Newfoundland 2018 – Day 10

Today is a day I have been looking forward to since the beginning of the mere planning of this trip. I wanted to go to one of the many bird sanctuaries in Newfoundland. I bought a new lens just for this. (A Sigma Contemporary 150-600mm telephoto )

So off to Cape St. Mary’s Seabird Preserve!
Originally I wanted to go to the Elliston Preserve which is famous for the best land based puffin viewing. Now I just got my puffin fix at Witless but the main reason for choosing Cape St. Mary is that it is a lot closer.

At that it is over 2 hours away. Now 2 hours of stunning scenery and endless salmon rivers is not a bad deal.

Coming up along the 1.5 km hike we see the first cliff of birds.

The white spots are birds

This area receives 70,000 birds. A Mix of Gannets, Kittiwakes, Murres and Razorbills. The gannets are majestic fast birds that can fly all the way to the tip of Greenland and back in the course of a day.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Lone Razorbill
Blake-Legged Kittiwake
The first Northern Gannets of the day
A few of the 14,000 nesting pairs
Getting Curved
My fellow bird nerds

Then the 2+ hour trip back full of salmon rivers and stunning scenery.

When we got back it was time chill a bit before going out to eat. We had decided on Blue On Water. It was a place we had tried 12 years ago and was still in business and thought they must be doing something right. It was good but not Basho good or even Bernard Stanley good and (considering the price) not even Ches’s good.

Again pictures

After dinner a nice walk back to the Air B&B along the harbour!

Never gets old!

Till next time.