Latest / Mouthy Marmots of the Olympic Peninsula / Vancouver Island travel tips and nature news

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Vancouver Island travel tips and nature news · Mouthy Marmots of the Olympic Peninsula

• 0:04
  Speaker 4: Welcome to the Mountain Marmots Podcast, a show where nature lovers and neighbors discover untold wildlife and community news, find ways to enjoy and protect this beautiful area, and of course, have fun.
• 0:17
  Speaker 4: I'm Carol from Port Angeles, Washington.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: Thanks for tuning in.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Hello world! Let's go to Canada.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: Here in Port Angeles, Washington, we're really upset that our Canadian neighbors are getting punished in a trade war.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: So let's show our support by going there.
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: To help with your travel planning, our local cruise shirts Victoria and Vancouver Island travel tips.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: And you know, Vancouver Island has oceans and orcas, but a lot of folks don't realize it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: They have fantastic mountains.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: And in those mountains, there are marmots that are being saved from extinction.
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: We have that story for you.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: And finally, our local birders will introduce some Canadian migrants you may not know about.
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: Let's hop on the Black Ball Ferry from Port Angeles across the Salish Sea to Victoria.
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: Here in Port Angeles, we're getting pretty darn tired of our government bullying our friends in Canada.
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: So this episode, we really want to get people interested in heading over to Vancouver Island, just a short ferry ride away.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: So I'm here with Leela, and we're going to talk about some of our favorite, favorite things on the island.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: So first things first, the ferry, if you walk on, is very economical.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: It's about an hour and a half, and um sometimes you see whales on the way over, but it's uh a nice voyage.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Of course, one of my favorite places to go is uh to a little park called, well, I shouldn't say little, Beacon Hill Park.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: It's walkable or you can take the bus.
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: I love Beacon Hill Park because right next to Beacon Hill Park is the Beacon Hill drive-in.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: And it has the best soft served ice cream cones.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: In Beacon Hill Park, there are lush manicured English-style gardens, peacocks wandering around, and um, they have a fabulous splash pad, giant sculpture of a watering can that kids love.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: That's at the corner of Douglas and Simcoe Streets.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: I love going up to the giant watering can, holding my ice cream, and watching that giant watering can.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: And some other sites in Victoria that are just fantastic, the Royal Beast Museum.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: So the Royal Beastie Museum has a lot of rotating galleries and uh exhibitions, which are very interesting.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: One of the things we love the most about the Royal Beast is the collection of exterior uh totem poles and monumental sculptures by First Nations artists there.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Um, most recently in June of 2026, a totem pole called the Sunray Pole was refreshed by a native carver and has been re-erected.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: All of these uh totems and a large longhouse are present there in what's called Thunderbird Park, which is immediately adjacent to the museum.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: So it's just such a reminder of all the history and all the culture that came before us.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: And then right down at the harbor, another thing I like to do, which is uh cheap, is taking what I call the bobble boats, those little yellow water taxis several times a day.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: They have what's called the harbor ferry boat ballet.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: And these small water taxis gathered together, they all look alike in slightly different colors, and they do a synchronized kind of dance for about 15 minutes at a time, and it's just so fun to watch.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: And if you want to head out of town, if you've got your car, a place that a lot of tourists from here actually don't go to, is to head to Sooke.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: That's a S-O-O-K-E.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Now, near Sooke, there's a fantastic provincial park.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: We like, we try to go every year.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: It's called French Beach Provincial Park.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: And when you get there, you understand why Canada is just so proud of its parks and its natural spaces.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: That campground is uh right by the water, there's a forest.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: And how how would you describe how they clean up that campground?
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: They invest in keeping the campground clean.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: They have a person that goes around and polishes the little number sign that indicates the campsite.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: They have the cleanest pit toilets I've ever seen.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: And the campsites are covered with a fine gravel, they're large, and there's not a bit of trash or anything left behind.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: One thing about camping at French Beach is they do have bears, and so you really have to keep your campsite scrupulously clean.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: They don't want you to have anything out on the picnic table.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: You need to put everything away when you're not present at the site.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: It's an amazing place, dog friendly, quiet, very clean.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: And what's interesting too about French Beach Provincial Park is you get there and there's this great sign and it says, a fed bear is a dead bear.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: You pull into your campsite and a little bit of a ranger, not a volunteer, but a paid staff person is going to come by and tell you all about how to keep your campsite clean.
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: And honestly, I just can't imagine that happening here in the States.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: But that campground is uh is just lovely.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: And of course, for us, one of the perks of camping there is uh in the summer, right by the campground entrance, there's a pizza place.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: And right down the way, it's a little place called Shirley Delicious where you can sit outside and have breakfast and you can sit with your dog outside.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: Just uh I I don't know, it's like a real showcase of what of a provincial park.
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: And we found that to be true throughout Vancouver Island that when you go to a provincial park, there are it's just night and day, they're funded, they have staff, it's clean and uh a place to be proud of.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: So French Beach Provincial Park, if you're not interested in camping, they have, like I said, this beautiful day use area.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: And it's about an hour drive east of Victoria, not too far, and the drive is uh takes you through some interesting places, one of which is the town of Souk.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: And you can visit Suk Potholes Provincial Park.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: And the Suk Potholes, the Souk River flows through these ancient uh deep pools carved in the rock by glacial melt thousands of years ago.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: It's really lovely to see.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: There's kind of a large parking area on several levels at Suk Potholes so that you can hike the trail along the river, or you can park and have a picnic.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: There are places you can park and dip into the river for a little swim if the weather warrants.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: It's just lovely.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: If you don't want to go out and camp, Suk Potholes is a nice day trip.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: Just a reminder: if you take your bike on a ferry from Port Angeles to you can actually get to Sooke Potholes.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: It's a lovely ride down a trail called the Galloping Goose.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: It starts in Victoria itself.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Put your bike on the ferry and then ride on over to the Galloping Goose Trail.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: And it's a fantastic ride that will end up at Sooke Potholes.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: And if that feels like a long day to get back, we have actually done it where you stayed in a little hotel in Sooke.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: So uh do it, head on over to Victoria and Vancouver Island.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Canada.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: We love you, you're our friends.
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: Hello, this is Kate from Port Angeles, and we just got back from a week on Vancouver Island.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: And some of my observations are um the people are incredibly friendly and feel uh very sympathetic with our political situation.
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: And we did have a little sign in the van saying basically we don't like him either.
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: And we got a lot of giggles on that and a lot of thumbs up.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: And a nice lady approached us in a in a parking lot and welcomed us to Canada and said, We're really pulling for you guys, our neighbors.
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: And that was that was super sweet.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: Um, my tip for going to Canada if you're hiking is remember that the hikes are in meters for elevation gain and not feet.
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: So when you cheerfully start working up that trail and think, golly darn, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be, then remember meters, not feet.
• 9:24
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: Uh the bears are friendly and they tend to just want to get the heck away from you.
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: So that was lovely.
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: Strathcona Park is gorgeous.
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: Again, the hikes are be selective because they will kick you butt.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Hi, this is Vanessa from Port Angeles.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: We love going to Canada.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It's it's just great that you can go to a different country, like right from town.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: You can you can see it from town.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Our favorite thing is to go to Salt Spring Island over the 4th of July.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: It's really rural and beautiful.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: The people are super friendly.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: There's lots of good places to eat and explore and kayak.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And mostly we go over the 4th of July because our dog really hates the Port Angeles fireworks.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: They start up early and they keep going, but at least you can get away from the worst of it if you go on the 4th of July.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And on the ferry, we always see lots of locals with their dogs doing the same thing.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: But here's a pro tip: if you're tempted to get out of town before the Port Angeles fireworks really kick off, don't go on July 1st, because that's Canada Day, and they'll also have fireworks.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: But they only do it for a couple hours, like after it gets dark, and then it's all over with.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So you can enjoy the rest of your time in Canada, fireworks free.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Those are some good travel tips.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Now, Vancouver Island has incredible mountains, and mountains and marmots may not be the first thing you think of on Vancouver Island, but maybe it should be, because those mountains are home to what's been called one of the best examples of species recovery in the world.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: Here to talk about this is the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Foundation.
• 11:15
  Speaker: I'm Adam Taylor.
• 11:16
  Speaker: I'm the executive director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation.
• 11:20
  Speaker: And the Marmot Recovery Foundation is a work charity, and we're the ones that have been tasked with really doing the on-the-ground work to try and recover the Vancouver Island marmot.
• 11:31
  Speaker: So we have a conservation breeding program, we have a dedicated facility for that, and then we release marmots to the wild and do habitat restoration and supplemental seeding and a lot of monitoring to see how the wild population is doing.
