Fri 5/25 Westcott Bay, San Juan Island, WA

Home, sweet home! Today we arrived at our home on Westcott Bay, which is on the Northwest side of San Juan Island, about 1 mile from Roche Harbor. The weather was cloudless blue sky and temperature in the high 60s-low 70s.

Mona the camel and myself

Upon our arrival, we visited with our neighbor's camel (yes, a camel in WA!) then dug clams in the bay in front of our house when the tide was out. I wish I would have taken pictures of the various types of clams we dug up, but my hands were pretty dirty. I will include photos of the species from another source (I do not own these photos).

The bay when the tide is out. If you look closely, you can see a few gulls AND the silhouette of two herons wading.

Ricky (boyfriend), Cameron (brother), and I digging for clams
Westcott Bay Sea Farms is at the end of our street. They sell gourmet varieties of seafood, including clams, shrimp, oysters, mussels, and crab; many of these are caught in the bay from cultivated beds.
Here are some clams found around San Juan:

Manila Clam (Venerupis japonica)
These are sold at the end of the street

Geoduck (Panopea generosa)
These guys have HUGE tongues

Razor clams (Siliqua patula)
These clams have the ability to burrow away from clammers!

Butter clams (Saxidomus gigantea)
Yum! My favorite type to eat, these are commonly found from AK to Northern CA

Littleneck (Protothaca staminea)
Cultured commercially with the Manila clam

Pacific gaper (Tresus nuttallii)
These clams squirt water up from holes in the mud.
(Source for all: http://www.asnailsodyssey.com/LEARNABOUT/CLAM/clamType.php)

At 5 pm on Fridays, the sheriff (who is our neighbor across the street) brings up a big bucket of meat scraps from the butcher and feeds the eagles while bystanders watch with cameras. The birds have become accustomed to this weekly ritual, so when we arrived at the top of our street, they were already circling above and perching near the feeding spot.

Bald Eagle soaring

Bald Eagle perched

I also saw a Common Raven and a Blackbird.These birds look fairly similar, with glossy black feathers. However, the raven is much bigger and has a black beak, while the blackbird is significantly smaller with a yellow beak.

Later, we paddled the canoe around the bay and observed at least 5 different species of seagull, all floating intermixed around us. In my research for the waterfowl group, I learned that there is a great deal of hybridization among gulls. As if they didn't look enough alike to begin with, Western Gulls, Glaucous-winged Gulls, Slaty-backed Gulls, and various other Northwest species hybridize---making it even more difficult to tell them apart!

See that little dot? That's us in the canoe. See those even TINIER dots? Those are seagulls (and possibly a buoy).

A slightly closer shot of us in the canoe, with a couple gulls to the left

Posted on June 5, 2012 06:18 AM by kates17