Doug's Updates

[Tigerlady105]

Doug, you have a never-ending source of pleasure right outside your home!!!  It must be exciting to be able to see so many different animals and birds there.  Thank you for sharing it with us...from a city girl who loves the natural world!  

Do you see orcas and other whales where you are?

[passerine]

Thank-you Doug glad you like them . I would like to correct the information i posted with the pictures of sea lions.
They are at Fanny Bay not Union Bay, as Doug kindly pointed out. Fanny Bay is a couple miles south of Buckley Bay & Union Bay is about five miles north of Union Bay with no log booms.

[Doug]

tigerlady asked if we ever see orcas or other whales here.  We used to have two or three visitations each summer by orcas (killer whales) but with the crash of the salmon in the Georgia Strait, there is hardly any reason for them to come here any more.  The orcas are centered in the southern Vancouver Island area between the Canadian Gulf Islands and the US Gulf Island, San Juan Island ... where there are salmon.  Now that the Grey Whales and Humpback Whales are recovering, we get the occasional visit from them - but not often.

[Tigerlady105]

Thank you for answering my question, Doug.  I hope the salmon will come back for the well-being of all of the food chain and that they will thrive.  It's nice to be able to see the orcas and other whales close to home.  Maybe some day salmon will return to the area and you'll be able to enjoy seeing whales again.   

[Blue]

The salmon will keep diminishing so long as the fish farms are thriving in the straits (Broughton Archipelago) north of Hornby Island.  

[Raptorman]

The salmon will keep diminishing so long as the fish farms are thriving in the straits (Broughton Archipelago) north of Hornby Island.  

I don't understand this. Can you explain why?

[Blue]

All of the salmon fry from the rivers up there (they are the ones that return to the Fraser River, which is a disaster this year) have to swim through the waters where the fish farms dot every bay and inlet.  They get infested with sea lice from the Atlantic farm salmon, which kills them, along with other pollutions.

Read some of Alexandra Morton's material here:

http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/

[Raptorman]

Thanks Blue.. Just one more thing to add to the long list:

Dams
PCBs and other chemicals
Logging
Seals & Sea Lyons
Sport fishing
Commercial fishing

etc, etc...

It's a wonder the salmon even exist at all anymore.  

[Tigerlady105]

That is so sad.  I wish more could be done soon...before it's too late.

[luvthebirds]

#$%$ $%&*  fish farms 

[Doug]

DID "HOPE" RETURN TO NEST AREA? (I am writing this just for the record)

At 11:30 am on December 18, 2009, Raptor reported hearing the two eagles screaching and seeing a dark eagle chasing off a raven from the "Scraggly" Tree (located two thirds the way from the Nest Tree to the Peters' Tree).

AJL at 11:34 reported an eagle chasing off at least one raven from this same tree.

Boonibarb, at the same time saw it all and took photos of the action.
At 11:32 two ravens in the Scraggly Tree.  At 11:33 juvenile eagle approached Scraggly  Tree.  At 11:34 juvenile landed where two ravens were perched, chasing them off.  At 11:34:o5 the two parents chased off the juvenile.

A good number of the eagle people felt that it was "Hope" back from migration.  It looks like this may be true, but I still feel "unproven".

Two things might reinforce the view that it was Hope.  1. When first fledged, Hope used the Scraggly Tree quite frequently as a perch.  This is a tree never used by other eagles before.  We could almost call it Hope's Tree.  So when we see this juvenile use this tree, it makes you wonder.

2. The Norfolk Botanical Garden, Virginia, where radio tracking has been done for several years, reports, "After the juvenile eagle disperses from the nest area, it will continue to return to the nest periodically over the next few years".

[Doug]

RECORD EARLY MATING  (also written for the records)

On December 30, 2009 at 12:50 pm,  The female eagle flew from the nest to the Peters' Tree where the male eagle was perched.  No sooner did she land than the male hopped on her back - the earliest I have seen them mating yet.  Previously, they had occasionally mated on the last day or two of January.  Normally they mate in February and March until the first egg is laid (usually around March 25).  In 2008, when they did no nest building and laid no eggs (for the first time), they kept mating until April 10, to no avail - the latest date I have recorded.

[Doug]

MALE, THE MAIN PROVIDER?

ajl and others have been observing over and over the male eagle bringing fish to the nest as a courtship gift to the female.  Perhaps related, I have often observed the female perched in the Babysitting tree (near the nest) while the male has been perched in the Peters' tree (near the sea).  If the male's job is to get fish, he should perch near the sea.  If you people keep records of who brings the fish, I'll try to watch more closely who is perching more often near the sea.

[Crissy]

ty ty ty for the updates Doug.  this is so exciting another year with M/P!

[Doug]

SHRIMP FISHING    One shrimp boat, the Pacific Rancher, is fishing in our area almost every day, storms excepted, and never on Sunday.  Today being Sunday, I thought it might be docked in the Comox boat harbour, so I went to investigate.  Sure enough, there it was, the Pacific Rancher.  

It is a good sized boat, solidly built of aluminum.  At the stern are its nets rolled up on a large reel.  The fisherman wasn't there but I talked to the fisherman in the next boat selling the salmon he had caught up north.  

The shrimpboat's owner is "Ledo" he told me.  And the area he fishes (just off Hornby) is commonly called "Ledo's Lane".  He's fished there for years.  There used to be a big black boat fishing there, I told him.  I liked its name - the "Love and Anarchy".

That boat was owned by Ledo also.  Ledo's father is the owner of "Portuguese Joe's Fish Market" in Comox.  Joe died a couple of years ago but Ledo's mother carries it on.

Ledo's boat, "Love and Anarchy" was sunk off the west coast of Vancouver Island a couple years ago - that's why you don't see it any more.  But Ledo is fishing again in the "Pacific Rancher" and he's back in his old territory.

I feel that Ledo and his shrimp boats are part of our neighbourhood just as our eagles are, just as George (the gull) and the cormorants are, just as the harlequins are and all the other creatures.  I'm sure our eagles feel the same way - always watching for by-catch discarded from Ledo's boats.