Birthday Week - Day 4

On day four we planned to spend the morning sightseeing and eventually getting to Meat Cove - The most northern community on Cape Breton Island.

Our first stop was Aspy Bay where John Cabot first landed in 1497.

In 1497 the first Europeans, led by John Cabot arrived on Cape Breton. Cabot's discovery of the island led to it’s eventual settlement by Europeans, mainly by the Scots, Irish, French and English.

We were the only ones here!

We did a little sand writing.

The tide was coming in.

We made our way to Meat Cove - the most northern community.  It’s another area with beautiful views.

We headed back to our cabin to grab something to eat before our 5:30 boat trip.

We had reservations to take the Photographer’s Tour with Bird Island Boat Tours in Bras d’Or ($54 each). It was a 2-hour drive from our cabin to the boat.

Mark read about a short ferry ride ($7) that would take several miles off our trip.  It was only about 200 yards across to the other side but saved us a lot of drive time.

Bird Island Boat Tours have several tours a day.  The Photographer's Tour starts at 5:30 p.m. because the sun position and light is better for photographers.  The boat was nice and large.  There were only 10 of us on this trip.

Inside was comfortable.

Large windows made it easy to take pictures.

The main target of the trip was the Atlantic Puffins that nest on Bird Island. Puffins spend almost all of their time out at sea, coming to land only to lay eggs and raise young.

They nest in tunnels and burrows that are either naturally occurring or that they dig. Many of these sites have been used for hundreds of years.

Bird Island is an important nesting site used by a lot of Atlantic Puffins as well as Razorbills, Black Guillemots, Double-crested Cormorants and various Gulls.

We enjoyed close-up views of Puffins both on the water and in flight.

There were fewer Razorbills but enough to get some nice looks.

Many of the birds were diving for food. This Black Guillemot caught a nice eel. 

There were also plenty of Gray Seals on the island.

A recent arrival as far as nesting birds is the Black-legged Kittiwake, a type of gull. Their habitat of sitting on opposite sides of the nest facing each other makes them easy to identify.

More common were Herring Gulls which seemed much further along with nearly adult-sized fledglings. These gulls take four years to transition from their dark juvenile plumage to the white and gray adult plumage.

With all of these little birds around, Bald Eagles have moved out to the island to hunt and scavenge. We saw a couple dozen of them, including this group of three adults and two juveniles.

After a 3 1/2 hour boat trip and a 2 hour drive through winding, dark mountain roads, we made it back to our cabin.

Next time: Birthday week - Day 5