Random Jottings

Woh. Today and yesterday we had some major wind and wave action. Yesterday we had 15 to 20 foot waves and today we added some steady rain fall. Just watching the waves yesterday, made me pine a little bit for my surfboard left behind. Definitely some epic surf break. Here is a video of the small island 'Saddle Rock' getting hammered by a few waves.





Otherwise, this morning we spent time surveying for the nocturnal Farallon salamanders. During the spring, while the island is still fairly wet, they are out in larger numbers. After laying their eggs, they'll spend their summer in some of the deeper holes and cracks. They are technically a subspecies of the arboreal salamander on the mainland. (given the island has only three trees, they've obviously modified their behavior to living in caves and other damp areas underground) Which is interesting, since 10,00 years ago these islands separated from the rest of California.

Farallon @ Sunset

Really busy day today on the island with more crew coming in. We had the sailboat 'Tiger Beetle" come in and expand our population from 3 to 5. Also, with the crew coming ashore we had 9 people briefly here. Triple the previous population for the last two weeks. This afternoon we checked on some of the Cassin's Auklet boxes and only found one egg with no parents. The full couple hundred check of the Cassin's boxes will be this week and it is anticipated that we will have our hands full with nesting birds. In any case, I'll leave this blog with a picture of the sun setting on the Western flank of the island. Especially lately we have had some very clear and spectacular sunset views.

Shark Bait

Tested out the new crane yesterday. Although given the shark work done around the island at various times, I couldn't help but look down for some large 16 ft plus great white shark. Thankfully, I suppose I should be happy that any large sharks won't be back to the farallones until this fall. Oh, well, in the meantime I've got a perfect photo where I can always photoshop in a shark.

Picture of the Day (Last Thusday)

Common Murre individual located in colony with a few other thousand birds. As soon as they actually start nesting we'll be in the blinds reading band numbers and watching them more. The murre actually looks a bit penguinish. Which is interesting given that the word penguin comes from the name of a murre related species of bird. So, in many ways I'm surrounded by Northern Hemisphere penguins. (The Tufted Puffins on the island probably are the best swimming birds here).


Apologies for the pictures of the day to be from last week. However, there are definitely some photo worthy moments from last week that should be credited with a 'photo of the day' caption.

Welcome to the Farallones

Welcome to the Farallon Islands.

View from the boat, heading into the island:


House:


View from one of the few paths around the island:
Sunsets Day Two: