This edition of Dawn Chorus is a photodiary of our trip up to the marina and back a few weeks ago. Autumn is a transition time for birds, molting plumage for most, and in some cases migration. Our 25 foot Albin does a lot of bouncing around in the swells and currents, and birds are mostly pretty far away, so I end up deleting most of my pictures, but I do have some to show you who we saw out there at this season.
We keep our boat on a buoy down at one end of the island and every autumn drive it the eight miles around the island to the one place it can be pulled out of the water for its regular maintenance. We picked a day the tide was coming in to help speed our way north through a narrow channel, and a morning several days later to use the ebb tide back through the same channel. Elansa is not a speedy boat so scheduling around tidal currents makes a big difference: her usual maximum speed of 7 knots can increase to 11 knots over a mile or so where the current is running.
The Salish Sea is not open ocean but if you get away from the shoreline the water gets deep and rough pretty quickly, which means a different set of birds compared to what I see from the beach. Offshore bathymetry is extremely varied, with reefs, rocks, channels and kelp beds. The birds gravitate toward upwellings and swift currents for foraging, and rocks and islands for roosting.
Notes about the birds in the captions of the pictures. Enjoy the trip!
September 26.
Flood tide. Low fog, some high clouds clearing off to partly sunny in the afternoon.
Check out the Murre swimming underwater at the Monterrey aquarium:
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When we arrived at the marina we had to wait an hour for the tide to come in more so the boat could get into position for the Travelift to do its thing. During that time I watched the birds and marine life around the marina.
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October 1.
Ebb tide. High thin overcast, sunnier by midday.
After dropping the boat back in the water, we headed back home, mostly retracing out route up to the marina.
As we turned into our home bay, we started seeing the shoreline birds.
Every season has a different set of birds in the Salish Sea. I’ll be out in the boat again as winter approaches.
Dawn Chorus is now open for your birdy observations of the week.