The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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August 27, 2019
Salish Sea, PacificNorthwest
My last Bucket took us up onto a headland over the town of Anacortes. This one takes place later that same day at the ferry dock where I got a look at the birds who make use of human structures over the water to nest and raise their babies.
My first stop was down the beach at the derelict pilings that once supported a salmon cannery in the last century, back when there were wild salmon to catch commercially in the Salish Sea. Those days are long gone but the pilings remain. The local Audubon society has built, installed and are maintaining about 30 Purple Martin boxes there which are used enthusiastically by a renewed population.
These swallows arrive in spring, raise babies over the summer and migrate south again in fall. I knew I might have missed them now at the end of August and was excited to hear their voices as I walked down the beach. As it turns out, the babies had fledged, leaving empty boxes, and were now in the wetland behind the beach learning how to hunt for themselves. I couldn’t get photos of them there unfortunately, too much foliage. But I could hear them, a particularly sweet melodious call.
After we loaded onto the boat I went upstairs to check out the nesting Pelagic cormorants. These birds discovered the dolphins (freestanding structures out in the water that guide the docking boats) in the 1990s when Washington State Ferries replaced the old wooden structures with these fancy new steel ones. These have many ledges and other surfaces just perfect for cliff-nesting cormorants, and the birds took to them in the hundreds. WSF has tried many strategies to discourage the cormorants over the years from nets to bars to hazing to — my personal favorite — plastic eagle kites on poles. None worked until the the hazing, and I thought that was the end of the nesting here, but for some reason they’ve allowed the birds to nest again this year.
By this time of summer the dolphins are pretty ripe, between the nests and poop. But fledging has been underway for some time since I saw only a few nestlings still in nests.
They and many adults were panting in the heat of the day. It was in the upper 70s. The panting is called gular fluttering (sora.unm.edu/...). Fewer of the adults needed to cool off that way since they could decamp to nicely chilly water below.
Adults are iridescent black, gleaming green and purple. They are assiduously grooming and have mostly molted into their winter plumage: no white rump patches, no white plumes, no red face.
The video clip shows the parent goosing the youngster, some encouragement to fly.
On the neighboring buttress other cormorants perch. One juvenile anxiously awaits a parent bringing food.
Next time I go through here the dolphins will be empty except for a few cormorants and gulls who come by to feed on fish in these waters. These juvs will be learning to fish in the currents further offshore. Winter rains will sluice the poop and nesting material off these dolphins and hopefully WSF will allow them to nest again next summer.
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Overcast this morning in the PNW islands. We had rain overnight. Daytime temps cooling to upper 60s after the past very warm days.
What’s the nature news in your neighborhood?
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