13 July 2018

On a birding trip to Newfoundland:

Here’s a bird that’s hard to see in Newfoundland even though 3 million pairs of them nest on Baccalieu Island and another 620,000 pairs at Witless Bay.

Leach’s storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) spends its life at sea and only returns to land under cover of darkness to nest in well-concealed burrows and rock crevices.  Because of this I probably won’t see one. Our tour isn’t making a pelagic trip.

Even so, I’ve learned some amazing things about this bird, illustrated in three videos.

Leach’s storm-petrels eat plankton and lanternfish from the ocean surface, flying and feeding in conditions that would make us seasick. In the video above, notice that the bird sometimes puts its feet down and walks on water.

The birds also feed at night because they see lanternfish glowing in the dark!  Learn about lanternfish below.

Unfortunately, the storm-petrel’s attraction to night lights is its undoing near human light sources. They fly toward artificial lights on land where some of them die. UPDATE, now that I’m here: On our first night at St. Johns I found a dead bird outside my motel window. Our guide identified as a Leach’s storm-petrel. 🙁

Leach’s storm-petrels live a long time for their size (20-36 years) and don’t breed until they’re four years old, producing a single egg per year.  This lifestyle was enough to sustain the population but in 2016 Leach’s storm-petrel suddenly jumped from Least Concern to Vulnerable in the IUCN Red List as described here.

Knowing that Leach’s storm-petrel could disappear makes it even more desirable to see one.

Since Newfoundland hosts almost half of the world’s population of nesting Leach’s storm-petrels (3.62+ million pairs), I stand a good chance of seeing one … if I could see at night.

UPDATE, now that I’m here: Yesterday as Hurricane Chris approached Newfoundland we drove from the south shore of the Avalon Peninsula, where Chris was due to hit, to Clarenville.  Along the way we stopped at St. Vincent’s Beach where a member of our group saw a flock of birds on the calm inlet water. 128 Leach’s storm-petrels!  Life bird for everyone!  We had great looks at these pelagic birds without being in a storm-tossed boat.

(videos from YouTube; click on the videos to see the originals. chart of IUCN threat assessment categories from iucn.org)

Day 6, July 13: Terra Nova National Park

On a birding trip to Newfoundland, “The Rock”

35 million seabirds nest in the province of Newfoundland & Labrador.  On The Rock alone there are 7 million Leach’s storm-petrels, half a million Atlantic puffins and perhaps a million others.  Here are two species that breed in Atlantic Canada but not as far south as the U.S. east coast.

Black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla):

These small pelagic members of the gull family range across the northern oceans.  In Europe they’re just called “kittiwakes” because they’re the only species, but North America has red-legged kittiwakes (Rissa brevirostris) on Alaska’s Pribilof Islands so we make a distinction.

Black-legged kittiwakes nest in noisy colonies on sheer cliffs, shown above and below. The young certainly don’t walk off the nest!

At the colonies, the birds say their names over and over: “kit-ti-waake, kit-ti-wa-aake” (Xeno Canto XC118116 recording by Magnus Bergsson in Iceland)

Black-legged kittiwakes are well studied because it’s easy to see their nests and monitor their success.  Sometimes they even nest on man-made structures instead of cliffs.

Their global population is now 14.6 to 15.7 million birds but they are declining across Europe at the rate of more than 40% over three generations.  The IUCN has listed them as globally Vulnerable to extinction.

Common murre (Uria aalge):

Murres resemble penguins but they’re not. They are auks, related to the extinct great auk (Pinguinus impennis) who’s memorialized by a statue on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island.

Murres never build nests. The female lays one egg in a slight depression on bare rock and the parents incubate for about 30 days. In large colonies the adults stand tightly packed, so close that they’re almost shoulder to shoulder.

Murre eggs are unusually pointy at one end. They roll in a circle and not off the cliff.

When murre chicks are 20 days old they leave the nest. Though they cannot fly they flutter off the cliff and down to the sea.

