August Whale Calendar

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It's August......

Have you made and printed your August Calendar yet?

Click on the photo and scroll to see all of the calendar



This was a fun photograph to make.

Rocking boat, moving pretty fast
Choppy waves...lots of vibration
Heavy overcast, shooting ISO 400
Anticipating the breach location

Nikon D200
18-200 mm Vibration Reduction Lens
1/640 sec, f/13, 200 mm focal length

After all the heat here in Texas, Alaska would be nice again.

Leave a comment and have a great August.

Troy

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W is for

Wide, Whale, Water, and Wear

A Wide Sitka Spruce

Rain Forest Monarch

The temperate rain forest is dominated by Sitka Spruce. Except where it penetrates valleys such as Hoh, the Sitka Spruce grows along a narrow coastal strip from northern California to Alaska.

High rainfall, fog, and ocean moderated temperatures create optimum growing conditions for these monarchs. This is one of the largest Sitka Spruce trees in the United States.

Height……………………......... Over 270 feet
Diameter at chest height… Over 12 ½ feet
Age………………………........... ~ 525 years

Martha was having a hard time measuring it.

Whale Breaching
Alaska

Around 90% of the body clears the water before the whale turns to land on its back or side. "Belly flops" also occur but are less common. In order to achieve 90% clearance, a Humpback needs to leave the water at a speed of eight metres per second or 29 km/h.

Water and Wear

With a little help from lichens

Living organisms may contribute to mechanical weathering as well as chemical weathering. Lichens and mosses grow on essentially bare rock surfaces and create a more humid chemical microenvironment. The attachment of these organisms to the rock surface enhances physical as well as chemical breakdown of the surface microlayer of the rock. On a larger scale seedlings sprouting in a crevice and plant roots exert physical pressure as well as providing a pathway for water and chemical infiltration. Burrowing animals and insects disturb the soil layer adjacent to the bedrock surface thus further increasing water and acid infiltration and exposure to oxidation processes.

To participate, visit ABC Wednesday, mrsnesbitt's place. Click here.

Troy and Martha

Seward, AK - Small Boat Nature Tour - Part 1

If you take a boat trip out of the Small Boat Harbour at Seward, be sure to ask at the reservations desk for a boat that has a naturalist or birder as the captain. It will pay big dividends. Many of the tours are listed as Glacier tours, but a receptive captain will go out of his way to show you special animals and birds.

We talked to the Captain before we left, and told him that we were interested in seeing a Thick-billed Murre, which would be a new bird (lifer) for us. He asked the rest of the passengers (12) if they minded going out of the way to an island further out in the Gulf of Alaska (to the Chiswell Islands) to see a rare bird. Everyone agreed as most were 'nature lovers' anyway. And we got to stay out a little longer.

Luckily, the Captain had a lot of discretion in his timetable and route. It was his only run of the day. We saw our obligatory glacier, but also lots of wildlife during the trip.

Be sure to click on the photos for the large versions

Small Boat Harbour Seward

I especially like the 3 red fenders in the otherwise blue-grey photograph

A Sea Otter (People Watching)

A Sea Lion Posing

Tufted Puffin

A Jam of Jellies

What do you call a lot of jellyfish crowded together. The Captain said that he had been crusing these waters for a long time and had never seen them mass together in this bay like this. Enjoy.

Update: Thanks to Tori Cullins, a USCG captain and marine biologist grad from the University of Hawai'i , I now know that a group is officially called "a smack of jellies" instead of "a jam of jellies". I like my made-up name better.

Black Oystercatcher w/ Red Beak on Yellow Lichen

Humpback Whale Breaching

Thick-billed Murre

This one bird is what we spent the whole day on the boat for. It was a life bird for us. Notice the white gape (smile) line. This is an identifying feature as well as the thick bill. We had not seen a lifer for a long time. Whoo-hoooo. We got a few more lifers when we got to the tundra on the North Slope and on the drive up there. But that's another story.

Part 2 of the boat trip will be next Sunday on AK Sunday Part 2. Stay tuned.

Alaska Sunday is a collection of photographic remembrances of our driving trip from Texas to Alaska.
18,000 miles, 16 weeks, 16 western states including Alaska and four Canadian Provinces.
No chronological order, just anything of interest that got in front of our cameras.

Troy and Martha