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: It's just such a great story that 25 years ago, less than 30 marmots were on the island and they were nearing extinction.
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: So tell me a little bit more about what happened when that became known.
• 11:59
  Speaker: So during the 80s and 90s, there was a real population crash for the Vancouver Island marmot.
• 12:08
  Speaker: And unfortunately, it took, I think, a long time for people to recognize that the population was crashing and why it was crashing.
• 12:15
  Speaker: So if we go back to the early surveys of the Vancouver Island mermot population, a lot of marmots were being found in cut blocks, so areas that have been forested.
• 12:25
  Speaker: And the initial um the initial impression was that if marmots like to live in these forested areas, or you know, areas that have been logged, that well, there was a lot of logged area on Vancouver Island, and the population was just fine.
• 12:41
  Speaker: But that turned out not to be the case.
• 12:43
  Speaker: In fact, as areas that had been cut began to regrow, the marmots that were living in those areas got wiped out.
• 12:51
  Speaker: And in the meantime, the marmots that were living in natural habitat, these tree-free subalpine meadows, uh, they weren't receiving dispersers.
• 13:01
  Speaker: So I guess part of this comes back to you know what natural Vancouver Island marmot habitat looks like.
• 13:06
  Speaker: So you've got this species which lives entirely on Vancouver Island, so it's an endemic species, and it lives in these high elevation meadows that are created by avalanches and rockfall, uh, really by snow action essentially.
• 13:23
  Speaker: And on Vancouver Island, those those tend to be pretty small.
• 13:26
  Speaker: We don't have large contiguous stretches of habitat.
• 13:31
  Speaker: They tend to be a few hectares at the top of this mountain and then a few hectares at the top of another mountain somewhere nearby.
• 13:38
  Speaker: And so that means each marmot colony is relatively small.
• 13:43
  Speaker: You know, maybe uh maybe just a few families, maybe 50 or 60 marmots, but but not huge populations in any one spot.
• 13:52
  Speaker: And what makes that kind of a population function are dispersers.
• 13:56
  Speaker: So these marmots, when they get about two years old, they leave their natal colony, their birth colony, and they travel across the forest to another Vancouver Island marmot colony.
• 14:08
  Speaker: And unfortunately, Vancouver Island marmots are very tolerant of young marmots that are arriving to their colony.
• 14:16
  Speaker: And so that provides genetic exchange, it provides a rescue effect, and it allows these small isolated populations to essentially function as one larger metapopulation.
• 14:28
  Speaker: And with logging and unfortunately with some other activities like hydroelectric dams on the island, we really broke up the ability of the Vancouver Island marmot to disperse successfully.
• 14:41
  Speaker: And then cut blocks actually created a population sink.
• 14:44
  Speaker: So marmots, you know, if you're a young marmot and you know you've got a journey to make, and then you look next door and it looks like there's this fantastic meadow space, you don't have to move all that far.
• 14:54
  Speaker: Well, that's what they did.
• 14:55
  Speaker: They just moved into these cut blocks because they looked like Vancouver Island marmot habitat.
• 15:00
  Speaker: So as the trees regrew, the marmots lost that open meadow characteristic that they really need to survive, and those colonies would be wiped out.
• 15:09
  Speaker: But while those colonies were being wiped out, natural colonies weren't receiving any dispersers.
• 15:14
  Speaker: So there ceased to be that metapopulation function, just these tiny little isolated colonies that started to wink out over time.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: And somebody was watching, or a lot of people were watching and got the news out sometime.
• 15:30
  Speaker: Yeah, so and this is this was definitely one of the challenges.
• 15:34
  Speaker: So I I cannot emphasize enough how you know, we think of Vancouver Island and we think of the beaches, and we think of orcas, and we think of Gary Oak Meadows, but but Vancouver Island marmots live in the mountains, and we do have some pretty serious mountains on the island.
• 15:50
  Speaker: And unfortunately, at the beginning of the marmot's decline, the the first people that started to really raise the alarm were naturalist groups and hiking groups that were going up into these marmot meadows, and they were coming back and saying, We're like, we're not seeing marmots.
• 16:06
  Speaker: And unfortunately, they weren't that those reports weren't given enough credence.
• 16:13
  Speaker: And and I I have personal experience with this, right?
• 16:16
  Speaker: You hike up into a meadow and you look around, and on any given day, you might not see a marmot.
