Mostly cloudy, becoming partly cloudy as the day went on. The clouds were such that the sun shone where I was for significant chunks of the day. Light winds in town.
Although it hasn’t been all that windy in town, I think the story has been different offshore. Buoy conditions had waves over 10 feet, but they have started to diminish. Hopefully there’s not too much swell for tomorrow’s cruise.
I was on the morning interview for Raven Radio talking about the food web cruise tomorrow.
From the radio station I went to Little Magic Island to check out the tidepools.
I’m thinking about making something of a habit of going there regularly. The nice thing is the tidepools are relatively small, so they don’t take too long to check. I’m curious about the consistency of organisms. So far I’ve found the branched sapsucker repeatedly on the same piece of seaweed, but I only saw the leopard nudibranch the one time.
Before returning home, I checked out the channel. I spotted the Slaty-backed Gull in the flock on the ramp.
Crow Behavior
A pair of crows were engaging in interesting behavior over a mussel. In hindsight I wish I had paid a little more attention and/or made note at the time about which bird was doing what.
The crow on the right is displaying to the other one. It seemed to be at least somewhat related to the mussel underneath the crow on the left (which it had been dropping to try and crack)
As best I can remember and/or reconstruct (from photos and video), one had a mussel it had dropped a couple of times, but had not yet successfully cracked. I had a shorter video that started after the bulk of their interaction was done (so I didn’t upload it). Here’s where I am hazy about which crow started with the mussel, and which ended with it. The (not uploaded) video suggests it switched beaks, but the second bird who ended up with it walked away upon discovering it wasn’t cracked open. I’m not sure which picked it up again.
In the video below, the crow that had been in control of the mussel and dropped it another time or two was approached by the second crow. As seen in the video the second one came up and did the, bobbing head bows, plus the rattling sound and eventually seemed to be allowed to take the mussel.
Again, I lost track/don’t remember which one of the crows ultimately kept the mussel. Whichever did, it dropped it a couple more times and then ate it. I’m wondering if this was all part of a courtship ritual.
I was feeling tired after my earlier than normal rise time and spent part of the afternoon napping.
This evening I transported most of the stuff I’ll need for the Rainy Day Bazaar down to the Centennial Building. I’ll take a few more things down in the morning and finish setting up before leaving it to Connor and heading over to the food web cruise.
There seems to be just two swans left at Swan Lake.
Later this evening I saw my first moth of the year at the porch light.
The first moth I've seen this year
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
