SUNDAY 21 August
(Note: There are 14 photos in this post, all of them having to do with the Ecological Reserve. They are distributed throughout the post, with captions. Most of them are higher resolution than they appear in the post. You might be able to click on them to see them full-resolution and actually see the birds.)
I was up later last night than I should have been, but I had things I wanted to get done before I went to bed. Linda was up before me (again) this morning and I got up at 7:45 AM. Linda made coffee while I started up my computer. Much to my surprise, it connected to the Park Wi-Fi. We had to leave at 10:15, so I did not have much time to do anything online, what with breakfast and all (I ate the last vegan raspberry strudel stick). I decided to leave my computer turned on and connected to the park Wi-Fi while we were away for the day in the hope that it would still be connected when we got back.
Our main focus for today was a boat tour with O’Brien’s Whale & Bird Tours, operating out of Bay Bulls, Newfoundland to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve (WBER). WBER covers a group of four uninhabited islands at the mouth of Witless Bay, which is the next bay south of Bay Bulls. (The islands are: Gull Island, Green Island, Great Island, and Pee Pee Island.) The islands are a major breeding ground for a variety of sea birds, including the Atlantic Puffin, Common Murre, and Leach’s storm-petrel.
The four islands that make up the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve are un-habited and off-limits to human visitors except for scientists from Memorial University. The coastline of most of the islands look like this.
We took O’Brien’s Whale & Puffin Tour Boat to see birds, but the geology was equally interesting and impressive.
The weather today turned out to be cloudy, but no rain and only a light wind. Since we would be out in the open water on a boat, we dressed in a couple of light layers and took our rain coats (as wind breakers) and light weight hoodies. I took the SONY a99 DSLR with my good Zeiss 24-70 mm zoom lens. I have a 100-300 mm Minolta zoom lens, which is lighter and might have been a more appropriate choice, but it does not have the same optical quality as the Zeiss.
Bay Bulls is almost due south of St. John’s, and was only a 35-minute drive from our campsite at Pippy Park using Allandale Road to the Trans-Canada Highway to Hwy-2 to Hwy-3 to Hwy-10 (The Irish Coast Drive). This was basically the same drive we did yesterday coming back from Lord Baltimore’s Colony of Avalon in Ferryland, another 45 minutes south on Hwy-10.
There are a few sea gulls on these rocks, but I just liked the shape and colors.
Common Murres. There were hundreds of thousands of them on the islands.
The F-150 has an integral Tire Pressure Monitoring System and I tend to keep an eye on the tire pressures. I seemed to recall that when I checked them on Friday after the service appointment they was as expected/requested. Today they were reversed, which is to say, the “front” tires were reading 45 psi and the “rear” tires were reading 41 psi. No way was that correct. I “ass”umed the technician had not reprogramed the system to account for moving the tires, but made a mental note to check the truck tires when I added air to one of the trailer tires once we got back to camp.
More Common Murres, and a few sea gulls. One of the gulls is actually the top predator on these islands, even in the presence of Bald Eagles.
Puffins hanging out by their burrows. They dig burrows deep into the hillside. Each pair lays one egg each breeding season. They mate for life, but are solitary except during breeding season spending 8 months apart each year by returning to the same burrow and mate (if they have survived) each year.
We arrived the required 30 minutes ahead of our 11:30 AM sailing, got our boarding passes (Linda had made our reservations online) and got in line. The started loading the ship at 11:20 AM, and pulled away from the dock right on time.
The crew was very good, as they usually are on tour boats; friendly, knowledgeable, and entertaining. It was a great outing in which we got to see a LOT of birds, some of them on the wing, of course, but most of them perched on steep hillsides and rocky cliffs. The tour guides shared a lot information about the birds here, and pointed out things they saw. We (Linda, especially) finally got to really see Puffins.
A closer view of the Puffins. The boat got reasonably close to the shore, but the birds are small and I did not have a long enough focal length lens to get good photos of individual birds.
This photo shows the Puffin burrows more clearly. Note the sea gull hanging around center-top, looking for an opportunity to get a meal.
The Witless Bay Ecological Reserve is home to the largest colony of breeding Atlantic Puffins in North America, and the second largest colony overall at approximately 500,000 individuals, just behind the one in Iceland. A very large colony of Common Merre also breed here and the Reserve hosts the second-largest colony of Leach’s storm-petrels, roughly 700,000 pairs.
We saw lots of Puffins and Common Merres, but also various sea gulls and a dozen Bald Eagles. The gulls and the eagles are predators here, so the Puffins and Merres breeding success is a numbers game.
