Great Shearwater

Great Shearwater (Puffinus gravis)

Great Shearwater

 The Great Shearwater is a common pelagic bird of the Bay of Fundy in summer.  It can be seen from our shores or following any  fishing boat.  It is found here from May or June through October.  It is an amazing world traveller.

The Great Shearwater breeds on islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean in the southern hemisphere; Nightingale Island, Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha and Gough Islands.  It is a member of the Procellariidae family (Shearwaters and Petrels).  It breeds in the southern hemisphere summer and then moves north to spend summer in the northern hemisphere.  It is a phenomenal flyer coming up the west coast of the Atlantic in our spring, flying eventually across the Atlantic Ocean and moving south again in our fall down the west coast of Europe and Africa.  It has long narrow wings which make it a good flier.  When we see it around our waters it is often flying close to the water on stiff wings.  It can get its lift off the air moving across the waves.  It is interesting to watch.

Great Shearwater

The Great Shearwater is one of four shearwaters found in the North Atlantic.  We can also see Sooty Shearwaters, Manx Shearwaters and Cory's Shearwaters.  The Manx is not common and the Cory's is rare.  I am not sure why the Great Shearwater is so named because the Cory's is larger (Great - 46 cm/18 in with a wingspan of 112 cm/44 in; Cory's - 46 cm/18 in with a wingspan of 117 cm/46 in).

Great Shearwater

The Great Shearwater builds its nest in burrows in earth or among rocks where it lays one white egg which is incubated for 55 days.  This is the only time the species comes to land.  The rest of the year it spends at sea.  It lands on the water to rest.  It has some difficulty taking off from the water and needs a running start, usually pattering along with its feet as seen in the photo above.  That is one of the many interesting sounds we hear from our pelagic birding boat trips.  Great Shearwaters feed mainly on fish and squid.  They have learned that fishing boats often dump fish parts overboard so often follow boats feeding on offal.

The Great Shearwater is dark brown above and white below.  Its mantle (back) appears scaly brown and gray.  It has a U-shaped rump patch.  Its head pattern is unique and helps with identification.  Its dark cap extends to just below the eyes and is set off with a white collar.  It has a long thin dark bill with a hook on the end.  The underparts are white.  It has variable dark markings on the underwing which also help in identification.  See the photo below.

Great Shearwater Showing Mottled Underwing

  Great Shearwaters are seen as friendly pelagic birds.  They are one of the most common birds seen from bird-watching boats off Grand Manan in season.  Because they readily seek offal and handouts from boats they often come in close, good for viewing and photography.  Even though they are listed as basically silent birds, they do emit a whining sound when competing for food.   Great Shearwaters have a unique method of self-defence.  They eject a foul-smelling oil from their nostrils when scared.  I am pleased I have never experienced this behaviour!

Great Shearwater

Ocean Sunfish

Ocean Sunfish Mola mola 

Ocean Sunfish with Great Shearwater

On July 7 a group of 35 naturalists were treated to a good viewing of an Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) while on a long boat trip off Grand Manan to the Prong area between Grand Manan, NB and Nova Scotia.  The Mola mola is a slow-moving creature so we had a good view and photo opportunity.  Shown above is what it looked like as it moved along slowly at the surface.  There were many seabirds present and the photo shows a Great Shearwater.

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

The Mola mola is a very large pelagic bony fish which inhabits all the world oceans except the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans.  It is a member of the Molidae family which contains the world's largest bony fishes.  There are several species of Molas in this family.  The Molas are prehistoric creatures being around since 45 million years ago.  They are harmless, slow-moving creatures which occasionally occur in our waters.  The Molidae contains fishes which weigh from 247 to 1000 kg or more.  Some rays and sharks can be larger but they are cartilaginous fishes.  

