Frog Pond & Keji Adjunct weekend

It was a beautiful weekend to be out on the trails, and a couple of adventures in and out of town proved to be a great chance to see lots of different birds.

On Saturday morning, a Beginning Birders Trip to the Frog Pond off Herring Cove Rd. with Bonnie Carmichael and Gail Bruhm of the Nova Scotia Bird Society proved to be a couple of hours well spent in some gorgeous sunshine. Even before we left the parking lot there were grackles and sparrows, while the park's twisting paths also provided sightings of woodpeckers, palm warblers, a northern flicker, American robins, chickadees, nuthatches and a raven. Although I didn't see one, there was a kinglet sighting and I think a yellow finch or two.


Here's a song sparrow to greet us in the parking lot.



Lots of chickadees in the park building nests out of dead trees.


Nuthatches were also in nest-building mode, this dead tree was full of them!

Sunday was spent on the South Shore, travelling the loop around Port Joli Head, a.k.a. the Kejimkujik Seaside Adjunct, just southwest of Port Mouton.

Getting there bright and early (ours was the only car in the parking lot), it was overcast at first, and fairly quiet, but eventually we began hearing the occasional song, and spotted a song sparrow or two as we made our way to the Harbour Rocks section of the park, where piping plovers are known to nest. A very large American Robin greeted us from a not-too-distant tree as we got to the beach, and a couple of seals lay on the rocks just offshore. I did catch a fleeting glimpse of one plover and heard a distinctive peep, just as it darted into the grass on the dune. A blue heron was also spotted, both in flight and in the water in the marshy area behind the beach. Also spotted, all over, were ticks! Luckily they were only found on the outside of our clothes, but take note that they are out there, so tuck in those pantlegs if you're out in the woods along the south shore.


Who's watching the bird watchers?

After the beach it wasn't great for spotting birds, more song sparrows and possibly some finches, although we did catch a glimpse of a yellow-rumped warbler on the southwest side of the trail, heading towards Boyd's Cove (which was funny because it was the very bird Bonnie Charmichael had been looking for the day before at the Frog Pond). Even though the sun had come out, we didn't see quite so many birds as we'd hoped, although this song sparrow serenaded us for a while as we headed back towards the entrance: