Newfoundland

We only spent 9 nights on Newfoundland, but the days were so packed with interest that this is a long post, and not fully complete.

To get the ferry from Blanc-Sablon we got up very early (for us) and drove down to the ticket office to be in the queue when the doors opened. That would be 2½ hours before the departure at 8:00am. That's Newfoundland time. The ferry is a Newfoundland concern. Don't let the fact that Blanc-Sablon is in Quebec and it was only 6:30 by local clocks confuse you.

Promptly at 8:15 the doors were opened and the queuers were admitted to a lobby. Actual sales of tickets doesn't start until 2 hours before sailing, so it was 8:30 (Newfoundland time – are you paying attention?) before we were given our number in the ticket queue and could sit in the waiting room.

Of course, all this drama doesn't apply if you have a reservation, but since we seldom know where we will be for the night until 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening, we went on standby. In fact, this late in the year (it was 4 September) there is seldom difficulty in getting on a sailing, and no latecomers were turned away. We were almost the last vehicle loaded on and there was clearly space for more.

Waiting for embarkation at the front of lane 8. But lane 8 was the last to be loaded.

The loading was so efficient that the vessel left EARLY, and docked in St. Barbe, Newfoundland similarly ahead of schedule. It was an uneventful crossing over a placid sea, devoid of the much advertised whales and icebergs.

Arriving in St. Barbe.

We headed North, destination L'Anse aux Meadows, under a clear blue sky and buffeted by a fierce wind. A sign advertised a trail to the Thrombolites. Who are/were the Thrombolites? A famous ice-hockey team, perhaps? From the same starting point we can reach Marjorie's Bridge. We found a place to safely turn round and went back to the car park by the trail.

The Marjorie Bridge (the spelling varies) is named after Marjorie Myers née Burke, whose father and grandfather built the bridge. It's a nice bridge and was clearly a boon to the community when it was constructed, but it's not that noteworthy.

The thrombolites were much more interesting. They turned out to be structures built by micro-organisms in the inter-tidal zone. The organisms are believed to resemble very early life forms. Read about them here. The information board asserts that they also grow in Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay, Western Australia but I remember those as being called stromatolites, which are quite different. Well, a little bit different.

As we drove, we passed many woodpiles. They were out in the open, with no fences or signs. Are they privately owned or a community resource where anyone can go for winter fuel? We eventually discovered that they are indeed private property, but everyone locally knows who each pile belongs to and a de facto neighbourhood watch deters pilfering.

We arrived at L'Anse aux Meadows (it means Meadows Cove) around 4pm, just in time for all but the first 5 minutes of a guided tour. “Of what?”, you may be asking yourself. Of the site of the earliest European settlement in North America. Around 500 years before Columbus, according to Norse sagas, Lief Erikson colonised “Vinland”. And there is compelling evidence. Several buildings have been excavated, built in the same style as the early Norse settlements in Greenland. And a couple of them have been used as the basis for complete buildings, erected in the Norse style of 1000 AD and using the materials that were available locally at that time.

What is left of an original building.

A modern reconstruction of a Norse longhouse.

It was fascinating. The archaeological evidence is limited, but it is astonishingly consistent with the sagas, with what is known about the Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland at that time, and with the location of a very large beach mentioned in the sagas and identified with one near Cartwright, in Labrador.

“Vinland” was a puzzle, because it apparently means “Wine Land”. But even this has an explanation. The site revealed pieces of butternut tree (a species of walnut) that nowadays grows only as far North as New Brunswick, just as the wild grapes do. So either the climate of 1000 AD permitted these plants to grow at the Northern tip of Newfoundland, or the colonists travelled further South to procure them.

Temporarily sated with history, we were returning to the visitor centre when we saw a moose and her well grown calf. They browsed unconcernedly while we enjoyed the sensation of positively seeing Canada's signature ungulate. The normally reliable Canon camera only focussed one of the pictures properly, but one is enough.

The proof that we have seen a moose.

To celebrate such an eventful and successful first day in Newfoundland we treated ourselves to a restaurant dinner. The special of the day was local produce; pan-fried cod. Delicious.

The fierce winds continued through our second day. The sun was shining, which was nice, but driving a long, high-sided vehicle was not easy. For two nights is a row our campsite app led us to free lakeside sites, but both were accessed over difficult terrain. Gull Pond wasn't too bad, but the road to Three Mile Lake was terribly potholed and we swayed violently from side to side.

As well as woodpiles beside the road, there were gardens. These were always fenced, sometimes covered in netting and almost exclusively planted with vegetables. The nearest house might be miles away. Eve figured it out. The Newfoundland soil is generally thin and would not be easy to cultivate. Road building churns up a lot of earth and rock and the debris by the side of the road could be soft and deep; easy to dig and able to yield a good crop. The fences and nets are to deter furred and feathered thieves. We later found the explanation at an information centre and she was 100% correct.

A healthy crop of potatoes.

The weather changed on the third day. It rained heavily. At first there was no wind to speak of, but then the gales returned. Yuk.

A horrible weather day.

We thought we would take a break at Table Point Ecological Reserve. It was known to Google Maps, right by the highway, but there was no sign of it in the indicated spot. No signs, no tracks, no places to park so no break. Further along the road the Arches Provincial Park did exist and provided a rest area. We walked through the rain to the beach and photographed the natural arches through which the sea foamed.

At least the rain eased as we approached Deer Lake. The urge for a proper shower was on us again, and the information centre there helped us find a campground. To get there we had to drive several kilometres along the Trans-Canada Highway, which is the main arterial road on the island. We encountered a pedestrian on the carriageway – another moose. There are many signs warning the motorist to be “moose aware” and here was the reason. A collision with a moose can be fatal to the humans as well as the quadruped. Because they are such tall animals, in a head-on collision the body of the moose can go through the windscreen of the vehicle. In this instance a couple of cars swerved and the moose cantered back into the forest with an offended expression.

Burnt Berry Resort was a motel with what looks like a newly made campground. The site was OK. The solitary shower was in the main motel building and not available to campers in the morning. But it had hot water and we got clean, which was the main thing. The couple operating this establishment were true Newfoundlanders. The wife's accent was so strong we struggled to understand her. What sounded like “aunters” translated as “hunters”. She assured us that Newfoundlanders always dropped their aitches.

We were heading for the East coast and the seabird colonies. We did stop a few times, and the trails in Terra Nova National Park were worth exploring more thoroughly. And Newfoundland's elemental weather let up, thank goodness, and we had some lovely, sunny days without excessive winds.

From a lookout in Terra Nova NP

This Spruce Grouse seemed quite unafraid.

From a trail in Terra Nova NP.

A beach by a lake in the late afternoon.

Nearing St. Johns the GPS really behaved weirdly, and took us along narrow roads that didn't seem to even lead to our destination. Eventually we discovered the reason. Long ago, in Quebec, we had selected a route that avoided motorways. We thought this was an instruction that applied only to that journey, but the wretched machine had remembered it. Most of the Trans-Canada Highway in Newfoundland was OK, but it classified some sections as “motorway” and avoided them.

In Bay Bulls we were directed through a narrow gateway to the local information centre. Bill was driving very slowly, but there was an unwelcome 'scrunch'. A concrete block was tall enough to scrape the side of the motor home. There was a scratch on the cabin door, and some of the aluminium framing was distorted. Damn! We removed the twisted piece along the bottom of the door and it was at least able to close without catching anything.

The puffins breed in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. We found a great campsite by the beach in Witless Bay, had a little walk and photographed some shore birds. No puffins, though, so we booked a boat trip for the next morning.

This is a semipalmated plover. If you look carefully you can see the half-webbed toes that give it its name.

It was a Saturday night. For some people that means party night. Unfortunately the 'some' included the occupants of the house nearest to our campsite. It was a still night so the sound carried very effectively and went on until past 1:30am.

The boat tour must be counted a success, even though we were at least a month too late for the best birding and even though the tour operator decided we would like the commentary suspended so that he could fill the boat with Newfoundland-Irish music. (In fairness, it wasn't too bad and one of the crew, with a very good voice, sang a couple of songs.)

There were free drinks for any tourist that spotted a whale spouting. Although a couple of claims were lodged I suspect that it was just foam on the waves. There were no definite sightings of big whales. A few white-sided dolphins were confirmed, but they were quite a long way off.

Another company's boat had located a sunfish and our skipper took us very close. They are an odd fish, since they can barely swim fast enough to catch the jellyfish they eat.

This one spent the entire time on its side. Is that their normal orientation? Anyway, it was flopping around at an all-you-can-eat buffet and was presumably happy.

The skipper did not seem to be in any hurry to get to Gull Island, where the puffins breed, but there were a fair few of them around us; some sitting in the water but most flying fast in one direction or another.

Warning: Bill took over 500 photographs that day. Many have been erased as not worth keeping, but there are an awful lot on the laptop's hard drive. Only a very small sample are included here. Maybe we will put up another post with more bird pictures for the naturalists among you to enjoy.

The island is a major breeding location for puffins, murres and razorbills. The murres had raised their chicks and had departed. So had all but one of the razorbills. And that individual evaded the camera. The puffins we were seeing were the late breeders whose pufflings were not yet ready to fly. Puffins only have one chick per year, by the way. So all we could see much of were puffins and those that prey on them – gulls and eagles.

The gulls will certainly take chicks if they can, but more often they harry a puffin carrying fish back to the nest burrow, make the puffin drop its cargo and steal the fish. The bald eagles take a more direct approach.

The very first picture of a puffin.  This one has a beak full of capelin, the small fish that must exist in teeming millions to support all the birds and whales that prey on it.

Another puffin.

Taking off requires a running start.

A puffin dives:- Head down; kick with the feet; gone.

A young (Herring?) Gull in flight.

A bald eagle who didn't wash his/her face after breakfast.

An immature bald eagle with its lunch. There was a chorus of “Oooh” when it was determined that lunch was a puffin, but that's the natural world.

A young seal put in an appearance.

The next birding location was Cape St. Mary's. Birds breed on islands only just offshore where they can conveniently be photographed. It was almost dusk when we got there. A large, flat gravel parking lot had no prohibition on overnight parking so we stayed. It was light enough for a look round. Almost immediately Eve spotted a bird on the ground. We had a clear look through the binoculars and even got a photo. A boldly striped face and yellow markings. It should be easy to identify from the field guide.

There was a distant noise – as of thousands of seabirds. And there they were, not so very far away. So we took the cameras and followed the path.

Gannets were circling, landing, greeting their mates and offspring, arguing with neighbours and generally carrying on. Thousands of them. The smell of so many fish-eating birds and their guano made itself felt. There were so many subjects for the Nikon camera and Tamron telephoto lens it was hard to choose.

In the morning the light was, of course, from roughly the opposite direction and stronger, so we gazed at the rowdy, milling throng and took lots more photographs.

A young gannet flexes its wings while the adults are (mostly) preening.

A gannet in flight near sunset.

A gannet in flight in the morning

The parent bird is regurgitating fish for the chick's breakfast. The chick's beak is as long as its parent's and it's all inside!

We noticed that the gannet colony had outgrown the island and had started nesting on the mainland cliffs as well. The same is true of the gannets at Muriwai in New Zealand. But there are a lot more gannets at Cape St. Mary's.

The information centre was open after we returned from our morning excursion. The lady was most helpful. There are more species that breed at the Cape, but they have already finished and only the gannets are left this late in the year. Of the land birds we had correctly identified Savannah Sparrows. “And there are lots of Horned Larks.” We had not identified last night's 'easy' bird so we looked up the Horned Lark. Sure enough, that was what it was. And before you laugh too heartily at our failure to identify it for ourselves, the species has a whole page of the field guide to itself with 14 illustrations of plumages sported by different subspecies and/or at different times of the year.

Yes, it does have the markings of a “Northern Horned Lark – winter plumage”, but not nearly so tidily as the drawing in the book.

Our final days in Newfoundland involved a lot of driving and a day trip to France. They will be the subject of a separate post.