Nova Scotia 2021: Moths and a Lifer Butterfly

Common Branded Skipper

On August 8th Doran and I left Scot’s Bay and made our way to the cottage in Kingston. We returned to the old farmhouse called Crow’s Landing where we had stayed in November 2019; it sits on about 20 acres with its own nature trails, providing the perfect spot for me to enjoy a few quiet early morning walks before visiting friends and family. As it is situated far from the coast, and its only water is a small slow-running trickle too mucky to be called a creek at the back of the trails, the birding wasn’t spectacular; however, it was certainly better than the birding on the cottage property in Scot’s Bay or even my own house in Kanata. The large trees surrounding the house, the open meadow habitat at the back, and the conifers and thickets surrounding the creek area all provided different habitats attractive to different types of wildlife. During our week there I found 33 bird species and several different bugs, mostly butterflies and moths.

Nova Scotia 2021: Grand Pré and Cape Split PP

Semipalmated Sandpiper

As my fiancé and I were working remotely during our week at Scot’s Bay, we did not have a lot of time to do much hiking or birding. Poor weather, especially on our one free day – the rainy Monday of the August long weekend – further reduced the number of opportunities to spend much time outdoors. Still, we were able to visit a couple of places during our week at Cape Split. The first was a new spot for us, Cape Split Provincial Park, which was intriguing enough to warrant a return trip. We stopped in briefly on Monday, August 2nd ahead of the rain just to check it out. The parking lot was busy with avian activity, including a Ruby-throated Hummingbird checking out the flowers, a pair of Bald Eagles (one adult and one juvenile) flying over the coast, a Blue-headed Vireo singing, a Common Raven “quarking” in a tree, and a couple of Song Sparrows chipping at us from the vegetation surrounding the parking lot.

Nova Scotia 2021: Ells Cemetery

Magnolia Warbler

One of the best birding spots on Cape Split that I discovered through eBird, Ells Cemetery, was only a ten-minute walk down the highway – though honestly the walk along the highway was just as terrific. The highway was great for birding due to the edge habitat along which grew wildflowers and shrubs near the properties and thick stands of forest in between houses. There were plenty of conifers, which resulted in my most amazing discovery yet: crossbills! Both Red and White-winged Crossbills were present almost every day, and thanks to the irruption in Ottawa last winter I was able to identify their calls before I even saw them. Other birds seen or heard along the road include a cuckoo making its throaty “co-co-co” sound, Blue-headed Vireos, Red-eyed Vireos, more Alder Flycatchers (I heard at least nine on one morning), Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, White-throated Sparrows, juncos, a Purple Finch, and several warblers, most of which were in song – including Northern Parulas.

Nova Scotia 2021: Scots Bay

Seashell on the Sea Shore – Scot’s Bay

On Saturday, July 31st my fiancé and I took two days to make the long drive to Nova Scotia. We planned to stay two weeks, although we were both working remotely at a cottage on the shore of Scot’s Bay, Kings County during the first week and used the second week as a true vacation week in Greenwood. By then there were no restrictions to enter Quebec or New Brunswick, although we had to show proof of vaccines and a travel permit at the Nova Scotia border. Once inside the border we were still subject to gathering regulations, mask mandates, and contact tracing protocols to dine indoor at restaurants, something we hadn’t done in Ontario since last fall.

Scot’s Bay is a community on Cape Split. The cape juts out into the Bay of Fundy, separating it from the Minas Basin. This continuation of Nova Scotia’s North Mountain range is 7 kilometres long and ranges between several kilometres to several dozen metres in width. It reaches 200 metres above sea-level at the scenic Look-Off halfway along the highway, and terminates in the relatively new (2019) Cape Split Provincial Park at the end. It also has a second provincial park, Blomidon, on the Minas Basin side, and a tiny access point to the beach on the Bay of Fundy side called Scot’s Bay Provincial Park. This is where I got my lifer Sanderling in 2008.

November Summary

Snow x Canada Goose hybrid

As expected, November turned out to be a dark, cold and dismal month. Temperatures fell to zero or below every single night, we had our first snowstorm on Remembrance Day (November 11th), and temperatures dropped to a frigid -10°C for a week in the middle of the month. Weather records indicate that this was the coldest November since 1995 with an average temperature of -1.87°C; the normal range usually falls between between -1.08°C and 4.20°C. Only six days were above average, with four days below the minimum temperature ever recorded. Fortunately warmer temperatures caused all the snow to melt in the last week of the month, but as a result of these below-seasonal temperatures, I saw no butterflies or dragonflies this month, and my backyard chipmunks disappeared early for their winter hibernation.

Birding in November means watching the feeders, the landfill (the Trail Road Landfill can be thought of as a giant feeder for gulls, crows and blackbirds) and the river. Driving through farmland and open fields can also be productive as the first returning winter residents, such as Rough-legged Hawks, Snow Buntings, Northern Shrikes, and Snowy Owls, look for suitable habitats to spend the winter. Ponds can be productive early in the month, but once the water freezes any lingering waterfowl or shorebirds will disappear.

Nova Scotia Part 3: Halifax

We spent the last two nights of our trip to Nova Scotia in Halifax. While Doran attended Hal-con, I walked around the city. It was very windy, and although I was hoping to find some good birds there weren’t too many around.

