Hi All,

Late in the day I made a quick rip around the Seawall. The major highlight
was a deliberate and targeted attack by an adult Bald Eagle on a harbor seal
which was nose-up in the water minding, as usual, everyone else's business.
It was a deliberate attack, the eagle ignoring the gulls in the vicinity and
stooping, talons out, at the seal's head. Big splash. I don't know if the
seal escaped without injury: let's just say there was no seal there for the
next long while. The eagle simply floated on the water for some thirty
seconds then took off and flew back to the tree from which it had sallied
out against the seal. I've never read, seen nor heard of eagles targeting
seals before. Whether floating on the water miles from land as salmon
fishers have observed, or arthritically swimming large distances as I have
observed or, now, taking a hack at a seal, Bald Eagles always surprise.

very high tide, winds calm to light westerly, some spitty precip, clearing
as very well-defined cold front arrived. Smashing double-arc rainbow against
N Van. Bloody cold.

5 Mallard (2m 3f)
~80 American Wigeon (mostly pair-bonded pairs)
~5000 Surf Scoters (75% Def Alt males; large (4000-4500 off Ferguson Point,
flocks of 00's scattered around Inlet)
2 White-winged Scoters (1 ad m, 1f/juv)
5 Greater Scaup (3f/juv, 2m)
1 Lesser Scaup (1f)
2 Long-tailed Duck (1m, 1f)
1 Common Goldeneye (1f)
96 Barrow's Goldeneye
11 Bufflehead 7m 4f/jv
3 Harlequin Ducks (2m 1f)
11 Common Mergansers (all Bsc plumage)
1 Western Grebe
43 Pelagic Cormorant (9 on Prospect Pt. cliff)
3 Double-crested Cormorant
17 Bonaparte's Gull (far out or close to Ambleside, W Van)
41 Mew Gull (+ ~200 in pre-roost 2nd Beach overflight)
1 California Gull, Def Basic
24 GW/Olympic Gull, all ages
1 Bald Eagle, adult; behavior described above

No loons, no grebes, no terns, no late jaegers.

Devonian Pk.

~175-200 American Wigeon, no Euro's
6 Mallard (2m 4f)
4 Hooded Merganser (1m 3f)
1f Lesser Scaup


best wishes

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
loblollyboy at gmail.com

Every answer deepens the mystery.
- E.O. Wilson
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