Common and thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia) both nest on Newfoundland and they look very similar.  Will I ever be able to tell them apart?

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. audio from Xeno Canto; see caption for link to the original)

Day 3, July 10: Morning at La Manche Trail, afternoon to Trepassey

On a birding trip to Newfoundland:

I want to see puffins.

Newfoundland is the best place to see puffins in North America.  In late spring and summer more than 260,000 pairs — half a million birds! — nest at Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.  No wonder the Atlantic puffin is a provincial symbol of Newfoundland & Labrador.

Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) are one of three puffin species but the only ones in the Atlantic Ocean.  Ranging from The Gulf of Maine to the Barents Sea at Murmansk, Russia, their largest nesting colony is in Iceland at 3-4 million pairs.

Puffins are so pelagic that they only come to land when they nest.  The rest of the time they live far out at sea, often alone, for 20 to 30 years, reaching sexual maturity at age 4-5.

In late spring the puffins come back to Newfoundland, all duded up with bright beaks, pale faces and orange-red legs.  Each pair claims and refurbishes its nest burrow and courts by slapping bills side to side (see video below). The female lays a single egg and both parents incubate for 40-45 days.

When the chick hatches the frenzy begins.  The parents fly out to sea and bring home 10 or more fish at a time, carefully stacked in their bills.  When the chick fledges, about 40 days old, he leaves the burrow at night and jumps into the sea.

Fish are key to the puffins’ survival but many fish populations have crashed in the North Atlantic — and so have puffins.  Their largest nesting populations have declined rapidly with complete breeding failure every year in southern Iceland since 2003. In 2015 the IUCN listed them as Vulnerable to extinction.  Puffins are starving in the eastern North Atlantic.  In Iceland, where people eat puffins, the hunt had to be down-scaled considerably.

In Newfoundland, Atlantic puffins are well protected.  Scientists are the only ones allowed on the nesting islands.  The rest of us see puffins from the boat.  Here’s what it’s like.

Half a million really cute birds!

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals. Video from Newfoundland & Labrador tourism)

Day 2, July 9: Morning at Cape Spear. Afternoon at Witless Bay on seabird/whale boat trip.

On a birding trip to Newfoundland

8 July 2018: Today my friend Ramona Sahni and I are flying to Newfoundland to join a 7-day Partnership for International Birding tour guided by David Trently.  The trip was my idea for a number of reasons.

1. I really need to see a puffin. Lots of puffins.  Years ago I saw a distant puffin profile from a whale watch boat in Maine but that’s not really seeing one.
2. The largest breeding colony of puffins in the western Atlantic is at Witless Bay Ecological Reserve just outside St. John’s, Newfoundland.
3. St. John’s and I share a name.  I have to go there.

St. John’s is the capital and largest city in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL).  The province is highlighted in red below.  Labrador, on the continent, borders Quebec. Newfoundland is the large triangular island beyond the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.  Canadians pronounce it “new-fun-LAND” (rhymes with “understand”).  It’s nickname is The Rock.

St. John’s itself is only five air-miles from the easternmost point in North America.  Because of this location Newfoundland has its very own time zone 1.5 hours ahead of Pittsburgh. When it’s 7am in Pittsburgh it’s 8:30am in St. John’s.

Newfoundland is as big as Virginia — more than 42,000 sq mi — so we’ll only have time to explore the eastern side.  The Google map below pinpoints the places we’ll visit including Witless Bay, Trepassey, St. Vincent’s Beach, Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve and Terra Nova National Park.  Zoom the map to see more.

Like all northern places there are fewer bird species but thousands of individuals.  Our Expected Birds checklist contains 83 species(*) but we’ll probably see more than a million birds because the seabird colonies are so densely populated.

260,000 pairs of Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) nest on the islands of Witless Bay.  I’ve come to the right place. I can hardly wait!

(puffin photo and Canadian provinces map from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the originals. Newfoundland map embedded from Google maps)

(*) The complete checklist, including rarities, is 180 species.
Day 1, July 8: Arrive at St. John’s, Newfoundland