Newfoundland & Nova Scotia Jul 03—14, 2007
Posted by Kim Eckert
Kim Eckert
Kim Eckert, with over 40 years of birding experience throughout the U.S. and Canada, has now been guiding birders or teaching bird identification classes for more than 25 o...Related Trips
This is not supposed to be a tour characterized by identification challenges! Of course, you do need a good look during our ferry crossing between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to pick out a Wilson’s Storm-Petrel from among all the Leach’s, and a decent view is helpful to tell the Arctic and Common terns apart, but once given favorable circumstances these IDs are pretty straightforward. And, while I’d never pretend to be able to separate a silent Bicknell’s Thrush from a Gray-cheeked in migration, during this trip it’s safe enough to call it a Bicknell’s in Nova Scotia (our record with finding this elusive and highly sought bird is still perfect!) and to assume it’s a Gray-cheeked in Newfoundland.
Nor is this tour one which typically has any unexpected rarities to highlight?after all, it is July during the breeding season with nothing but a few shorebirds migrating through. We’re more than content to enjoy and remember all the expected resident woods birds we find, mostly in Nova Scotia, and this year?in addition to the Bicknell’s?that Red Crossbill at Liscombe Lodge’s feeders (crossbills don’t normally go to feeders!), the unexpected family group of Rusty Blackbirds in the Margaree Valley, and no fewer than 20 species of warbler were especially memorable.
The all-day ferry crossing to Newfoundland usually makes the news highlight reel as well, since this may be the most comfortable and productive pelagic birding experience anywhere, with our annual sightings of the two aforementioned storm-petrels, Northern Fulmars (this year the numbers were far higher than anything previously!), and three shearwaters (Greater, Sooty, and especially Manx). We see them annually, that is, given fog-free conditions, and this year the weather and visibility were close to ideal.
In addition, this summary always has something to say about our days in Newfoundland, especially at Cape St. Mary’s, where the fog can be bad just as often as on the ferry. This year, though, the weather wasn’t merely close to ideal, it was perfect, with unlimited visibility, light winds, and moderate temperatures, and the sights and sounds (and smells) of all those cliff-nesting Northern Gannets, both Thick-billed and Common murres, Black-legged Kittiwakes, plus a few close-at-hand Razorbills were indeed nothing short of spectacular.
But, alas, the weather did close in at times during the tour’s last few days (similarly, our birding during all four of our days in Nova Scotia had been hampered much of the time by rain). Fog eventually obscured our seabird and whale-watching opportunities at Holyrood Bay, Cape Pine, and Cape Spear, and it threatened to do the same during our boat trip to Witless Bay. But it did lift just in time for us to see all the Atlantic Puffins and the rest on Gull Island, which seemed almost close enough to touch from the boat.
The humpback whales also put on a show as they lunge-fed on capelin in the shallows right next to the boat as we returned to dock. These were certainly the most impressive mammals we saw, although the close-to-shore fin whales at Cape Race were a close second (we also saw minke and pilot whales), while on land we spotted four caribou (one of these strolling down the middle of the highway) and five moose (one in full gallop and four others standing like statues in a residential front yard).
So much for the highlights? Well, not quite! It seems I have yet to mention that apparently first Newfoundland record of a Pacific Golden-Plover and the second provincial record of a Fea’s Petrel! The plover, sporting its handsome breeding plumage as it fed on earthworms on its favorite lawn in Trepassey, was first found in mid-June (when initially it was mistakenly assumed to be the very similar American Golden-Plover), but it then disappeared for a couple of weeks before conveniently reappearing just a couple of days before our arrival in Trepassey.
And that Fea’s Petrel, a rare vagrant detected on a few favored pelagic trips much farther south along the Atlantic coast, was identified from the ferry by Brennan, who had done his pelagic birds homework and was struck by its distinctively whitish tail before noting other field marks. (I may have spotted it first, but I was unsure of its identity, initially thinking it to be a shearwater.) There is, though, a remote possibility this could have been something called a Zino’s Petrel, a much rarer species which no one is sure how to distinguish in the field from the Fea’s.
These were hardly our only birds involving identification challenges, however. First, there was this distant loon in Nova Scotia which looked pale and on the small side, but we’re still not sure if it might have been a Red-throated or even a Pacific instead of a Common Loon. From the ferry the next day we watched an equally distant unidentified jaeger which appeared to have white limited to only its outer two primaries?a feature suggestive of Long-tailed Jaeger.
Upon reaching Newfoundland, our ID problems continued with yet another jaeger: everything about its bulky profile, broad-based wings, and superior size compared to the kittiwakes it lumbered after suggested Pomarine?but through the scopes we could see short but clearly pointed central tail feathers indicating Parasitic Jaeger. And then there was that immature white-winged gull we saw in Trepassey just minutes after enjoying the Pacific Golden-Plover: it was about the same size in all respects as the Herring Gulls around it?probably a large Iceland Gull, but at this time I can’t entirely rule out small Glaucous Gull as a possibility.