When the boat got back to the dock, we spent a few minutes in the gift shop where Linda found a really nice T-shirt with an embroidered Puffin and “Newfoundland”.
Although difficult to see in this photo (click to enlarge?) this hillside is covered with thousands of Common Murres packed closely together.
On the drive back to camp we made several stops. First was the Sobeys in Mt. Pearl to top up our stock of non-perishable food and pick up a few other sundry items. Next was a nearby Pet Valu for another box of Dr. Elsey’s cat litter, but they only had it large bags. Linda did a quick search for other pet supply stores and was surprised to find a PetSmart not far away. And they had what we were looking for. From there we took Old Placentia Road to its terminus at Kenmount Road and stopped at the Irving filling station to top up the fuel tank. The pump I selected wasn’t working correctly so I moved to another one and fueled up. Our errands done, we returned to camp via the now familiar route through the heart of Memorial University on Prince Philip Dr.
There are a few birds in this photo, but I just liked the composition.
Back at camp, Linda started preparing dinner; angel hair pasta with onions and garlic lightly sauteed in olive oil before adding sun-dried tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, and vegan Italian sausage. We used the last of our vegan parmesan (sprinkle) cheese. We did not have wine, which would have been nice, because we forgot to put a botte in the refrigerator this morning before we left.
While Linda did her thing in the kitchen, I got out the VIAIR air-compressor and brought the pressure up slightly in the driver-side front trailer tire. After I put everything away, I installed the stinger for the 3P hitch in the truck receiver and positioned it in front of the trailer, ready to hook up tomorrow morning. I did not, however, remember to check the truck tires and put everything away when I was done; until I was writing this part of the blog much later in the evening.
The group of Common Murres, center-frame, are guarding a chick.
This is what the North Atlantic Ocean does on a relatively calm day.
Skip ahead to 8:30 PM. With darkness coming on fast, I went out to check one of the tires. I selected the driver side drive tire. It was 38.5 psi. Well, that ain’t right, folks. I checked the driver side steer tire and it was 42.5 psi. I had not driven on them for at least 4 hours, and I was pretty sure the Ford dealer had actually rotated them based on visible tire wear, so I concluded that the technician had not, in fact, adjusted the pressures as I requested, if indeed the service writer ever passed that information along. To say that I was not happy would be an understatement.
I got Linda to help me by using her phone as a flashlight and got the VIAIR air-compressor back out. Naturally, it’s stored in the most inaccessible place in the bed of the truck, but then I very rarely need to use it. I inflated the driver-side rear tire to 48.0 psi and bled it down to 45.0 psi I then bled the driver-side front tire down to 41.0 psi. I repeated this for the passenger side. By this point I was not feeling the whole “living the adventure” aspect of this situation, but it definitely fell into the “you gotta do what you gotta do” category and, upon some reflection (looking for silver linings) we had just avoided a potential disaster of hauling the trailer with under-inflated drive tires. Another positive was that the compressor is easy to use, works well, and is relatively quiet. It also stores nicely in its own bag.
The Witless Bay Ecological Reserve Islands. This photo is a composite of two photos, made with Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor.
PHOTO – 590x393_14_… Linda and fishing boats as our O’Brien’s tour boat returns to dock.
Linda and fishing boats as our O’Brien’s tour boat returns to dock.
As a final check, and partly to satisfy my own curiosity, I turned the ignition on in the truck to see what the integral TPMS would report. 42 psi for both steer tires, 46 psi for both drive tires. So, it appears that the technician DID reprogram the position of the tires, which is a big deal, but did NOT adjust the pressures. Linda said the outside ambient air temperature was 58 deg F, so these were good settings, and I can live with the 1 psi discrepancy between my digital air pressure gauge and the integral Ford system. The minimum pressure to support the maximum load is 39 psi for all four tires and the maximum cold inflation pressure for the tires/wheels is 50 psi. I like to the run them higher when towing, especially the drive tires, as that axle is near its GAWR, and the higher pressure makes the tires stiffer which results in better handling.
But I digress. After dinner I still had a solid, usable Internet connection via the Park Wi-Fi. First, I transferred today’s photos from the SONY a99 to my laptop. I then finished editing the blog post for yesterday, adding in the photo references and writing the captions, before uploading, assembling, and publishing it. I then turned my attention to the post for today, but have the detour to deal with the tire pressures, it was clear that I was not going to get it written and get the photos selected, processed, and captioned before bedtime.
Our time here in Pippy Park is coming to an end, and tomorrow is a big travel day. Our destination is Sanger Memorial RV Park in Grand Falls-Windsor, some 420 km (~260 m) west on the Trans-Canada Highway.
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