Day 19 - Another Day In St. John's

We decided to slow things down just a bit and not try to go too many places in a single day, so we are spending another day in St. John's and another night at Pippy Park.

It rained pretty heavily last evening, but was finished by this morning. It was still overcast when we started the day, but it cleared a bit and we had some mid-morning sun before returning to overcast and a light sprinkle at dinnertime.

There are a series of walking trails spread around St. John's called The Grand Concourse. It encompasses 120 km of trails that reach just about every part of the city and quite a ways beyond. One could walk from Quidi Vidi through downtown St. John's and all the way to Kelligrews on Conception Bay, about a 35 km walk, without leaving a trail.

There is a good-sized pond just outside the campground, Long Pond, and a portion of the trail system circumnavigates it. This was the to be our morning walk. The start of the trail, for us, is on the quieter north side of the pond and runs through the woods just above the water. Towards the west end it opens up as it passes around the marshes at the end of the pond. The portion of the trail on the south side of the pond runs along the edge of Memorial University and is much busier and noisier than the north side, but still a pleasant walk.

We saw a pretty good selection of birds as we walked the trail from ducks on the pond to Osprey in the sky over it to warblers, juncos and chickadees in the trees along the trail. The highlights were many Yellow Warblers and several Boreal Chickadees which we don't see at home.

After returning to Speedy for our mid-morning coffee, we extended our stay for another day and went off to find today's life bird. Tufted Ducks have been spending the summer at a nearby small pond, Kennys Pond, a couple of miles away. It was on the way to the shopping area where we were also heading to do some grocery shopping and find a place for Ellen to get a haircut (I'm still putting it off).

We stopped at the pond and walked down to a little dock to get a good view. We were surrounded by pigeons, the most we've seen in a long time and there were a large number of Mallards nearby. We spotted a couple of diving ducks which turned out to be Greater Scaup. As we scanned the edges of the pond looking for the Tufted Duck, Ellen looked down and one was practically at our feet.

Tufted Duck

It was like he came in for his close-up and swam around in front of us while Ellen took many photos, even showing off by diving and coming up something which it shook around for a while. Having done its performance, it paddled away out to the middle of the pond. If all life birds were so easy....

Having seen the duck it was off to the Stavanger shopping area where we had lunch in Speedy and  Ellen had her haircut at the local Chatters hair salon, then on to a Sobeys market to restock our dwindling larder.

We were back a Pippy Park by late afternoon and spent some time selecting and uploading the photos that are in the previous entry in The Speedy Journal before settling down to a roast chicken dinner and a quiet evening.

Tomorrow we expect to be off to Cape Spear and then south to start our circuit along the Irish Loop, the circuit of the southeastern lobe of the Avalon Peninsula.