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

The Ocean Sunfish occupies a unique place in the ocean ecosystem.  It drifts around slowly looking for jelly fish, its main diet.  Its top speed is 3.2 km/hour.  Its name, 'mola', is derived from the word for millstone and describes its peculiar shape.  It looks like a fish without a tail; a fish that has only a head.  In German it is called a 'swimming head'.  It is flattened dorsoventrally and its dorsal and anal fins have evolved into large paddles which it uses to slowly move along.  It kind of looks like a lollipop with 2 fins on the lower edges.  It moves through the water by slowly undulating back and forth propelling itself along with the 'paddles'.  

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

The Mola can get very large, 10 ft by 14 feet.  Because of its large size it does not have many predators except orcas, sharks and sea lions.  It is silvery in colour and is covered with tough, leathery, sandpaper-like skin.  The skin is composed of millions of minuscule bony plates each with a tiny spine.  It has large eyes and an open mouth which gives it a weird expression.  It cannot close its mouth and its teeth are fused into a beak-like structure.  Its only mammal-like bones are in the dense bony spine.  The other bones are cartilaginous.  This is an advantage for weight reduction while maintaining structural integrity.  Its intestinal walls are thick in order to resist the stings and abrasions from its food.  Its 'tail fin' is not actually derived from a tail at all but has evolved from a fusion of the trailing edges of its dorsal and anal fins.  It is called a 'clavus' and is used for steering.  

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

The dorsal fin which is frequently out of the water looks much like that of a shark.  It can be distinguished by the motion of being waved in and out of the water as it propels the fish along.  The dorsal fin of a shark would be cutting straight through the water.  See the photo above.

The Ocean Sunfish eats mainly jelly fish but also small fish, zooplankton and algae.  It dives to a depth of 500 ft to feed and then returns to the surface to warm itself after being in the cold ocean depths.  That is how its gets its name, 'sunfish'.  Its skin can be covered with parasites and it often has commensal fish feeding off these parasites.  The Sunfishes sometimes breech in an attempt to rid themselves of these parasites with the force of the heavy splash.  The female lays 300 million eggs and the young are only millimetres in size when they hatch.  The young travel in schools but become loners when they reach adulthood.

Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola)

The Mola mola has a very large eye which can be seen in the photo above.  They are curious creatures and often approach people.  It seemed to be enjoying watching us as we watched it.

The populations of Molas are vulnerable to human activity.  Many get caught in gill nets and other fishing gear.  They are especially vulnerable to the garbage in our oceans.  Many suffocate on plastic bags which they may mistake for jellyfish.  They also consume other ocean trash like so many other species.  

We must clean up our oceans in order to protect vital ocean ecosystems! 

Atlantic Puffin

Atlantic Puffins in our Coastal Waters

Atlantic Puffin

We are fortunate to have Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) living on our coastal shores.  Their normal breeding grounds are off Iceland, Greenland, northern Labrador, northern Europe and Atlantic Canada.  They are an iconic species that is well known to most people.  They bring many tourists to our area.

Atlantic Puffin With Bill Full of Fish [D. Ingersoll Photo]

The Atlantic Puffin is a happy-looking, clown-faced bird.  It is a member of the Alcid family.  It lives on the open ocean for most of the year and comes to land in spring and summer to breed and raise its young.  It prefers rocky ledges and islands.  It nests in burrows or among and under rocks on these islands.  It builds its nest from grass, feathers, seaweed and leaves.  It lays a single white egg sometimes spotted with brown or lavender.  Incubation ranges from 39 to 45 days and is shared by both adults.  

The adult puffin stands about 32 cm (12.5 in) tall.  It is a round, heavy bodied bird that walks well on land.  It has a large head and is noted for its colourful face and bill.  In breeding plumage it is distinctively black and white with black on the top of head, collar, back and tail.  The face and complete breast are stark white.  The feet and legs are bright orange red.  The bill is large, flattened laterally and shows red, yellow and blue plates.  The corners of the mouth (gape) are yellow orange.  The eye is ornamented with a clown-like triangle of red colour.  Both male and female look alike.  The non-breeding plumage is subdued with black or gray on the face and the bill loses most of its brilliant colours.  The young have a grayish black face and a much smaller gray bill which may show some muted colour.  

