For The Birds, etc.

Tuesday, July 21

Today was a day for the birds and other sightings. As we pulled out of Shippegan Harbour early this morning, we tried not to disturm the hundreds of birds feeding in the salt marsh area beside us. That explains the mosquites. There were numerous herons and gulls and marsh birds that we could not identify. We regret not bringing a bird book.

Tuesday continued to be a sunny and calm day. We welcomed the change from the day before. Apart from continued sightings of whales, porpoises and seals, there were the gannets, who are very interesting to observe. Gannets are graceful white sea birds with black tipped wings and yellow heads. They soar together in a line sometimes gliding, sometimes flapping sometimes rising to dive hard into the water. We observed a large group of gannets circling 100 feet in the air and taking turns diving into a school of fish. More and more birds came until the scene resembled a vortex of birds with all of its members plummeting out of the middle of the vortex into the water. It only took a few minutes for most of the birds to be sitting on the surface together trying to digest their meals.

We motored most of the day because it was so clam and made it to Escouminac harbout for the night. This was a commercial fishing harbour with a restaurant and lots of local traffic. For any francophones reading this, can you understand the Acadian language? It sounded completely foreign to us, probably like full-on Newfoundland speak would sound to any English speaker. Very colourful however...

A nice night's rest set us up for a busy Wednesday.

donandjohn