I was a little surprised to see blue sky out my window when I woke up this morning. Before long it was replaced by clouds dropping a bit of light snow. The balance between snow and sun shifted towards sun as the day went on, but occasional showers continued into the evening. No snow accumulated at sea level as far as I could tell.
More gulls found the food source in the channel since yesterday. I did not count, but I suspect there were around twice as many. Among them were my first Herring Gulls of the year (#81). In some ways they were my first in a couple of years, as apparently I did not document any last year. I made sure not to let them slip by this year.
My first stop at the channel was during high tide, and I saw only one Long-tailed Duck, but the highest number of gulls. Later in the day the tide was out, and there were far fewer gulls, but many more Long-tailed Ducks. I’m not sure if they were hanging out at the north end of the channel (as I’ve seen them do in the past), and moved back after the gulls thinned out, or if they had gone further away than that. I suspect their absence and return was due more to the gulls than the tide. For their part, the gulls appeared to be roosting on the tide flats at the park, though I did not brave the chilly west wind to investigate more closely.
I drove out to Starrigavan this afternoon to take a look. As I approached Halibut Point Marine, the hills near the mouth of Katlian Bay were largely obscured by what looked kind of like fog, but I suspected was a snow shower. By the time I got to Starrigavan, there was a bit of snow on the ground rapidly melting, and I could see blue skies above. I was puzzled by a light and dissipating fog clinging to the hillsides where the shower had been. My best guess is the snow shower cooled the air enough to for water vapor to condense into fog, but as the shower moved off and warmer air mixing in along with the sun quickly burned off the fog.
Around 5pm, I was back out the road again taking a look, and saw at least three or four whales off of Halibut Point. I caught a large splash, and wondered about a breach, but follow up splashes (which seemed a little smaller) were from tail lobbing and pectoral fluke slapping. The increased activity did not last long, however.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