• 16:22
  Speaker: Like they're there, but you might not see them.
• 16:25
  Speaker: Now we have marmots that have um radio transmitters embedded in them so we can detect them, so we know if they're there or not.
• 16:31
  Speaker: But but it's true that if it's raining or if it's too hot, the marmots go underground.
• 16:36
  Speaker: They just don't come out and aren't visible.
• 16:39
  Speaker: And so those reports were written off, well, this is just anecdotal.
• 16:44
  Speaker: And then, you know, as that alarm kind of continued, again, the very first survey said, well, there's lots of marmots.
• 16:51
  Speaker: They're just they're just living in cut blocks.
• 16:53
  Speaker: And and so it took a long time to react.
• 16:57
  Speaker: And so unfortunately, it really wasn't until um there was just over 100 marmots left in the world, 100 Vancouver Island marmots left, that recovery efforts really even got started.
• 17:12
  Speaker: And so the very first marmots were brought into captivity in 1997.
• 17:16
  Speaker: By 1998, there were fewer than 100 marmots, period, anywhere in captivity in the wild.
• 17:22
  Speaker: The whole global population was less than 100 individuals.
• 17:26
  Speaker: And um over the next over the next few years, a total of 55 marmots were brought into into into captivity to form a conservation breeding program.
• 17:36
  Speaker: And those individuals, the ones that were targeted were individuals living in cut blocks and pups.
• 17:44
  Speaker: And those at that time, those two groups had essentially a 0% year-to-year survival rate.
• 17:52
  Speaker: So it was an attempt made not to interfere with any wild marmots that were left living in natural habitat.
• 18:00
  Speaker: But really at the time the feeling was this species was going to go extinct in the last, that there really wasn't much hope for it.
• 18:07
  Speaker: And at the end of the year in 2003, we usually say there's less than 30 Vancouver Island marmots left because we probably missed a few.
• 18:17
  Speaker: But we could only find 22 Vancouver Island marmots.
• 18:20
  Speaker: So there were 10 at a spot, Mount Washington Alpine Ski Resort.
• 18:26
  Speaker: That was the single largest group, and they were showing really um quite profound signs of inbreeding depression.
• 18:33
  Speaker: So they had a really small body size, they had really high parasite loads, and were really struggling with infertility.
• 18:40
  Speaker: So although there were several pairs of adults, only one pair of adults was actually capable of um of breeding by that by the time uh we started recovering that population.
• 18:50
  Speaker: And then the remaining 12 marmots were spread across essentially four mountains uh in groups of you know two of one of them was just a single marmot uh by the end.
• 19:01
  Speaker: So it was, yeah, it was about as close to extinction as you can can possibly get before we were able to begin releasing marmots back to the wild to recover the population.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: It's just an amazing story because if you think think about it, I mean that's that's kind of a short time to bring the population back.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: And I know it's a managed recovery now, but it it must be amazing teamwork that goes goes along with this recovery effort.
• 19:34
  Speaker: Yeah, it has it has been uh an incredible piece of work.
• 19:41
  Speaker: I mean, I guess I you know I feel I I feel like I'm tweeting my own horn here.
• 19:44
  Speaker: But yeah, this this this is an um it's been amazing to see the population recover, and it has certainly been an incredible team of people.
• 19:53
  Speaker: So we work with partners at the Calgary Zoo and the Toronto Zoo, and they've really helped us develop our conservation breeding program while managing um garment conservation breeding programs themselves, and you know, and working with you know other partners as well, Mosaic and BC Parks and naturalist groups.
• 20:15
  Speaker: Um it's it's been a a real a real group effort.
• 20:20
  Speaker: You know, I often tell people that I came to this project and I had a background working with other species at risk.
• 20:27
  Speaker: And what appealed to me about this project was it felt to me like this was a species where we had a real chance to bring the species back to really recover the species, to not just um prevent extinction, but to actually restore species to the wild.
• 20:47
  Speaker: And I think we're on our way to to doing that.
• 20:51
  Speaker: I really feel right now, you know, we live in a period of profound biodiversity loss globally.
• 21:00
  Speaker: And unfortunately, there's a real desire in many cases, a real push to give up on species that are close to the brink of extinction.
• 21:12
  Speaker: And the desire, there's a desire to to write it off as hopeless.
• 21:17
  Speaker: And and I really believe that we need stories like the Vancouver Island Marmot to demonstrate that we can do this, like we can bring these species back from the brink of extinction.
