Wildlife abounds in the San Juan Islands, but only if you like bald eagles. And harbor seals. Oh, and Stellar sea lions. And minke whales, pigeon guillemots, rhinoceros auklets, common murres, cormorants, turkey vultures, mouflon sheep, black-tailed deer, fallow deer, sika deer, and maybe some bald eagles and vultures fighting over shreds from a dead-and-beached harbor seal carcass. But only if you're into all that!
From Friday Harbor, we got the call of vultures and bald eagles fighting over the tidally-beached carcass of a seal off Shaw Island. We love gruesome and feeding (especially gruesome feeding or feeding on gruesome) and went a-searching for it. Along Spieden and Sentinel Islands, we saw mouflon sheep, sika and fallow deer, a stoic bald eagle and plump warming harbor seals. As we came around the west side of San Juan Island, we spotted a cacophony of sea birds and right among them, two minke whales surfaced! After watching these two whales feeding for about twenty minutes, we came along Whale Rocks to see stellar sea lions. And they were making a racket! One jumped in the water and then tried to crawl back out to his "spot." The new owner of the coveted spot (another big male sea lion) bared teeth and made grumpy sea lion sounds. After five minutes of sea lion spit in his face, the original vacate-er jumped back in and swam around to challenge another male. Finally, he won the spot but then decided it wasn't worth it and jumped back in the frigid northwest waters after the usurped male. Maybe he just wanted a fishing buddy.
Another fine day on the Salish Sea.
Serena, Naturalist
San Juan Safaris