January 9, 10, 2011

Sunday 9~~~~ After Mass today we came home and Kent went and did the laundry and I cleaned house. We spent the rest of the day watching movies and I worked on the blog. Today is Mathew's birthday, Gene just had his birthday two days ago and we still have Thresa, William and Pammy's birthdays to go yet this month. Monday 10~~~~Tonight is the Oregon Ducks Football game, so we are going to the Elks Club for dinner and watch the game. This afternoon we drove up the coast past the William Hearst Castle (top picture) to the elephant seal viewing area at Piedras Blancas to watch the seals give birth and mate. Winter is the elephant seals' season of birthing and breeding, beginning in late November or early December with the arrival of the huge adult males, who are returning from their long journey to Alaska and back where they have been foraging to bulk up for several months of fasting. As they come din, one by one, the dominance hierarchy on the beach changes often as they try to set up their territories. A massive male that can weigh two tons or more is very impressive, with his long, dangling nose---the proboscis that gives elephant seals their name. He will settle in his chosen spot on the beach, comfortable, snoozing. When another male seal arrives and announces his presence with a great bellow as he emerges from the surf. The two size each other up, first with vocalizing and posturing. The hollow holler of an adult male is hard to describe, it has been said that it sounds like a Harley revving up in a gym. Sometimes the big voice is all it takes to make one back off. If not, they might fight banging chests together and biting necks with their sharp canine teeth. Although it bleeds, the opponents teeth seldom go deep enough to do serious damage. The pregnant females begin arriving in December and each one selects a comfortable location to give birth. After long migrations, the females have nourished their bodies to withstand a couple of months of fasting, birthing and nursing. They usually give birth about a week after arriving, a female gives birth to one pup, which weighs between 60 to 80 pounds. The birth usually takes less than half an hour. The first thing the mother does is vocalize with her pup, bonding so that they can find each other if they become separated on the crowded beach. The pups nurse for about 4 weeks and can gain as much as 10 # a day on the rich milk. For every pound a pup gains, his mother loses 2 pounds. By the end of the nursing period the pup can weigh over 300 pounds. At the end of this 4 weeks of nursing, the mother goes into estrus and immediately weens the pup, mates and goes out to sea, back to Alaska. It is important that the pup, now called a weaner, is fat enough to survive after its mother leaves because it will take 8 to 10 weeks for the pup to teach itself to swim well enough to head north to forage for food. Each alpha male will have as many as 40 females in his harem, and he expects to mate with each one of them when she weans her pup, about a month after it is born. There is a lot of action as the alpha males chase other males lurking around the harem and fight for mating rights. At the same time, females are squabbling over pups and space, and winter storms are threatening to separate pups from their moms. It is not always a pretty picture, but its a noisy, exciting time and a rare opportunity for human visitors to observe the seals' birthing and mating season without disturbing them. This is a cycle they repeat year after year. The beach is just packed with these seals and there were so many babies when we were there today. As soon as they are born and are vocalized, they lay beside their mothers and flip sand all over their bodies with their tiny fins, just like the adult seals constantly do. It is very noisy with all the bulls hollering, the babies crying and the mothers calling them and the seagulls all over scavenging the placenta or after birth of the seals. They come to exactly the same spot every year and this is the second year we have gone there to watch them.
The taco dinner before the game was very good. The Elks in Keizer should take lessons from these cooks how to do good tacos. The Ducks lost the game, but we enjoyed watching it with two young men from Anaheim who were Duck fans. They left a sack full of the sweetest oranges on our step this morning when they left, we were still sleeping.