Where
there are whales there is food and where there is food there are birds!
NOTE - Every tour should be considered a bird watching tour as we almost always see lots of seabirds on all of our tours all summer and into the fall. If your interest is birds, the Bay of Fundy has a real treat for you.
The
waters around Grand Manan Island abound with birds of many species
and we are fortunate enough to see many birds during our tours to see
the whales. While this tour is primarily a whale watching tour we
offer special sensitivity to those interested in the many birds that
feed and live in the same areas
as the great whales of the Bay of Fundy. Some of the species that we
are privileged to see include the following:
greater
shearwater; sooty shearwater; Manx shearwater; northern fulmar;
Wilson's storm-petrel; Leach's storm-petrel; northern gannet; red
phalaropes; red-necked phalarope; Atlantic puffin; razorbill; common
murre; thick-billed murre; black guillemot; dovekie; great skua
(rare); Pomarine jaeger; parasitic jaeger; black-legged kittiwake;
common tern; arctic tern; common eider; great cormorant;
double-crested cormorant; common loon; and bald eagle. Other species
are also possible.
See
our "What's Planned"
page for some special bird tours* that we are planning for the coming
season. Note that special charters for birdwatching or other
activities are available for your group, so give us a call
or e-mail
if you have a need in this area.
* These special bird watching tours are in the spring before the whales arrive and are operated for the Elderhostel program at the Marathon Inn. It is not that there are more or better birds at that time of the year, it is just that there are no whales so the program directors call the trips "bird watching trips". In fact the best birds are during the summer on our whale watching trips. In the past some people have come for the bird trips thinking that this was the best time for birds - this is not the case. They are good trips, but the whale trips offer a wider variety and larger numbers of seabirds.
Some
time should be set aside to experience the great land-based bird
watching offered on Grand Manan and White Head Islands, especially in
spring and fall. For more information on birding on the Islands go
the the Grand Manan Tourism web site - "birding"
page here,
or view the whole Grand
Manan web site here.
Another good source of information and an interesting site is the "Grand
Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station".
Bowdoin
College operates a research site on Kent Island, one of the
uninhabited "out Islands" of the archipelago. See the list
of birds identified
on this island.