This is Why You should Venture out in the Rain

I’ve become an expert in Rain.  Living in a temperate, coastal rainforest will give you such credentials without a lot of effort and even for me, whose enthusiasm for life is usually in the high stratosphere, the dark, wet gloom of our mercurial grey and dried, seaweed-green landscape can make my mind rattle on a hundred reasons for staying indoors.  The truth is, we really do miss out on all kinds of opportunities, discoveries and adventures while taking refuge under our invisible, wide-brimmed witches hats.

Risking the flattened, matted, hat-hair stuck to cheeks, the make up smeared faces, the awful, wet jean feeling and eventual pervasive dampness of all clothing, is totally worth it.  I’ve been having the most epic, wildlife encounters in all kinds of rainstorms and meeting many of The Broughton’s big baby animals.

A brown, splotchy patterned, baby eagle grows a pound of body weight every 4 days until it is 6 weeks old, by then it is fully feathered and nearly as large as its parents.  At around 3 months the big babies finally take their first flight and will stay with their parents for up to 5 months learning how to fish and hunt together.  When I was a volunteer at a raptor rehab center, anyone wanting to work with the eagles had to prove they could hold up a gallon water jug with an outstretched arm, for over a minute.  If you couldn’t, you’d soon feel the sharp talons of an eagle inching it’s may towards your neck as your arm sagged under its weight.  A female adult eagle living on the rich salmon of the coast, can weigh 17 pounds with a wingspan of 8 feet.

The chubbiest babies I’ve seen lately have been the little harbor seals.  Little round heads hiding close to shore with their 300 pound mamas are popping up near their favorite haul outs or in calm, hidden sanctuaries.  Weighing  up to 35 pounds at birth, seal pups quickly double their weight in 3 – 4 weeks, with their mother’s fatty milk.

And then there are the baby humpbacks…our little treasures here in The Broughtons.  I spent hours standing on a tiny islet filming a mama and her baby lunge feeding around me.  Born 10-15 feet long, weighing about a ton, these big babies stay with their mothers for a year, feeding and learning their migration route all the way from the warm waters of Hawaii.   Eventually they too will balloon into the 50 foot , 40 ton, herculean sized whale.

Meet The Broughton’s biggest babies…

For more information on humpack whales of The Broughton Archipelago and to download a humpback whale identification catalog visit: http://www.mersociety.org/researchhumpbacks.htm