Today we headed back north from Trepassey, stopping at Cape Race to once again look for Willow Ptarmigan and other species. It was raining, as promised, but not too hard and visibility was a bit better than during yesterday's fog. The 21 kilometer road south and east to the light house was winding, and had lots of roadside tundra and tuckamore, and right along Trepassey Bay on the North Atlantic Ocean.
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| Road to Cape Race, Newfoundland |
One of our first birds was a rather dejected-looking Short-eared Owl that we flushed a short distance off of the road where it sat and appeared to be still actively hunting despite the rain.
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| Short-eared Owl |
Very soon after this, we were startled to see a Whimbrel sitting on a small hill just off the road. Jared said that Whimbrels were really rare in Newfoundland in June (they move through during May) so we should take a good look at it...and get photos.
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| Whimbrel |
I thought it looked a bit more "blurry" than the Whimbrels we usually see in Michigan, which I think are fairly boldly "checkered". Jared suggested that the European subspecies was more likely this late in the spring and if that's what it was it would have a white rump, and white stripe up the back. We didn't flush it on purpose, but when it did we got our photos. It was indeed a European Whimbrel! It is possible that this may be split as a separate species sometime in the near future.
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| European Whimbrel |
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| European Whimbrel |
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| European Whimbrel |
We did eventually see two different Willow Ptarmigan, one of which was fairly close to the road.
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| Willow Ptarmigan (immature male) |
A bit more than half way along the road, we flushed an animal off the road and didn't get a very good look as it ducked into a patch of tuckamore. But we parked and waited for it to come out, and were surprised when a Red Fox hopped right back into the middle of the road and walked right past the car...carrying a dead Black Guillemot!
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| Red Fox with prey (Black Guillemot) |
The tallest spruces along this road were only maybe 3-4 feet tall, but despite this there were nesting Blackpoll Warblers in them.
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| Blackpoll Warbler |
When we arrived at the Cape, near the lighthouse, we walked around on the tundra a bit and saw a couple American Pipits displaying (they breed here).
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| Cape Race, Newfoundland |
Jared was looking around on the ground for something and we both found several Leach's Storm-Petrel wings. Apparently, on foggy nights, they get lost and crash into the land where they are preyed on by foxes, Short-eared Owls, and perhaps gulls. Although more than a million Leach's Storm-Petrels breed on the coasts of Newfoundland, they are very difficult to see in summer and we never did on our entire trip.
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| Leach's Storm-Petrel wing |
The Cape Race Lighthouse is best known as where the first distress signals from the Titanic were received. If you want to hear what the foghorn sounded like, click here.
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| Cape Race Lighthouse |
From here, we headed back toward St. John's but made a few stops on the way, while the rain continued. At Cape Broyle, where we had stopped on our way south, we found an immature Iceland Gull, which is an uncommon to rare species in June in Newfoundland (they breed a bit north of there).
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| Iceland Gull |
We drove back north to St. John's and dropped Jared off at his house, and then we made our way west off of the Avalon Peninsula, to the town of Clarenville where we stayed the night. It rained the entire way there, but stopped just as we pulled into the motel. Tomorrow we start 5 days of exploration on our own.
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Three videos have been uploaded from the previous days posted to this blog.
A video with some stills of our boat trip to Witless Bay can be viewed here.
A video of the seabird colony at Cape St. Mary's can be viewed here.
A video of a male Woodland Caribou near St. Schott's can be viewed here.
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