A year ago GBP member and Birding buddy Emil Baumbach signed up for a boat trip to Machias Seal Island off the coast of Maine to see an Atlantic Puffin colony and came back with pictures like the one below; I was very jealous.
Birder2011 wanted to see the Puffins too, so we pumped Emil for information about how to book the tour because the limited seats fill up quickly. So on the day boat reservations were made available Karen and I tried to book the trip. By the time I clicked on the date we wanted and started typing my name all the seats were gone! Birder2011 was able to book a seat (with the help of her tech-savvy daughter who used Auto-fill to quickly complete the form). Here’s a picture she took from her trip in June, 2024:
Needless to say, I was doubly-jealous, so we looked for a birding trip up in that area that included Atlantic Puffins on their Trip List. We found one conducted by Field Guides entitled Nova Scotia & Newfoundland Birding Tour. We were pleased to see that it was co-led by Jay VanderGaast who was our fearless leader on our Jamaican and Canadian Rockies birding trips. The other leader was Chris Benesh and between the two of them we couldn’t have had a better team of guides.
The tour itinerary was 10 days starting in Newfoundland and ending in Nova Scotia. Before getting into the details of what we did and saw I’ll mention that the trip had some issues, which were out of the control of our guides, but resulted in the loss of about three days of birding. The main issue was that the ferry booked to take us from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was having maintenance performed on it. The original plan was to bird on Day 5, take the ferry overnight to Nova Scotia, and then bird on Day 6. Because that ferry was unavailable we had to drive 10 hours across Newfoundland on Day 5 and then take the ferry during the day on Day 6; as a result we did minimal birding on those two days. The other issue was the weather – during the 10 days we were pretty much rained out on one day and had scattered showers and overcast more five days. On the bright side we did have good weather for the two highlights of the trip – a boat trip to Bird Island and visiting a Northern Gannet colony. More on those later.
During the trip we saw 123 species of birds, most of which we had seen before. We knew that we wouldn’t get many lifers on this trip; like last year’s Canadian Rockies birding trip we thought of it as a scenic tour as much as a birding tour. We did end up with 8 Lifers – 7 in Newfoundland and 1 in Nova Scotia. If you would like to review our eBird Trip List (includes a map of where we birded, a list of checklists and a list of species seen) CLICK HERE.
We arrived in St. Johns, Newfoundland a day before the tour started. We sometimes do this to have a day to ourselves and explore the area. We had a leisurely breakfast and then took off to climb Signal Hill. The top of the hill has been the site of strategic fortifications since the 1600s as it overlooks the narrow entrance to the harbor. Signal Hill gained fame in 1901 when it was the site to receive Marconi’s first transatlantic wireless transmission. Today the harbor has a lot of traffic from ships going back and forth to the many oil rigs out in the ocean. After looking down to the ocean and city of St. Johns Karen and I decided to take the North Head Trail back to the hotel. I’m glad we were going down, as there were hundreds of stairs climbing up the rock face of the hill to the top.
As we descended toward the ocean we came upon two Adirondack chairs along the trail so we sat for a spell looking at a Bald Eagles’ nest on the hill across the bay. We also caught glimpses of humpbacked whales not far from the coast.
As we got closer to water level the trail narrowed and degraded. Luckily someone had affixed a heavy chain to the rock wall which we used as a handrail.
As we rounded a bend in the trail we found ourselves right across from the old lighthouse that stood at the entrance of the harbor.
The trail ended at the outskirts of St. Johns where we met a fellow birder just beginning his trek up toward Signal Hill. He was kind enough to point out the newly hatched Herring Gulls nesting on the roofs of some homes near the trailhead. My first bird pic of the trip!
Next, Day 1 of our Newfoundland & Nova Scotia birding trip in and around St. Johns, where we get our first Lifer1
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