• 21:28
  Speaker: So last year, um in the in the fall of last year, we had 420 Vancouver Island marmots out in the wild.
• 21:38
  Speaker: And yeah, so over 10 times the number of marmots that we started with.
• 21:43
  Speaker: And they're spread now out over 37 different uh mountaintops.
• 21:49
  Speaker: So we still have a long, long way to go before the species is truly recovered, and certainly before they've managed to reoccupy all of the mountains that they have.
• 21:59
  Speaker: historically lived on.
• 22:01
  Speaker: But we've made a lot of progress.
• 22:03
  Speaker: And I feel like we have some really good tools and we know what we're doing when it comes to Vancouver Island mermit recovery at this point.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Again, I have to say it's it's it's really inspiring and especially thinking of all the people working together to make this happen, just regular people and organizations and the government.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: Because that's of course one thing here right now in the United States with the threats to our Endangered Species Act and the plans to open up blogging all around Olympic National Park.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: And I think of our poor little marmots.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: But then I, you know, look across the the the strait here at Vancouver Island and I think of your you know the marmot recovery program that that people put this together and it it really gives me a lot of hope yeah I mean I certainly think for the Olympic Marmot that there is reason for optimism like that.
• 23:01
  Speaker: There are we we've developed tools if things get truly dire for the Olympic marmot.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: So we're talking uh it's almost October and what what's happening now in the field?
• 23:14
  Speaker: Just last week we um watched our first marmots go into hibernation.
• 23:20
  Speaker: So I'm curious about the Olympic marmot actually so for us uh it sounds a bit odd that it's the marmots the furthest south almost our furthest south colony are the first ones to go into hibernation and then the ones that live a little bit further north they're likely to stay active for oh probably another two, three weeks or mid-October we'll start to to really see large numbers of marmots go underground for hibernation.
• 23:44
  Speaker: So for us right now this is kind of an odd kind of year.
• 23:48
  Speaker: We're busy um going out to the meadows but as I mentioned earlier we don't actually see the marmots hopefully uh but we can just detect where they are underground and then we can make a note of exactly where their hibernacula is so that we can come back in the spring and we actually provide a supplemental food.
• 24:06
  Speaker: These um they're mystery leaf eater biscuits.
• 24:08
  Speaker: They're actually designed for uh gorillas um and it turns out that that gorillas and marmots have really similar dietary needs.
• 24:19
  Speaker: Which baffles me once they're underground um and and our work in the fall is done we will go back out we'll start doing habitat restoration that means removing tree ingress so this is a result of climate change I know that this is the case in Olympic National Park as well what we're seeing is that there's this uh elevational tree migration so as snow loads drop snow in the form of avalanches or just in the form of creeps is really what makes marmot meadows in our mountains.
• 24:54
  Speaker: But we need snow a lot of snow and as snow loads decline its ability to effectively scrape small trees off of the landscape is being lost.
• 25:05
  Speaker: And the result is that marmot meadows are slowly infilling with trees and that seems to have an impact on predation so predators are more successful because they have stocking cover to sneak up on marmots and it seems to literally just overgrow really important habitat structures those burrows and hibernacula that marmots use generation after generation.
• 25:30
  Speaker: I mean marmots will reuse the same hibernacula for 40 50 years probably indefinitely so this fall you know after the after our habitat restoration is done we will look to the skies and cross our fingers and and hope that it snows a lot which seems unfortunately uh unlikely this fall but um that's outside of our control so we we just have to hope and wait and that's always a challenge when you're working with an endangered species is the amount of factors like the weather that are just totally outside of your control.
• 26:04
  Speaker: Just such a great story thank you so much Anne thank you for for allowing me to ramble about marmot.
• 26:12
  Speaker: I have yet to see one of your Olympic marmots so this is high on my list of priorities is to head down to Hurricane Ridge and visit one of your marmots a big thanks to Adam Taylor he's the executive director of the Vancouver Island Marmot Recovery Foundation.
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: We'll have their website and links to their work on our website at mouthymarmotbuzzrout com and now some birding news Intrepid birders Iris and Nancy wonder if a Canadian invasion is happening hi Iris hey Nancy welcome to Bird Chat thank you it's so good to be here it's really good to be here with you and I feel a little strange because I welcomed you and usually you're welcoming me.
