Itinerary

Day 1 - Arrival and Orientation
The tour begins with arrival at our Halifax after dinner, where we meet our leaders. Night in Halifax.

Day 2 - Kejimkujik National Park
We leave Halifax and head for Kejimkujik National Park, 381 square kilometers of scenic tranquil lakes and forests. The hardwoods will be at the peak of their autumnal colors, there will be no biting insects with which to contend, and walking a couple of short trails will be very pleasant. We will look for boreal forest specialties here — Spruce Grouse, Boreal Chickadees and Gray Jays still in family parties, Pileated Woodpeckers calling noisily, and Barred Owls hooting even during the day. Common Loons will still be on several of the lakes, and we will likely see several mammals including Porcupine, Beaver, White-tailed Deer, and maybe even an American Marten. In the late afternoon we leave the rolling landscape of the interior of the province, and continue along the Atlantic coastline to Yarmouth, where we check into our hotel, which will be our headquarters for the next three days.

Days 3 to 5 - Birding on Bon Portage Island and Cape Sable
Each day we leave Yarmouth early morning, with a packed lunch, for trips either to Bon Portage Island (less than an hour’s drive to dockside, then 20 minutes by boat) or to Cape Sable (an hour to dockside, a few minutes by boat). Both islands are famous migrant and vagrant “traps”, as documented in (Governor General’s Award winner) Evelyn Richardson’s beautiful little book, “Living Island”. Bon Portage Island was donated some years ago to Acadia University, which maintains a biological research and teaching station there. We will be able to learn of some of the research on birds being carried out, and hopefully find a few young Leach’s Storm-Petrels still in their nesting burrows. Best of all, we take a leisurely walk around the whole island, sampling the inevitable diversity of birds at this time of year.
We reach Cape Sable Island by causeway, and Cape Sable proper, a sand-dune island off Cape Sable Island, is visited by small boat across a narrow channel. The cape has been written about lovingly by Evelyn Richardson’s daughter, Betty-June Smith. A walk on its beaches and dunes is indeed exhilarating, and a visit to Cape Sable’s “forest” (a few square meters fenced off from sheep) sometimes produces startling finds. This will be our best site for shorebirding, with Whimbrels and Hudsonian Godwits a specialty, and a list of rarities such as Curlew Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, and American Oystercatcher. Birds such as “southern” herons and warblers, Western Kingbirds, Blue Grosbeaks, Summer Tanagers, Dickcissels, Grasshopper, Field and Clay-colored Sparrows are routine on Cape Sable Island at this time of year, and real “improbables” (Evelyn Richardson’s phrase) are always possible. Nights in Yarmouth.

Departing mid-afternoon of Day 5, we drive up the “French Shore” (the heart of l’Acadie) and catch a ferry to Brier Island, where we check in at the comfortable Brier Island Lodge and enjoy a hot meal. Night on Brier Island.

Days 6 to 8 - Brier Island
It is traditional on Brier Island to be at the North Light near dawn to observe the often-spectacular stream of migrants departing for the northeast; they are compensating for having gone too far out to sea during the night. There are always the unexpected among the birds — unseasonable “reverse migrants” and sometimes-real exotics from afar. These rarities often stay through the day, perhaps exhausted by their long, miss-oriented journeys. During the day, there will also be plenty of opportunity to study “obscure fall warblers” and other birding challenges. The island is famous for its raptor flights in fall, particularly of Sharpshins, Broadwings, and falcons. Short walks to Pond Cove will give us a good list of shorebirds: Baird’s, Western, and Buff-breasted are sometimes there at this season. Night on Brier Island.

We choose the best weather day to board one of the island’s long established whale-watching boats—safe, well-outfitted and comfortable—for our half-day pelagic trip. If the weather permits, we cross the Bay of Fundy, so that we can maximize our list of pelagic birds, and perhaps even make a brief stop at on Grand Mannan I., New Brunswick, also famous for its birds. Among the pelagic species, Greater and Sooty, and sometimes Manx Shearwaters, Gannets, both phalaropes, Kittiwakes, and Puffins are virtual certainties. Jaegers and either South Polar or Great Skua, murres and Razorbills, are possibilities, and who knows what else? Then, of course, there are the great whales.

We spend the morning of Day 8 again birding Brier Island. After lunch we leave the island and head to Wolfville in King’s County via the beautiful Annapolis Valley. We stop at the Ducks Unlimited impoundment to view shorebirds and waterfowl, before arriving in the picturesque and charming university town of Wolfville on the shoreline of the Minas Basin, an offshoot of the Bay of Fundy. Night in Wolfville.

Day 9 - Birding King’s County
King’s County has an amazing variety of excellent birding habitats, from the mudflats and extraordinary tides of the Minas Basin to extensive marshes and meadows, and mixed forests and lakes. We will spend a very pleasant day birding several hotspots in the area, including Blomiden Provincial Park for landbirds, dykelands and ponds for marshbirds, and the mudflats and beaches for shorebirds. As with much of Nova Scotia in the fall, rarities turn up regularly in this area, and we will make an extra effort to track them down.
In the late afternoon, we head for Halifax, arriving around 7:00PM. Night in Halifax.

Day 10 — Departure
Our tour concludes in Halifax after a wrap-up breakfast.