I always try to write these things from a recent personal experience. This one came from a site visit to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, and, while we were waiting for the ferry to shove off, we watched about a dozen pelagic cormorants on the pilings right outside our window. They had a playful look to their smallish heads, almost like they were having fun diving around the backwash of the prop keeping the boat against the ferry pier. Maybe they were – it looked like the fishing was easy.as the boat disoriented the fish. Seen close, I was amazed to see the variety of colors in the ‘black’ birds.

Three cormorant species live in the Salish Sea. A year ago, I wrote about the largest, the double-crested cormorant and now here’s number two. At first, the pelagic cormorant seems jet black, but that’s certainly not true. I like these birds very much because, as the light changes, their iridescent colors change from purple to red and green. The pelagic is smaller than the double-crested. It has a thinner neck, much smaller head and very thin bill. Almost snake-like might be a good descriptor. Two white flank patches and, during breeding, a red beard also help with identification. A third variety, the Brant’s cormorant sports a tan cheek patch.

I admire these birds for their fishing skills. Recently we were on one of the San Juan ferries and I watched a group fishing and occasionally fly to nearby pilings for rest. They were all very chatty with each other and seemed curious about us. Some were below at the base of the pilings and were diving in the turbulent backwash for disoriented pile perch. Almost every dive produced a fish, and as the birds surfaced, we could see some quickly toss the flapping fish upwards, then swallow it headfirst as it came back down. This way, the fish went down those skinny throats with scales backwards and fins retracted. Stomach juices did the rest. To help all this, cormorants ride low in the water thanks to solid bones that aid in long dives. A very successful bird!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

I admit there’s something fun in driving up to the mailbox and getting a magazine with my own stuff in it. Such it’s been now for a bunch of years with this project. Richard at the magazine, now Joe who has moved into Richard’s desk, and I’m still at it. In this current series I think I’m up to about 5 years of stories:

Here’s the story that went with it:

Harbor Porpoises – Can we think of this smart, inquisitive marine mammal as the mermaid of the Salish Sea? I’d like to think so. Appropriately, harbor porpoises are about the size of a woman, 5 feet and 120 lbs. – the smallest of the six species of porpoises. This little beauty is probably the most common cetacean in the Salish Sea and Phocoena phocoena is only found here in the inland waters of the Northwest. They live among us as if they were our neighbors, and, I guess they are! Once common here, harbor porpoises almost disappeared in the 1970’s, probably because of gill nets that drowned them and polluted harbors. More northerly populations survived, and now they’re back – big time. I’d like to think that, for a change, it’s something good we’ve done.

So where do we see these guys? Harbor porpoises generally tend to be solitary foragers, so a fin may appear, then vanish for a bit, then resurface in a graceful and fluid up-and-down arc. If two fins appear, suspect a mom and young – they can have one offspring a year throughout a 15-20-year lifespan, being pregnant and lactating at the same time. Occasionally a group can ‘herd’ fish into position for a meal, but that’s not common. Look for color differences in body parts. The flippers, dorsal fin, tail and back are dark. The question might be asked why are harbor porpoises back? It appears their increases are more than what the locals could naturally produce themselves, and given that they are “harbor” mammals, not an offshore species, they must be coming in from the north. Whatever the reason, it’s good news for nature-watching sailors.

Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America – and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Click the image to see it larger in your browser.

Finished up my Carbon River painting and sent the final file for approval. I think it’s close. This is my second large painting for that amazing place, and I think it’s better than the first installed at Ohanapecosh. It sure is more complex. Things changed as it progressed, and I’m appreciative of the park folks, especially Kristyn, who trusted me enough to give the freedom to alter approved content.

And here’s Nancy on the trail where the painting was sited, an old cedar boardwalk through the skunk cabbage. The thing about Northwest rain forests – they’re really messy, I mean amazingly messy – and crowded. Nothing tidy lives here when you have a zillion plants all competing for space, branches laying all over, broken and decaying trees, shrubs, ferns, mushrooms and the rest.  I hope I got that feeling for crowded biomass! This painting will now be scanned and an entire exhibit, both digital and 2-dimensional will be built around it for the Carbon River Ranger Station. Come see it next summer.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.