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: Well something happened this week that made me realize that you have become a master birder so master yes yes I have yes and not once but at least twice have I sent you on a birding mission and you have succeeded yes that is very true I have succeeded and boy was it special.
• 27:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah so and what did I do what was the first thing I did I texted you.
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: You did I know it was so great.
• 27:39
  Speaker 7: So tell us about what you saw.
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: By the way we're at um our usual meeting place the Mighty Pine on 8th Street in Port Angeles a fine establishment.
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: Fine fine establishment so the mission was to find a Clark's nutcracker and the first time I tried to find it was on the trail that is out um obstruction point and did not see it.
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: And you when I told you you texted me back and you said well clearly you weren't paying attention because other people saw it out there.
• 28:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah sighted many times in that exact area by other birders.
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: Well I felt shamed so I decided I would go up to switchback and uh try to beat my record of the time getting up there but also look for this bird.
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: And lo and behold um I looked and I saw uh a flash of white with the black and it it's a very unique looking bird so I was pretty sure that that's what it was and but then uh went a little bit longer and there was the nutcracker on a branch right in front of me and it has a very unique beak and and sort of a roundish type face.
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah it's a little headly head yeah and I knew I I'm a hundred percent positive it was that bird and it was super super exciting and I tried to to text you from there but that did not happen.
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: No service yeah but it was very cool.
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: Oh that's amazing so that is like a super lifer you know not even just because you're a new birder that's a I have never seen one you know I've been on a mission all summer every time we go out hiking up in the elevation to to find one you know there are a lot of birders here who have either never seen one until this eruption wow really yeah and a lot what eruption oh thank you for asking so I was just reading on the American Birding Association that there's a big eruption of Clark's nutcrackers coming down from their usual high elevation and from Canada.
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: So we're talking about Canada in this episode that's our tie-in so the Clark's nutcrackers are like just moving all over the country they're being there's a photo on the ABA site of a Clark's nutcracker in a bird bath in Wisconsin which is hilarious.
• 30:01
  Speaker 7: Yeah your place my my motherland your motherland yeah so I've seen one and you have not you've seen two I've seen two and you have not well I'm gonna get up early tomorrow as I like to do and go up switch back and hopefully I'll see at least one and I'm really stoked for you hoping I get to see one this winter um and that's why I thought you should host.
• 30:23
  Speaker 7: Oh okay so that then are you throwing it back to me um yeah I want you to talk about some backyard birds.
• 30:29
  Speaker 7: You know Lee Leela had a great idea I'm always talking about these rarities that most people are never gonna see we have a lot of people who are just getting in into birds and we have a lot of cool birds that show up in our backyards here in Port Angeles.
• 30:42
  Speaker 7: So why don't you tell me about like I don't know Anna's hummingbirds do you see those in your yard?
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: I do you know every morning I sit and have my coffee in our comfy chairs and I look out the window and I watch birds which is something I never thought I would do and you've influenced me.
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: You're welcome and um a lot of Anna's hummingbirds come by and I love them.
• 31:06
  Speaker 6: Ever since we went to Cuba and saw the little bee hummingbird which is really teeny teeny I've been very interested in hummingbirds.
• 31:14
  Speaker 6: But one of the things that um my wife and I love about these hummingbirds is that she has always had this feeling that her father comes to see her as a hummingbird.
• 31:24
  Speaker 6: Oh wow and so whenever the hummingbirds come up she says hi dad.
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: Oh that's so cool and so now whenever I see them because she's still working and I am retired.
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: I know I sit and when I see them and I say hi dad and it's fun.
• 31:41
  Speaker 7: So can you describe what they look like yeah they're little they look like a hummingbird and their wings go really fast.
• 31:49
  Speaker 6: Uh huh what color are they?
• 31:50
  Speaker 7: They're gray grayish whitish the females are kind of grayish whitish yeah but the males are really kind of iridescent green right sure they are they are but I don't pay attention to the male I only pay attention to the female.
• 32:03
  Speaker 7: So our Anna's hummingbirds are interesting because they live here year round and a lot of times people who will ask me like they'll get nervous because it'll be December and they'll say hey I saw a hummingbird in my yard should I should I how should I take care of it?
• 32:17
  Speaker 7: And they're actually fine there they live here year round.
• 32:19
  Speaker 7: They do this cool thing at night when it gets really cold where they like slow down their heart rate and they basically go into like an overnight hibernation.
