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| Day 10 - Percé and trip to Bonaventure Island | ||
 What a joy to wake up to perfectly clear skies. |
 We started the day at the Center De Découverte. This was the old cod processing plant which has been renovated and contains excellent displays telling the history of the area. We viewed a 20 minute DVD describing what we were going to see on Bonaventure Island. |
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 This magnificent wood carving caught everyone's eye. |
 A view walking down to the pier. |
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 When the tide is out, there is a land bridge to Percé Rock |
 The tide is out and you can see people walking across on the land bridge. |
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 This is our campground from the pier (using a telephoto lens) |
 The boat that will take us on the tour and to the island waits for the scuba boat to depart. |
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 We could not have had better weather conditions than what we had. |
 The boat navigated around three sides of Percé Rock |
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 The end of the rock |
 Looking through the notch back toward Percé |
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 On the way to the island, we spotted this string of birds in the air. |
 As we got closer, we could see they were the Northern Gannets that inhabit the island during the Summer. |
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 It is somewhat difficult to see, but the white lines among the green above are nesting Gannets |
 A little closer view of the nesting birds. |
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| Bonaventure Island and Percé Rock National Park is home to the largest migratory bird refuge in North America. Its colony of 122,000 Northern Gannets is the most accessible and the largest in size in the world. | ||
 These Northern Gannets are nesting on ledges in the rock. |
 There were also a number of small waterfalls on Bonaventure Island. |
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 We spotted these Gray Seals off of Bonaventure Island |
 The boat dropped us off at Bonaventure Island so we could explore the island on our own. |
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 The view from the pier. |
 We are all heading toward the other end of the island where the largest nesting spot for the Northern Gannet is located. The walk was 4.5 miles round-trip. |
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 Kelvin & Dee had stopped to have some lunch when they were joined by a very hungry sea gull. |
 Another gull up-close-and-personal taken by Susan Barack. |
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 Harold and Carolyn Powers stopped along the trail to enjoy a quiet lunch and enjoy the scenery. |
 As we walked up the path we had a beautiful view looking back toward Percé Rock |
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 Upon arriving at the rookery, you are assailed by the aroma and the noise of all these birds. These gannets are building their nests in the ground and they are all about the same distance apart. |
 A Northern Gannet in flight. |
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 Close up view of the Northern Gannet |
 They have such beautiful coloring on their head, plus the blue eyes. |
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 Two gannets gathering vegetation for their nest. |
 Taking off with some potential nest material. |
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 Heading toward the nest with a beak full of vegetation. |
 Not sure how they home in on where their mate is, but they somehow to find their way home. |
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 A male gannet delivering the material to his mate (I cannot take credit for this picture; I found it on the web) |
 Over 250,000 birds nest between Percé Rock and Bonaventure Island. 122,000 are Northern Gannets. |
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| Above two gannets are caring for their young. | ||
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| The sequence above was very funny to me. The gannets are very territorial and you best not infringe on your neighbor. The picture to the left shows two pairs on adjoining nests going at each other over territorial rights. The picture on the right looked like both couples were giving themselves their version of a "high five". "Yeah, we showed them dear". | ||
 A pair preening each other. |
 A very stately gannet sitting on top of a viewing area. |
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 A few of us started back a little late and we missed the hourly boat, so we cooled our heels waiting for the next one to arrive on the hour. |
 Tonight was a dessert night after the travel briefing. Many goodies were shared and enjoyed. |
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| The final joy of the day was seeing the moon come up and cast a golden glow over us all. This was a picture perfect day in all respects. |
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Click here for a Google map of above pictures. |
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