Maritime Birds and Bees

136 days ago 2 views ongoing by Tim Bray www.tbray.org

Maritime Birds and Bees

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick each have plenty of wilderness; PEI not so much. So pictures of bears and cougars and so on would be plausible, as would marine mammals. But no. Herewith, from our recent vacation, birds and bees, with a little lens-geek side trip.

Birds · Having touristed around Charlottetown, we drove down a series of smaller and smaller back roads and ended up at Canceaux Cove near Rocky Point, which I thought might present a nice vista of the city. It did, but the city looks boring. By way of consolation, there were these cute little birds running around on the beach and then flying loops in formation over the water.

Pretty sure these are Semipalmated plovers.

I wanted to get a picture of them in the air so I sauntered down the beach, assuming they’d fly away picturesquely. They studiously ignored me and eventually I had to jump and down and wave my arms and even then they took off grudgingly.

They were graceful and did this mysterious thing that birds can do, staying in formation with no obvious leader. I’ve had the pleasure, very occasionally, of being in engineering teams like that.

Bees · We went to Annapolis Royal