Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland

Our main destination today was Cape St. Mary's, about 2-3 hours south of St. John's. It is most famous as the largest nesting colony of Northern Gannets in North America with about 15,000 nesting pairs.

It was a beautiful sunny morning, and we took the mile-long walk out to the edge of the cliffs where outstanding views of the colony can be had. It is difficult to portray in a few photos just how many birds are here.

 

They were incubating eggs and had not quite hatched any young yet, and there were birds flying all around some still even gathering nesting materials. I was able to get a lot of different perspectives on them as we watched from as close as 30 yards away.

I made a special effort to try to get flight photos of these graceful birds with their 6-foot wingspans. Some of them turned out well, but many did not!

There were lots of other birds here as well, including lots of Common Murres of both the "bridled" form with a white circle around its eye and continuing behind, and the normal all-dark ones.

And Black-legged Kittiwakes were plentiful as well.

There seemed to be a contest between the gannets, the murres, and the kittiwakes to see who could bray the loudest. It was a close call, but I think that the Kittiwakes won.

One of our favorites, the Razorbill, was quite scarce here and we only saw two of them. They are the closest living relatives of the extinct Great Auk.

There were very few small birds in this area, the most common being Savannah Sparrow.

Cape St. Mary's is famous for its foggy conditions, and about half way on our walk back to the visitor's center, the fog rolled in. We got socked in within 5 minutes!

As we ate our picnic lunch outside the visitor's center, another Savannah Sparrow perched on the nearby railing, in front of the red door of the building.

Inside the visitor's center, along with a bunch of other nice displays, was this wonderful life-sized carving of the flightless Great Auk. The last known breeding pair was killed on July 3, 1844 on Funk Island, off the north coast of Newfoundland.