Dawn chorus at Lime Kiln and Orcasound

Meg McDonald was first this morning (at 5:02 PST) to detect faint calls of southern resident killer whales at Lime Kiln. Val’s WhoListener program confirmed her report with detections from 504-555. There were plenty of clicks mixed in with the S2/3/16+ calls, so one might infer there was some fishing going on under the setting full moon. (Anyone have an underwater photograph of that?!)

Calls and more clicks were detected by WhoListener 46 minutes later at Orcasound (641-759). So I infer that the southern residents were traveling slowly north in Haro Strait without being spread out over more than a couple kilometers. (Orcasound is 5km north of Lime Kiln.)

The automated detections are tabulated below as spectrogram clips and short mp3 recordings. Let us know what calls you hear in the comments. My quick sampling suggested there were some variable calls that I don’t hear very often and am unsure about categorizing…

25 Detections


2011-10-11 05:05:04
node=lk dB=95 trigger=PWR


2011-10-11 05:05:43
node=lk dB=94 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:32:43
node=lk dB=95 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:35:12

node=lk dB=98 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:44:00
node=lk dB=103 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 05:44:17
node=lk dB=103 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 05:44:39
node=lk dB=104 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:44:49
node=lk dB=101 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:44:59
node=lk dB=97 trigger=PWR


2011-10-11 05:46:31
node=lk dB=108 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:47:09

node=lk dB=102 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 05:47:19
node=lk dB=101 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 05:55:41
node=lk dB=106 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 06:41:56
node=os dB=106 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 06:44:23
node=os dB=106 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 06:52:32
node=os dB=99 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 06:53:54
node=os dB=101 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 06:54:36

node=os dB=101 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 06:54:51
node=os dB=98 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 07:00:05
node=os dB=105 trigger=PKT

2011-10-11 07:39:33
node=os dB=99 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 07:45:36
node=os dB=100 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 07:55:01
node=os dB=100 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 07:55:56
node=os dB=100 trigger=PKT


2011-10-11 07:59:45

node=os dB=98 trigger=PKT

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