Bruce Mactavish
Caplin spawning season brings bird activity on beaches
The caplin spawning season hit a peak this past weekend. They were spawning at numerous beaches, on the Avalon Peninsula at least.
Some fantastic concentrations of caplin-eating seabirds were observed. Veteran caplin seabird watcher Chris Brown summed up his weekend sea birding experience like this: there was terrific action at Bear Cove. Streams of shearwaters were constantly moving north toward Renews Island where gannets were diving and humpback whales were feeding. Rafts of birds were visible in both directions from the Bear Cove interpretive site. Chris estimated 25,000 to 30,000 shearwaters in view.
About 70 per cent were sooty and the rest were great shearwaters. The best place for close views was Burnt Point just north of Murphy’s Road in Cappahayden. Rafts of birds were only 100 metres or so off shore.
Shearwaters were also in rafts and flying east off the shoreline from Portugal Cove South to Cape Race. Ken Knowles, John Wells and I arrived at Cape Race on Saturday morning just as the fog was lifting, revealing hundreds of shearwaters on the water just off the rocks.
Once the birds realized how close to shore they were, they patterned over the water to join many hundreds more resting on the water a little farther offshore. The sounds and sights of surfacing humpback whales were constant. Just south of Witless Bay there
was an amazing swarm of kittiwakes and puffins feeding on caplin over a large area. Humpback whales were surfacing continuously, sometimes several at a time.
I know there are some 250,000 pairs of puffins nesting on the four islands in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. They must have all be fishing between Witless Bay and Cape Race.
The numbers of puffins seen this past weekend was mind boggling at times. It is all very exciting to witness such an abundance of life all because of a little fish called the caplin. We wish it could go on forever but it will end as quickly as it started.
The birds and whales will feed well while the going is good. Nesting seabirds depend on caplin to feed the young in the nest. Shearwaters come all the way from the Southern Hemisphere to spend their winter here in Newfoundland waters during our summer.
The shearwaters need that
easy energy gained from the caplin to aid in their annual moulting of wing feathers during their visit to Newfoundland. The humpback whales fatten up on caplin in Newfoundland before retiring to their winter grounds in the warm waters of the Caribbean where feeding conditions are actually quite poor for whales. Times are good in Newfoundland if you are a caplin feeder — even if it’s only a frying pan or two’s worth.
Birders are torn between seabirding and shorebirding. Shorebird migration is picking up nicely. The first whiterumped sandpipers have arrived. These high Arctic nesters will travel all the way to South America for the winter but not before stopping over in Newfoundland for a few weeks to fatten up on the marine invertebrates.
Common species like the ruddy turnstone and semipalmated plover have been present for a couple weeks now but their
numbers continue to build. Whimbrels, also known as the curlew, are walking the barrens eating insects and looking for early berries. Black-bellied plovers have joined the ubiquitous greater yellowlegs on the tidal coves around the province. Among the numerous shorebirds on the beaches there is sometimes a rarity to be found.
A rare shorebird from prairie regions of Central Canada called the American avocet was found by John Tuach at Baie Verte. This large, striking black and white shorebird with a caramel-coloured neck and head and a thin upturned bill stood out among the gulls and greater yellowlegs where it was discovered resting on a small grassy island in the estuary.
A few birders travelled to see this bird for their provincial bird lists. Less rare — but at the opposite end of the easy-to-identify scale — was a ringed plover at Biscay Bay on the Avalon Peninsula. It looks very similar to
the plentiful semipalmated plover. It takes good views with a spotting scope to see critical identification mark,s including the lack of yellow ring around the eye.
But it is the extra-wide black breast band that first alerts a prepared birder to a possible ringed plover among the semipalmated plovers.
The Biscay Bay bird ticked off all the boxes and was documented with photographs. While mainly a Eurasian species, a few nest in the high Arctic on Baffin Island and are thought to migrate back over to Europe to spend the winter. It is becoming apparent that some of them may be following the semipalmated plovers to wintering places in North America.
A pattern is developing as we discover one or two ringed plovers most years. These are the good days.