Cape St. Mary's

Last Week Cass and I ventured out to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve. It was a two and a half hour drive to get there, several windy roads and hills with the last 13 km only on a 1.5 lane road. Another coastal location with cliffs 100 ft above the water this place is home to 50 000 Ganets, a type of seabird. Following a 1.4 km hike down a slightly prairie type landscape (except for the fact you are near a cliff) you can get surprisingly close to a nesting rock covered in birds.

It was also incredibly windy. It looked like some of the birds would just hover when they tried to fly into the wind. When we got back to the silent and calm confines of the car you could tell how loud the constant wind really was. My ears rang for a bit after.

That cliff face is covered with birds.

Here it is zoomed in.

On the hike.

The Ecological Reserve is essentially a wide open field extending from the cliff edge. All activity, other than following the trail, is banned. Oh and sheep grazing is allowed as well. I guess they have to mow the lawn in some way.

You can see the visitor center on top of the cliff.

This one Cassandra took. She's starting to like snapping the trigger a bit.

Th babies are born in the spring covered with down. They start to grow out of it in the fall.

 

The view further down the coast.

There isn't much to do there but look at the birds and walk around the visitor center. There is a look out nearby that we ended up skipping and a restaurant that serves Moose. After a couple hours of bird watching we headed for home and stopped in a little town called Branch along the way. It's a small fishing village with a sandy beach that the waves come crashing in on. There were kids chasing them in and out. There were also some break waters that the waves crashed on that were pretty cool. Cass promptly fell asleep in the car once we headed home from here.

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