The puffins are strong fliers and fly back and forth to sea in search of fish to feed the young.  See the photo above which shows an adult with a good supply of probably herring to feed its young.  Anatomically they have a series of backward-facing barbs on their tongue and hard palate which help them hold many fish at once.  They forage by diving and swimming under water with their wings and strong feet and legs.  Puffins are mostly silent but do vocalize on the breeding grounds with deep moans and growls.  

Atlantic Puffin Young

The Atlantic Puffin is the provincial bird of Newfoundland and Labrador.  On a visit to Bay Bulls, NL, last summer I saw about 100 puffins swimming in the bay.  

Atlantic Puffin

The scientific name for puffins, Fratercula, means friar or little brother.  Presumably that is because of their black and white 'dress' and their waddling walk which would remind one of a friar or a small child.  It is certainly fun to watch them.  We are noted here in New Brunswick for our colony on Machias Seal Island.  On a visit there I watched many of these birds coming and going while feeding their young, or just standing around apparently socializing on the rocks.  This colony attracts many tourists every year and is strictly controlled so no harm is brought to the birds while the tourists enjoy watching the activity.  

Atlantic Puffin

Because of their weight and shape the puffin has to work hard to fly.  It looks somewhat like a flying football.  Compare them, for example, to a gull or a shearwater which have long pointed wings and stream-lined bodies.  Flight for them would be much easier.  The puffin is an interesting adaptation between flight in the air and under water.  It has done that successfully.  According to IBirdPro, they flap their wings 300 to 400 times a minute to maintain flight in the air.  Amazing!

Atlantic Puffin

If you have never seen this species,  you should arrange a trip to Machias Seal Island to watch them.  They are one of New Brunswick's natural heritages.

Great Cormorant

Great Cormorant Nesting Site 

Great Cormorants

Recently I visited a nesting colony of Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) off Twillingate, NL.  They had taken over a large rocky 'island' off the mouth of Twillingate's large harbour.  The island was about 300 metres long and 50 metres wide, was completely rocky and had steep sides.  All birds had to land on the island at their particular claimed site with very little chance of walking around.  The roughness of the craggy rocks made multiple nesting areas.  There were about 80 to 100 cormorants on the island and many more were in the air around it.

The island was mainly taken over by the Great Cormorants.  No Double-crested Cormorants, no murres, no gannets were seen.  The only other species present were a few Herring Gulls and perhaps one Great black-backed Gull.  

Great Cormorants

Some cormorants were sitting on their nests.  Many were standing around possibly socializing or protecting their mates.  The photo above shows a Herring Gull also present.  The nests were made of sticks and a depression in the rocks was brought up to level and made safe with the sticks.  The nests are lined with seaweed or other refuse (garbage, like plastic).  It looked like these birds are careful nest builders.  They lay 3 to 5 pale blue or green eggs and both the male and female incubate them for 28 to 31 days.

Great Cormorants

The Great Cormorant is our largest cormorant, being 94 cm (36 in) long compared to our other cormorant species, the Double-crested Cormorant, which is 81 cm (32 in) long.  It is black with a white throat patch, yellow skin around its beak and a white flank patch.  The Double-crested does not have these white patches and has orange skin around its beak.  The young Great Cormorant is brownish with a white belly and the young Double-crested is brownish all over with no white belly.  It takes the Great Cormorant three years to get its adult plumage.  The Great Cormorant is mostly silent but deep groans can be heard around the nesting colonies.  

Great Cormorants

The Great Cormorant breeds only in maritime habitats in eastern Canada and Maine.  Nesting colonies are found around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland and south to Maine, on rocky islands and cliffs.  They move south in winter along bays and seacoasts to North and South Carolina.  

The Great Cormorant pursues its main diet of fish underwater, using its powerful feet to propel itself. It also eats crustaceans.  These birds are very sociable and are sometimes found in huge colonies.  This is one of the species trained by Japanese fishermen to help them fish.  An interesting fact about Great Cormorants is that they sometimes swallow pebbles to add weight to their bodies so they can dive deeper after food.  An interesting and obviously trainable species.

