Sunday July 25th

Time for an update before we head off to New York tomorrow morning, where we are assuming we will be too busy for such pursuits.
Just to go backwards for a bit before I go forwards! Our first night on Cape Breton Island on July 20th was just incredible. We stayed with a lovely lady at a tiny place called Creignish on the west coast, who had converted a former school into the bed and breakfast and it was an absolute treasure trove of art work, found stuff from the beach and, more importantly from our point of view, she was a real environmentalist and attracted a great range of birds and animals to a feeding area (we know - this is not really the proper thing to do, but it did give us a close look at some things we would otherwise not have seen!). As soon as we arrived we spied a couple of Red Squirrels and didn't even make it inside before Sandra came out and we had great discussions about what was around.

She also had Chipmunks (a lovely surprise for us) which came sliding up out of the profusion of plants surrounding her house.

Then there were the birds! A family of Blue Jays entranced us with their beautiful colours and patterns and were such busy, busy birds.

Even better were the Red-throated Hummingbirds. What a delight - those wings are just a blur and they dart around like tiny jet fighters. It is almost impossible to believe that each winter these tiny birds fly all the way down to and then across the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean.

Finally, we saw a Common Grackle - what a great name! This was another beautiful bird, with a fabulous purple sheen all around the throat.

What a night and thank goodness for the Lonely Planet and their recommendations!
Just to continue the biodiversity report, on Friday we did an Atlantic Puffin tour on a converted lobster boat from Englishtown. As Murray pointed out in his last post, when I was a kid Puffins were my favourite birds so I was very excited. We travelled seven nautical miles out to the Bird Islands, through some fairly lumpy seas and as soon as we arrived the Grey Seals popped up to check us out:

At first we saw lots of Sea Eagles perched in overhangs on the island, which was pretty exciting too.

There were lots of Puffins and Razorbills on the sea, which didn't afford us too close a look as they were very wary of us getting too near, but I took loads and loads of photos anyway, hoping a few would come out and did manage to get one of a Puffin floating and one flying which were well-focussed enough to crop. so here they are. I was amazed how tiny Puffins are - only about 150mm tall. Their wings are very short too, but beat at an amazing 300 beats per minute, which is why they can fly at some 85kph.
Murray also managed to take a photo of a Bald-headed Eagle too, so here that is as well! We have to tell you all about our trip down to Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg too, but that will have to be a new blog as we have discovered that if we try and write too much, it all gets very difficult to correct the text and insert photos without doing a lot of swearing and unpleasantness so in the interests of family harmony, I'll finish here!