My first stop was the Halifax Public Gardens. I wasn’t able to hear much over the wind, but I did find two White-throated Sparrows among the usual starlings, pigeons, gulls and mallards that spend their time here. It would be nice to visit in the warmer months to find some different migrant or breeding songbirds, as the park – though beautiful – doesn’t seem to attract a great variety of species in the later fall months.

From there I walked down to the harbour, hoping the waterbirds would at least make the visit worthwhile. The usual Herring Gulls were bobbing on the water and lined up on the piers, but I didn’t see a single duck or seabird.

Herring Gull

Nova Scotia Part 2: The Pheasant

Ring-necked Pheasant

On October 25th we spent some time visiting Doran’s foster mother just outside of Greenwood. She has a large property on the south mountain and maintains a set of feeders that leaves me envious. A small line of trees separates her property from her neighbour’s on the one side, and an open grassy field lies between her house and the other neighbour’s. Her back lawn rolls down to another small woodlot at the back, which has a small muddy swamp at the bottom of the slope. In just six days spent there in May 2012 and July 2015 I counted 28 species on her property, including a mother mallard crossing the yard with 8 ducklings, an American Woodcock “peenting” at night, a Savannah Sparrow, a Pine Siskin, a Purple Finch, two Evening Grosbeaks, a singing Chestnut-sided Warbler, Ovenbird, Red-eyed Vireo and a surprise Northern Waterthrush perching in a spruce tree near the deck bobbing its tail. My favourite bird, however, is one that we don’t see in Ottawa: the Ring-necked Pheasant!

Nova Scotia Part I: Margaretsville

White-crowned Sparrow

In late October Doran and I spent nearly a week in Nova Scotia to visit his family and spend some time at Hal-Con, the huge sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention held in Halifax. We spent the first part of our trip at a cottage in Margaretsville, a small town on the Bay of Fundy only a short drive from Doran’s home town of Kingston. The cottage was beautiful with a large second floor loft that looked out over the water. It sat on a wide expanse of lawn with a grove of trees between the house and the road. On our first day there I saw a juvenile White-crowned Sparrow on the gravel driveway just outside the cottage, a couple of crows and a raven flying over, five Herring Gulls and a single Ring-billed Gull, and a Common Loon swimming along the bay. The cottage was close enough to the shore that I could set up my travel scope in the large picture window and watch the birds from the comfort of indoors!

Nova Scotia in November

Remnants of Life

I’ve never been to Nova Scotia in the fall before, but as my fiancé Doran was planning on driving down to attend the Hal-Con Sci Fi convention in Halifax from November 4-6 I decided to join him. We left on Wednesday, November 2nd and spent the night in Edmunston as usual; I didn’t see anything really interesting until the next day while we were somewhere between Moncton and the Nova Scotia border. We were driving past a watery, marshy area next to the road when I spotted a couple of shorebirds, including what looked like a yellowlegs in flight, and a red fox slinking along the ground! Between the Nova Scotia border and Truro we saw a dark hawk with a white tail and white wing-tips hovering above the grassy shoulder of the highway. My best guess is dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, though it’s difficult to really process any field marks when driving at 115km/h. Doran noticed the Ring-necked Pheasant on the side of the road; that was the only other good bird we saw on the drive to the city.

My goal was to do some local birding while Doran attended Hal-Con – he has his own booth promoting his company, Whitefire Comics, and normally attends ComicCon in Ottawa every year but wanted to do something different this year. On Friday morning after helping set up his booth I went for a walk around the downtown area. First I checked out the waterfront area, which has its own eBird hotspot, though only 47 species have been recorded there. I thought I might see some loons, mergansers, or Common Eiders and was disappointed – the only birds I saw on the water were gulls. However, I did get Ring-billed Gull for my Nova Scotia list, so at least the visit was productive. The only other birds present were Herring Gull, Rock Pigeon, and European Starlings.

A Lifer Gained

Back in August, while I was writing up my blog posts about my trip to Nova Scotia, I spent a lot of time scrutinizing my photos while deciding the best ones to include. I was going through my photos from our trip to the Bird Islands IBA when I discovered a photo of this bird among my many photos of the Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills and Black Guillemots swimming in the ocean:

Common Murre

I got a horrible sinking feeling when I realized that this wasn’t a Razorbill as I had thought, that I actually didn’t notice this bird while I was photographing it – and that it would have been a lifer! At that point on the boat tour I was photographing the birds on the water, trying to get some decent photos of the different sea birds. They were too far to identify without the binoculars so I wasn’t paying attention to which species I was photographing. The only black and white alcids I actually saw (and identified) were Razorbills and Black Guillemots. This is neither – but looks like a cross between the two. When I checked my field guide, I realized it was a murre. However, there are two murre species possible on the east coast – Common Murre, which is quite numerous, and Thick-billed Murre, which is much less common – so I asked my friends on Facebook what they thought it was. The consensus was that this was indeed a Common Murre: Thick-billed Murre is blacker with a well-defined white wedge into the throat area, and has a white line along the cutting edge of the mandible. Also, Common Murre is the “default” murre in those parts.