Thursday 6 October 2016

Birding on The Rock


WELCOME BACK BIRDERS! Sorry for the long wait between posts, but I have been on a birding trip to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, by far the best trip this year. It definitely hits the top 5 best trips of my life. Newfoundland is a memorable place, not just for the way people talk or the puffins – but all of it, from the Bay Bulls to Gros Morne to Cape Ray.      

From Nova Scotia to
Newfoundland is a 16 hour ferry ride


The pitcher plant is Newfoundland and Labrador's provincial flower and we saw lots of them. These plants are related to the Venus Flytrap and Sundew because they eat flies. Their method, which gives them the name Pitcher Plant, is to trap the flies in the sticky liquid at the bottom of their pitcher shaped structure. 

One of the most amazing hikes we went on was at the Tablelands. This is a phenomenal landscape, where Earth's crust is exposed, also exposing many very different and different types of rocks. The strange orange colour is because of the peridodite, which is so full metals that no plants can grow. Another amazing rock was serpentenite.


Serpentenite among the peridotite


Moose are supposed to be EVERYWHERE in Newfoundland, but of course we didn't see one. Everyone's excuse was that it was hunting season which was true, because the only moose we saw had been freshly shot and was in the back of a pick-up truck. We did, however, see moose tracks everywhere, to the point where we thought that someone was going ahead of us with a moose track mold, planting the tracks in the ground....


BIRDS OF NEWFOUNDLAND

The signature bird of Newfoundland is the Atlantic Puffin and we saw them. 
At gull island in bay bulls we saw about 500 puffins, and we didn't even come at the best time
 to see them 




The Piping Plover is an endangered species that lives in some parts of Newfoundland.
It would have been nice to see one, but we didn't
      

where we went Yellowlegs were all over the place! 





If you ever go to Newfoundland, I strongly recommend hiking Mount Gros Morne this is a great 8-hour hike with some of the best views I have ever seen