Spring is slowly leaking into Newfoundland one little bit at a time, the buds on the trees are almost ready to break open.Birds are singing even though all have not yet returned the woods is still alive with bird song.
I am hoping to get out this weekend and see some kinglets that were reported and also to see if i can get some shots of the newly arrived yellow rumps !
P.S this morning i seen the first swallow at Nevile's pond for the year. I seen the first one on this exact date last year !
I'm not going to blab on and on with this post but i wanted to share a couple more shots from the cape that i thought were pretty cool !
Cape St.Marys for me was possibily one of the most amazing things Ive seen sense Ive started birding ! There was never a dull moment, between eagles,gannets,murres,larks,kitty wakes and even a northern harrier ! I'm not sure where to start...Well ill start at the main attraction. Gannets.
I was astonished at how close you were to the gannets, when you were standing on the edge they were literally flying 2-3 feet from your face.You never will be able to see the beauty in these birds until your this close to them !
You would think that a bird with a wing span of almost 4-5 feet would be some what clumsy but they are truly graceful and ride the wind with ease !
There were many species of bird at the cape but for right now I'm going to talk about my two favourites, Next the Horned Lark !
I was hoping to see the horned lark at the cape because one of my field guides said it was one of the best location's in NL to see one. But i didn't get my hopes up to much because i knew they can be hard to locate. As soon as we arrived at the cape we played a lark call we had on brads itouch and with in seconds we had larks right in front of us !
At one point we had up to five horned larks in front of us ! Some were doing aerial combat over territory ! But it was NOT easy to get close to these birds ! They were very well at keeping their distance and even when we army crawled very slowly towards them with the call playing they were weary of our presence. There was a few times when one would let us get pretty close and that's where i got these shots !
One more post about the cape to come ! Hopefully you don't get bored by it !
Feel free to comment and let me know what i can improve....Yes i know my spelling but anything else ? COMMENT
Astonishing is not the word to describe the amount of birds and activity at Cape St.Marys !
Well i think its fair to say that i witnessed the one day of the year that the majority of the breeding birds arrive on the breeding grounds ! AMAZING
When me and fellow photographer Brad James and i arrived at the cape there was approximately 3-4000 gannets and many thousand kitty wakes already on the breeding cliffs.
There was thousands and thousands of murres in the water but not one on the cliffs.
I made this picture this size so that you could try and take in the number of murres that i seen !
Later in the day the murres took flight almost all at the same time and began to swarm the nesting cliffs !
By 3:00 most of the murres were on the cliffs searching for nest sites !
Theres A LOT more to come about the cape and its residents in my next post.
Who said you have to go far into the wilderness to get great shots ? This morning when i woke up i was greeted by some of the birds that come to backyard to feed or nest.
Usually robins are quite skittish and fly when you come with in 30 feet of them but this morning this robin was very approachable and gave me quite the unique pose !
Over the last 2 weeks European Starlings have been fighting over one of my bird houses.They display a lot of aggression for each other ! They also have been devouring my suet !
Tomorrow evening i will have the beginning of my 2 part post about Cape St.Marys !
Going to be an early rise tomorrow !
