[lisark]

Just had a lovely birding weekend here in the Codroy sponsored by the Nature Conservancy of Canada...it's the annual Birding Bonanza and this year we had the biggest group ever...over 20 people attended!

Our workshop speaker was Bruce Mactavish who is an internationally known birder and a leading expert on gulls.

Basically we ran all over the Codroy Valley, visiting what's called "Warbler Alley" and hearing many different species of songbirds, then we hit the beautiful Searston Beach for shore birds, sea birds (a highlight was the three Northern Gannets diving/hunting repeatedly offshore--can you say "velociraptor?"). We then hit the estuary for Goldeneyes, Blue-winged Teals, Black Ducks, Wood Ducks, one EIDER!!!!, pintails, American Wigeons, Common Mergansers, Red Breasted Mergansers, Mallards and more.

We continued on to Gale's Island where we saw a Northern Harrier, Merlins, and about 20 crows mobbing a Bald Eagle. We also saw a huge number of mergansers there (Common and Red Breasted)...unbelievable concentrations, maybe 200 birds total? Unreal.

Then later in the day we saw four crows mobbing a Common Raven...for the more inexperienced in the group this was a great opportunity to learn the differences between the two. The aerial acrobatics that were displayed in both circumstances were amazing! Woohoo!

The highlight of my weekend and many others was when we made it to Cape Anguille at the lighthouse. Murrs, Scaups, Guillemontsand a Common Loon in winter plumage were seen (the loon got us all excited because in winter plumage it looks so different!). But then...much to our amazement...we were treated to a 45 minute spectacle of Humpback whales breaching and fluking only 1 km offshore in bright sunshine...what a privilege and an honor to have been treated to this display...we lost count of how many whales we were seeing, and to top it all off we also saw Minke whales!!! and two harbor seals.

Anyway it was awesome to get to be around so many amazing birders and especially Bruce Mactavish who was not only an amazing teacher for the weekend but also just a plain old all-around nice fella. Bruce got to intereact with Ollie and Rocky, my Hahn's Macaw, and actually had some interesting sightings (for him) of a Woodcock which he has been trying to see for YEARS. After he heard the woodcock he called his friend Paul, who immediately drove 10 hours one-way all the way from St. John's to join Bruce in the evening/dark expedition to see the woodcock...they were successful and both Paul and Bruce were deliriously happy to have added the Woodcock to their lifetime list.

Total for our 24 hour period was 82 species of birds, with pledges raising money toward purchasing land in the Codroy Valley for conservation purposes!!!! A big success.

Lisa G