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: Wow that's really cool I did not know that yeah sometimes you'll find them like if it's really cold kind of like their feet grab on just as a reflex but maybe it'll loosen up a little bit and you might see them hanging upside down like a like a humming bat.
• 32:41
  Speaker 7: I would love to see that so that's a really common backyard bird and you know you don't need to get a fancy feeder.
• 32:48
  Speaker 7: You can actually just plant like like native shrubs that flower they love the flowers that are out in our yard.
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: They love a salvia I've got a big vegilla that that that just explodes with blooms that like tube like blooms they love those.
• 33:03
  Speaker 7: So yeah that's a really common one the Anna's hummingbird you're gonna see that here year round.
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: So there's another one let's talk about the black cap chickadee.
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: Oh well they are everywhere aren't they?
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: They are um yes I watch them quite often and they never stop.
• 33:18
  Speaker 6: They go go go go go go go and they're kind of a grayish with a black cap.
• 33:23
  unknown: Right?
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: Happily named yeah happily named and uh they make a lot of noise and they just flitter around and they're really they're probably the most common one that I see in our yard.
• 33:33
  Speaker 7: Yeah I'm not surprised an interesting thing about the black cap chickadee is they will make an alarm call to like scare the other birds out of the feeder.
• 33:42
  Speaker 7: Like but the other birds think the alarm call is because maybe there's a Cooper's hawk or something somewhere.
• 33:48
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: So you mean like maybe not quite the I'm a new birder.
• 33:57
  Speaker 7: Super close but yeah so they'll like like fake it like fake an alarm clock call just to like get get a people away from their food?
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah yeah I'm gonna try that at home.
• 34:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah yeah highly recommend.
• 34:08
  Speaker 7: Yeah so black cap chickadees you know that's an that's a good one to look for in your backyard feeder.
• 34:13
  Speaker 7: And then another kind of flashy one and a noisy one is the Stellar's J.
• 34:18
  Speaker 6: Boy they are really really really noisy.
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: Yep and they're very cool looking they have a very they have a so their their hairdo is like from the 60s like kind of John Travolta in grease thing.
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: Crusty.
• 34:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah yeah very crusty and uh beautiful blue color which is why uh I called them Stellar jays because it's a stellar blue they are stellar and super loud and one time I heard them in the backyard like louder than I ever have and so I ran to the back of the house and they were having words with a cat in in the yard.
• 34:54
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah the birds the birds won.
• 34:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah yeah the catars jay they they they have no patience for the cats they're just like nope it's gram it's gram that was clear so interesting thing about Stellar's Jays is they're not blue jays a blue jay is another kind of a jay a Stellar's jay is blue but it's not a blue jay a blue jay is a baseball team yes exactly and it's not a blue jay is not a Stellar I did make the mistake of calling them blue jays everybody and you politely told me no no no yeah to clear it up and now I know and I can correct people when they say blue jay.
• 35:30
  Speaker 7: That's right that's right so um those are some those are three good backyard birds if you're just getting into birding to pay attention to and get to know there are lots they're a lot of character a lot of fun um gonna leave us with some firsts of fall so you got the the Clark's nutcracker man I know God's why you're the host today my job here is done.
• 35:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah you're done man I walked out of work out of I logged off on work today and I walked outside and I heard and saw my first flock of cackling geese flying overhead and they that's a Canada tie-in because they look like tiny Canada geese they're related we heard them today too yeah they're like like they have like little cute cackles as they fly overhead yeah so everyone's gonna start seeing those all probably the next month they're gonna have massive flocks of those um and what else oh the Canada J.
• 36:27
  Speaker 7: Speaking of this is like a day of jays another Canada tie-in I just want to like give a shout out to the Canada J.
• 36:33
  Speaker 7: The American Birding Association officially changed the name from Gray J to Canada Jay this year thanks to our our neighbors across the street we love them for sharing their birds with us and their Clark's nutcrackers so I think that's it.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: Okay just one more thing to say Happy birding happy birding indeed and happy sailing on over to Vancouver Island where parks and forests mountains and marmots await by Canadian while you're there but don't forget to come home and vote.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: And here's a little think-along song as you head to the polls by Lopkerjo and five artists in the USA The Mouthy Marmot Collective acknowledges that the lands we broadcast from are the appropriated homelands of six tribal nations who continue to care for this region today, including the Hoh, Jamestown Sklalam, Lower El wha Klallam, Makah, Quileute, and Quinault tribes