Monday, June 6th: Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick

Monday,  June 6:  Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy:  New Brunswick   53 degrees

We are having a good day on our last day on Grand Manan Island.  Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 7th) we will catch the morning ferry back to the mainland and then travel northeast to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick.  It's foggy today but we enjoyed exploring and an 8 mile run.  Enjoy the blog.

  The Grand Manan Archipelago- one of the top birding spots in eastern Canada- consists of a large 55 square mile main island and 20 smaller ones, which boast a combined bird list of 365 species.  The archipelago is a varied landscape that includes massive cliffs and rocky intertidal areas, mudflats and sandflats, estuaries, headlands, brushy fields, coniferous and mixed woods, as well as various ponds, bogs (sundews and pitcher plants yesterday), and marshes.  The deep marine waters of the Bay of Fundy (famous for having the world's highest tides: twice a day, up to 12 meters of water or more rush in and out, roughly equivalent to the height of a four-story building!) to the north and east of the islands are attractive to ocean-going birds and marine mammals (we saw four new trip marine mammals yesterday (Harbor Seals, Harbor Porpoises, Minke Whales (all 3 of which we see in SE Alaska on the Delphinus) and Gray Seals).

BirdMobile in our campsite

Anchorage Provincial Park

Alder Flycatcher

New trip bird: An estimated 63% of their population breeds in Canada's boreal forest.

Bee on Clover

Black-throated Green Warbler

Their population appears to be increasing in the southern parts of their breeding range, but decreasing in the north.  The decline comes from the loss of mature forest on wintering grounds.  Also to blame is aerial spraying to control spruce budworms and other forest pests.

Female American Redstart

Unlike a lot of songbirds where only the males sing, these females are beautiful singers

Referred to as the "butterfly of the bird world" because of its quick fluttering motions and bright colors on the wings and tail.

Golden-crowned Kinglet

New trip bird: Each of the nostrils of these bird are covered by a single feather.

Grand Manan Coastline

 

Lindsay on the foggy coastline 

Osprey

An old friend and the only one we saw on the island

Our ferry

Purple Finch

Razorbill

New trip bird: Their chicks cannot fly when they leave the cliffside colony, so the breeding site must give immediate access to the sea.  They are exclusively an Atlantic species, with no counterpart in the Pacific.

Skipper

 Cliffside Trails

Male Yellow Warbler

Song Sparrow

Very persistent singers

Swallowtail Lighthouse

On northeast point of Grand Manan Island 

Bathroom Signs