Summer Or Fall? Days on the Cusp

Terns and a setting moon over Sacred Mountain

Beautiful blue sky day and the heat remains, 26 degrees off the water. On the water, the summer absent ducks are returning and various gulls and terns as well. There is a shoveller and teals, the odd mallard female and the always here, common merganser. The terns are rowdy today and acting like swallows over the 'wiggly' water. 

Wiggly with what you might ask, me too. It seems a bit too early and dry for Sooke River salmon , but well, the creatures don't lie. Seals are coming into the estuary and battling something, dinner I suppose. The only missing tell-tale sign of the start of the salmon run are cormorants.

Gulls flocking and gathering on the sandbars

The farther the salmon have to go upstream, the earlier the run. Sooke River, Charter's Creek and DeMamiel Creek runs, forming in the Sooke River estuary, are so close to the ocean that they start late and usually with the rains.

While it is still summer dry on the raincoast, it was a wet spring and early summer.  I have to get my blackberries picked, and keep my eye on the estuary.