I know that those in the Atlantic provinces refer to the Maritimes as “down east,” but for us in Southern Ontario we are going northeast. No matter how you get there, I once again returned to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on a trip with Sue, for her summer vacation. She chose the spot, flying in to Sydney, NS and touring around Cape Breton, followed by an all night ferry over to Port Au Basque in Newfoundland, and touring around there for a day and spending the night before taking the daytime ferry back to Sydney.
Though I have been to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland multiple times this year, I have not spent that much time in Cape Breton or the southern part of Newfoundland. Sue also came up with the itinerary and made most of the reservations. So it was a vacation for me from planning. I did have some target birds while there, namely Thick-billed Murre, Great Shearwater and Red Knot. I had hoped something unexpected or rare would show up, but that was not to be. But, as I have said, it was Sue’s trip and she was excited to see Atlantic Puffins and Northern Gannets, along with the many other birds we found throughout the week. Not to mention the seals and whales!
We took a few boat trips, and had a couple cancelled as well, including Sue’s Zodiac whale trip. I did book a last minute whale trip and we did see Pilot Whales, which was a first first for Sue as well. We actually took two puffin trips, because, well, you can’t get enough puffins. We also got amazing looks at Great Cormorants nesting on the Bird Islands in out of Englishtown. I also got much closer looks at the Northern Gannets than I did earlier in the summer. I am only a little disappointed I didn’t get to Cape St. Mary’s and the gannet breeding colony. I also got to see my first Great Shearwater of the year, as well. And we took a drive up to a place called Meat Cove. All the roads were twisty and winding and either went up or down, almost never flat. I was thankful for the rental car with automatic steering, that gave the feeling of a self-driving car at times.
The all night ferry over to Port Aux Basque, Newfoundland was like a mini cruise. We checked in at 9:30 in the evening and were in bed on the boat in our tiny cabin before the boat,(ship?) even left port. No time for dinner or breakfast, and I slept in and missed the sunrise and seabirds as we made our way into the ferry docks the next morning.
After getting off the boat we found a nice place for breakfast and birded around southern Newfoundland until midafternoon, heading up to Stephensville Crossing Estuary, where we saw a bevy of shorebirds, including three Red Knots, my second year bird of the trip.
That night we stayed at the Hotel Port Aux Basque, which sounds fancier than it really is. Nice hotel, and we had a good breakfast in the morning, including the Newfoundland specialty, fried bologna. It was a nostalgic thing for me as well. I loved fried bologna sandwiches as a kid and never imagined it would be a staple on almost every breakfast menu when I visited Newfoundland. They do things right out east, ahm, Down East!
The ferry right back to Sydney, NS was during the day, and it was like a six hour pelagic, but without the seasickness. Lots of seabirds, including a Parasitic Jaeger. But the real excitement was seeing warblers following the boat on their migration and in the case of Magnolia and Yellow-rumped Warblers, landing on the boat to feed on crumbs and rainwater. Actually, when we left port it was still raining, and I was worried the whole crossing would be spent trying to spot birds from the windows from our seats in the front row of the ferry.
Overall it was a fantastic, and slightly more relaxing trip than all those preceding it. We visited Baddeck, where we toured the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site and had an amazing dinner for Sue’s birthday at the Cable Room restaurant in the aptly named Telegraph Inn. Alexander Graham Bell, who also invented the telegraph, prior to the telephone, hoped that one day telegraph wires would “laid on to houses” as was the case at the time of water and gas pipes, and that friends could “converse with each other without leaving the home.” Sounds like he was way ahead of his time and actually predicted the infrastructure of fiber optic cables being “laid onto houses” and our ability to message friends from our cell phones, again, without leaving the house. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
We spent the last night Membertou, just outside Sydney, at the Hampton Inn, and dined at the lovely Kiju’s Restuaurant, where the only disappointment was that the pork belly appetizer was sold out. The locally made hard cider was great. And the blueberry cake for dessert was one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten. In fact, the food throughout he trip was very good and I became a fan of the fish cakes, though do prefer crab cakes when available.
We returned home Sunday and the next morning I was off and running to Norfolk County to find an American Golden Plover, but that’s another blog.
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