FLOCKING TO NEWFOUNDLAND

The Rock is home to the ‘seabird capital of North America’

Newfoundland’s celebrity bird is undoubtedly the Atlantic puffin. Not only is it the official provincial bird, but I felt its presence as much on land as I did at sea. Everywhere I looked on my trip in July, I noticed a puffin: on T-shirts, key chains, snow globes, Christmas ornaments, stuffed animals. And yet, they remained adorable.

Nicknamed “sea parrots,” they’re on many a visitor’s wish list, for good reason. Watching Atlantic puffins fly haphazardly at speeds that reach 88 kilometres per hour, with their wings flapping around 400 beats per minute, while carrying several capelins in their beak, is nothing short of a spectacle. Gazing into the bird’s slightly melancholy eyes and seeing its outlandish, bright-orange striped bill up close — a bold seasonal adornment to signal that yes, oh yes, this bird is absolutely fit to breed with — is an unforgettable experience.

Happily, for those eager to observe them, puffins stay put during their breeding and nesting season, from April until August — the only months of the year when they aren’t wandering solo on the open ocean. They make their home in seabird colonies, which boast other jaw-droppingly gorgeous (if less flashy) friends, relatives and acquaintances, including razorbills, common murres, black guillemots, northern gannets and kittiwakes.

And Newfoundland happens to have the largest Atlantic puffin colony in North America, just 30 kilometres south of St. John’s: the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. The drive to the fabled birds follows the Irish Loop, hugs the rocky coastline and offers breathtaking ocean vistas, coves and fishing villages along the way.

It’s also possible to walk the distance to Bay Bulls, one of the communities near the reserve, along the East Coast Trail, but that would require gear, fortitude and fitness that I lacked. The birds one sees from the shore are merely an amuse-bouche, a glimpse of the cornucopia that lies further out, accessible by boat tour.

It’s one thing to know that roughly half a million Atlantic puffins nest on the four islands — Great, Gull, Pee Pee, Green — that comprise the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. It’s an entirely different experience to see it firsthand.

From the top deck of my boat tour with O’Brien’s Whale & Bird Tours this summer, I found myself so close to the birds that I could watch them — sitting next to their burrows, swooping around me, and miraculously not colliding with any other birds — without binoculars.

Imagine the cacophony of four million (give or take a few) seabirds flying about chaotically, raising their young on rocky, barren islands that serve as the largest housing complex you’ve ever seen. Add to that a certain foul odour (what did you expect?) and voila, a seabird colony.

The decision to congregate in such large numbers and to raise young literally surrounded by other birds — a common murre’s breeding turf measures seven square inches! — does have the advantage of deterring predators and offering protection.

For two hours, I had an intimate window into the birds’ colony life. I was privy to their parenting skills and watched them engage in deep conversation, argue vehemently, fight, caress one another and ward off a menacing great black-backed gull.

I marvelled at the common murre’s penguinlike posture and gawked at the spectacular fashion sense of the black guillemot — a stunning pitch-dark bird with a bold white wing-patch and bloodred feet that match the inner lining of its mouth. Afterwards, I had a hard time focusing on the minke whales that played an elaborate game of hide and seek with us, before regaling us with a fin display.

Legend has it that Witless Bay was once called Whittle’s Bay after Captain Whittle, who had settled in Newfoundland. After his death, once his family moved back to England, the bay became Whittle-Less, and from there the name slowly morphed into Witless. The area surrounding the ecological reserve is largely rural and was devastated by the collapse of the cod-fishing industry in the early ’90s; the burgeoning ecotourism industry has the potential to provide new economic opportunities for the area.

It might be tempting to think that once you’ve seen one seabird colony, you’ve seen them all. And yet, although Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve is only a two-hour drive away, at the southwestern tip of the Avalon Peninsula, I felt like I had entered a portal into a different world.

Newfoundland weather is volatile, and after a perfect day of sun and blue skies for the puffin extravaganza, the landscape disappeared into fog so thick, it engulfed the road. I travelled to Cape St. Mary’s with Jared Clarke, Newfoundland’s premier bird guide and owner of the tour company Bird the Rock.

Driving through the barrens, we suddenly found ourselves in one of the world’s most southerly expanses of subarctic tundra. Every so often, when the fog eased up, mosses, lichens and wildflowers — including the provincial flower, the purple pitcher plant — punctuated the treeless terrain.

While I walked the kilometre-long trail across the barrens from the visitor centre to Bird Rock, the third-largest nesting site of northern gannets in North America, my senses were on high alert. I could hear the birds’ shrieking and smell their fishy guano before I could even see them flying overhead.

As we approached Bird Rock — home to 30,000 gannets — I was grateful for the fog, not only because it felt like a more authentic Newfoundland experience, but also because I’m afraid of heights, and standing on the edge of the vertical drop leading to the nesting cliffs might have been too much.

To say that gannets are majestic is an understatement. With their sixfoot wingspan, they light up the sky with their gleaming white bodies and black wingtips. And then, without notice, they plummet head first into the ocean for food, executing their near-vertical dive at a speed of 24 metres per second, with nary a splash.

On Bird Rock, where the gannets return year after year, I felt like I had stumbled into a frenzy of avian domestic chaos. Couples greeted each other by “fencing,” standing breast to breast and rubbing their enormous bills against one another before preening their partner. It was impossible not to stare with wonder.

On our way back to St. John’s, I asked Clarke if seeing these seabirds so often (his summer tours regularly sell out) ever gets old. “I never get tired of it — it’s like stepping into a National Geographic special,” he says. “And I learn something new every time I visit. It’s always fresh, always fantastic and always a little humbling.”

By the time we returned to St. John’s, the fog had lifted completely, and it was as if my encounter with the thousands of seabirds was a magical dream. In a matter of months, they would disperse, shed their brightly coloured breeding plumage and head for open water again.