Great Auk - The Last Chapter

Great Auk Sculpture

Great Auk

I recently visited Fogo Island off the north coast of Newfoundland, east of Twillingate.  The main purpose of my visit was to see the recent tribute placed there to the Great Auk.  

The Great Auk lived in the North Atlantic for hundreds of thousands of years and nested in huge numbers off our north coasts.  It was a flightless bird which swam huge distances from nesting grounds in the North Atlantic to southerly areas like Cape Cod and Spain in winter only to return again in the spring.  It fed on fish and invertebrates and hauled itself out of the water much like penguins do today.  It was a large bird, measuring 75 to 85 cm (30 to 33 inches) long and weighted 4 to 5 kg (11 lbs).

Joe Batt's Arm Rocky Coast

The tribute to the Great Auk is mounted on heavy granite rock polished by glaciers and the North Atlantic weather at Joe Batt's Arm on Fogo Island.  The hike out to the sculpture is 3.5 kilometres each way on a marked path over a very rocky terrain to Joe Batt's Point.  The sculpture is bolted to solid rock right on the point.

Trail to Great Auk Sculpture

Our hike out to the sculpture seemed very long and we wondered if we had missed it until finally we came upon the sign shown above.  The sculpture was a short climb from there.  The photo below shows what I saw as I mounted the last huge rocky mass that made up the end of Joe Batt's Point.

Joe Batt's Point Showing Great Auk Sculpture

The sculpture looked alone as I climbed over the rocks.  Things were very quiet there, only the sounds of ocean waves and few distant gulls.  That was a far cry from the deep croaks of the Great Auks that once lived there by the thousands.  There was a shallow beach immediately east of the sculpture which would have been inhabited by the auks in past times.  See below for the exact area where auks once sunned themselves after making a landing.

Great Auk Landing Area East of Joe Batt's Point

The Great Auk was officially declared extinct in 1860.  The last official sightings were in 1844 in Iceland and one sighted off the Grand Banks in 1852.  Since then the North Atlantic coasts have been sickeningly missing the deep croak of the millions of Great Auks that once lived here. 

The Great Auk was used by early humans for food and oil for heat and light.  In early times we lived in harmony.  Then for two centuries humankind in their greed slaughtered millions of them, driving them into extinction.  The northern coast of Newfoundland was one place ships from Europe gathered to conduct the slaughter.  Funk Island, 70 miles east of Fogo Island was a chief slaughter location.  It even got its name from the stench caused by the slaughter.  The name of the island is a sad reminder of humanity's folly.  Humankind alone is responsible for the extinction of this species!  There have been lots of feed and ample breeding grounds for this species.  It would still be here sitting on the rocks off Joe Batt's Point if it weren't for mankind and his greed.  

Great Auk Sculpture

The Great Auk sculpture is very well done.  It was sculpted by Todd McGrain and erected in 2010.  It is made of bronze and stands about six feet tall (a little less than 2 metres).  It is only feet from the deep Atlantic waters.  It is facing east for a reason.  Todd McGrain made two of these sculptures and the other one has been placed off the west coast of Iceland.  The Newfoundland sculpture is facing east and the Iceland sculpture is facing west.  They are both looking out to sea towards one another looking for their kind.  It is a beautiful but sad reminder to what has happened to this species.  

Great Auk Sculpture Showing the Flightless Wing

The slaughter of the Great Auk species was so dramatic and so ugly that it has become a symbol of humanity's stupidity.  The only good that has come out of it is that it was for this species that the first law was made to protect wildlife.  That was in England in 1794.  It has taken us a long time to smarten up (and there has been an awful trail of blunders along the way).  Funk Island was the largest and last known colony of the Great Auk.  We can rightfully claim the Great Auk as our own.  We took part in its demise but we can learn from our mistakes.  The biggest problem with wildlife protection is humanity and his ability to change the environment.  We must change our ways or we will execute our own suicide.  The Great Auk has taught us that. 

