On the Lookout (08-01-13)

There are certain things that are fairly easy to find on Newfoundland, that may be more difficult to find in other places.  Those are the things we have been on the lookout for in our travels.  What are they? Whales, icebergs, moose, and Puffin.

Moose

Let’s start with moose.  I mean, seriously, there is one moose for every 6 people here on the island.  How hard can they be to find?  They are so common, some of the highways are equipped with moose sensors, that alert drivers by flashing lights when moose are on the highway. Of course,  they weren’t flashing when we went by (twice).

  Every road we drive on seems to have prime moose habitat along the sides. Don’t the moose know this an excellent place for them to be?

We even drove down some brain-jarring, spine rattling dirt roads, just to increase our chances of finding some of these elusive creatures.

We finally did see a moose- actually a cow and her calf, while on the hike at Western Brook Pond. I couldn’t get a picture of the calf though.










Puffin are birds that look like a cross between a Toucan and a penguin.



 

They are actually easy to find because they hang out at the same places all the time- one of those places is the town of Elliston- so all we had to do is go there and see them. 

They are absolutely adorable when they fly- I expected them to seem out of place in the air, like a penguin would be, but they fly pretty fast. 

Icebergs

Iceberg season is really over at the end of June, so we weren’t sure we’d get to see one. You can take a boat tour out to see whales and Icebergs, but we really didn’t want to do that because we knew that the boats weren’t finding any icebergs anyway.  On the way to Labrador, we stopped at a visitor center, and she told us about an iceberg that was floating around a harbor.

  Lucky for us, it happened to be on our way, so we kept a sharp eye out. 

As far as icebergs go, its not a very big one, but this late in the season, I felt very happy that we were able to see one at all!  As a side note, the people from this area were some of the first to respond when the Titanic sank.

Whales

Last but not least, the whales.

Newfoundland has lots of coastline. More than 10,000 miles of it, I believe, and whales live here all summer long.  Again, you can take a boat tour, but you can also watch the whales from shore, so everywhere we go, we are on the lookout for the telltale “blow”.

We saw whales Friday, but they barely came out of the water at all, and were so far away, we didn’t get any pictures.

Saturday was better, but not by much. These whales were very close to shore, there just happen to be no roads in the vicinity. There was a small pod of whales feeding just offshore. At least I got a picture of the tail!

This picture actually has two whales in it- a fin showing on the left, and another whale blowing thru its blowhole on the right.  Yeah, I’d like to get close enough to get better pictures!

We’ll still keep a sharp eye out to see if we can find more whales, moose and puffin ( the icebergs are a lost cause at this point) but at least we got to see them once!