in closer to shore, herding fish where they can be more easily caught. She doesn’t do this in the daytime. For some reason fish are vulnerable to this kind of trapping.
On that hike a couple of days ago we had to leave before it got any darker since the walk through the woods is hazardous at night without a flashlight (tripping over tree roots etc).
As we left the shore, we could see cormorants still streaming down the Pass heading for the Rock.
Thursday was indeed the last dry day here. Yesterday it was grey, rainy and showery. Today is too, and a bit breezy.
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Do you see animals behaving differently during the crepuscular time of day? That includes just before sunrise as well as after sunset.
Nature observations from your part of the world?
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