Orcas Island Whale Watching in the San Juan Islands of Washington State

We experienced a rare sighting of a family of transient orca taking a harbor porpoise. We were out near Discovery Island yesterday when we came across them slowly moving east and south. At first the young orca whales in the family were chasing the porpoise, copying move for move. If the porpoise turned sharply the chasing whale would as well but never touching the porpoise, which any one of them could have done at any time during the chase. The young whales took turns doing these maneuvers. Even a very young two year old was joining in. All the while the mother orca was tailing the action until after maybe 30-45 minutes when she appeared to have enough and you see the result in the photo. We never saw the porpoise again after that. It was apparent to us the mom was teaching her young how to hunt and we, along with a few other boats were there to witness it.

I know the photo is a little out of focus but this was the best of the 100 + photos I took. The hummers showed up on the 25th of March, right on schedule. And as usual we have one male that we named Nepoleon. He rules the feeders. He will allow females to feed and never any other males. He has a perch above the feeders and keeps a close eye on them. Lately there has been a male Anna’s hummingbird feeding as well. Nepoleon is a Rufous hummingbird, smaller than the Anna’s. The little Rufous doesn’t challange the Anna’s, but I can tell the Anna’s is not very comfortable and spends as little time as possible on the feeder.

Lately the weather here has been much cooler than normal. In fact we had some snow yesterday morning. I feel bad for these little birds but they seem to be doing fine. Starting tomorrow we are expecting much warmer weather. With all the rain we had this warm weather coming will cause everything to sprout, grow and bloom very quickly. I can’t wait.