The photo below shows the Great Auk looking east for his mate and family.  For more  extensive  information on the Great Auk please see other posts on this blog.

Great Auk Watching For His Family

Gray Catbird

Regular Summer Resident

Gray Catbird

The Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) is a regular summer resident here.  It usually appears in late May and leaves in September or October.  It breeds in all of southern Canada and all of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains.  It winters in the southeastern US, Mexico, northern California and the Caribbean Islands.  It is a member of the Mimidae family which contains the mockingbirds and thrashers.  These birds, as their family name suggests, are mockers or mimics.  They copy the songs of other birds and sing them repetitively and lustily. 

Gray Catbird

The Gray Catbird can be found hiding in bushes and its presence is usually discerned by its variable vocals.  Its voice is a mixture of various squeaks and squawks interspersed with a cat-like 'mew'.  It also mimics other birds' songs but usually attaches some kind of squeak or mew before or after the mimicked song.  It is really quite fun to listen to the antics of this bird.

Catbirds are secretive and usually only peak out at you from among the dense vegetation in which they usually reside.  There they find their food:  insects, spiders, fruits, berries, and seeds.  They usually feed on the ground or in shrubs or low trees.  When feeding on the ground they toss leaves aside looking for insects.  They are curious birds and often peak at you from among the foliage if you squeak or 'spish' at them.  See below as a catbird peaks out at the camera.

Gray Catbird

The Gray Catbird is 22 cm long (8.5 inches).  Males and females are similar in appearance.  The body is a dark gray and they have a black cap and black tail.  Under the tail is a cinnamon patch which is often difficult to see.  See the cinnamon patch in the photo below.

Gray Catbird Showing Cinnamon Undertail Coverts

An interesting fact about the catbird is that it is able to identify its own eggs and therefore is not as susceptible to parasitism from Brown Cowbirds as some other species.  It sees the cowbird egg as not its own and pushes the alien egg out of the nest.  Discerning birds!

Gray Catbirds are very interesting New Brunswick breeding birds.  Look and listen for them around your yard or while on your next hike.

Sora

The Sora is a Rail

Sora

The Sora is a member of the Rail family, Rallidae.   This family includes rails, gallinules and coots.  We have two rails commonly found in New Brunswick, the Sora and the Virginia Rail.  Occasionally a rare rail is found here.  For example, there was a King Rail in Fundy National Park earlier this spring.  

The Sora is a compact chicken-shaped bird about 19-25 cm long (7.6 to 10 inches), about quail size.  It is commonly found in marshes and pond edges in summer.  Its presence is usually discovered by the frequent loud descending whinnying sound it makes.  That sound has become synonymous with a fresh water marsh.  As seen in the photo above, the Sora is brown and gray in colour with bright yellow bill and legs.  There is white barring on its back and sides.  The black on the face and throat set the bright yellow bill off well.  The female is similar to the male but slightly muted on the face and bill.  

Sora

The Sora is a secretive bird (except for its loud voice).  It skulks through the vegetation and prefers to be heard and not seen.  Note above how well it is camouflaged by the cattails. Its large feet facilitate its slow walk through the marsh vegetation.  It also swims readily.  When walking it bobs its head and cocks its tail high.  

Sora

The range of the Sora is widespread.  It summers in all of southern Canada southward to most of the northern US.  It winters in the very southern US, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands.  It builds its nest among the cattails suspending it above water.  The nest is made out of dry leaves, grass and reeds and contains 10-12 buff eggs with gray or brown spots.  Both parents incubate the eggs.  

The Sora feeds on aquatic insects, snails, seeds, invertebrates and wetland plants.  It uses its large feet to rake the aquatic vegetation in search of food, like the way a chicken feeds.  

Sora

The Sora is the most common rail in North America.  Large numbers are shot by hunters each year in the US but their population is stable probably because of their large hatch size.  The greatest threat to this interesting species is the destruction of fresh water marshes.  We are thankful for the help Ducks Unlimited is doing to reverse this trend.  Marshes are a healthy part of our environment and should be maintained and kept pure.