Camping du Phare a Perce, Perce, Quebec, Canada
When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes; all he expected from his power comes to nothing. ~ Proverbs 11:7
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all!
I thought of that hymn (and a couple of others) off and on all day today! What a glorious day we had!
But I can promise you, there will be more Rock and Bird pictures than you will probably want to look at! More than you may have even thought possible! Go ahead and scroll through. I won’t take offense. Promise! 😊
We spent all day on Bonaventure Island. Once upon a time, the island had a thriving community living on it – until they too were expropriated in 1971. Thirty-five families were displaced. ☹ But at least these were summer homes by then. No one lived on the island year-round. Now the entire island is another Quebec National Park. Besides the sea-faring history, it’s main claim to fame these days is their enormous Northern Gannet colony.
Northern Gannets are sea birds. As you’ll read in a bit, other than when they stop to nest, they spend their lives at sea. They have a life expectancy of roughly 20 years and return to this island every year in late March from their lives of roaming to and fro on the sea, to lay their eggs in the same nest as the previous year. Each mated pair raises only one chick. Adults have a wing span of 6-feet! That’s just a bit shorter as Blaine is tall!) They glide and can deep-dive fish, spotting fish from a distance of about 10-feet in the air and reaching diving speeds of 62mph which probably helps them reach their maximum diving depth of 72-feet. Oh. Yes. They can swim underwater, too. This little island isn’t the only place you can find Northern Gannets, but this little island has the largest population – 250,000! Up from 200,000 last year. Now what I want to know is . . . who counts them? Certainly not the lady we bought our ferry tickets from, because when she told us how many there were, I asked her. She just stared at me. Guess she doesn’t understand American sarcasm. 😊
Here’s some information from allaboutbirds.com:
Nearly as large as an albatross, the Northern Gannet is sharp in every respect, with a heavy, sharp bill, pointed tail, and long slender wings. Adults are snowy white with black wingtips and a crown washed with gold. To see gannets hunting fish is one of North America’s great wildlife spectacles: flocks rain down upon the ocean, blizzardlike, by the thousands, looking like a force of nature. The birds’ excellent vision and vigorous vocalizing when diving helps them catch fish as well as avoid collisions with other diving gannets.
Northern Gannets have excellent vision. They detect foraging gannets at great distances, enabling them to move quickly to reach prey. Their sharp eyes also allow them to detect prey underwater amid the reflected and refracted light where water and air meet. Their eyes have special structural adaptations for plunge-diving, and they are able to see well underwater immediately after striking the water.
Northern Gannets incorporate odd objects into their nests, which are otherwise mostly comprised of seaweed, mud, feathers, and excrement. Among the prizes found by gannet researchers in the nest walls have been a plastic frog, shotgun-shell casings, rope, lobster-pot tags, false teeth, a catheter, fishing line, plastic wrap, a gold watch, a fountain pen, and golf balls.
Most plunge-dives are relatively shallow, but the Northern Gannet can dive as deep as 72 feet. It uses its wings and feet to swim deeper in pursuit of fish.
In North America, the Northern Gannet breeds in only six well-established Canadian colonies: three in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, and three in the North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland. In Europe it is distributed in 32 colonies from the coast of Brittany in France northward to Norway.The oldest recorded Northern Gannet was at least 26 years, 1 month old when it was found in Quebec.
So now you know a bit about how we spent our day, let’s get started with the day itself.
Hoping to catch the first ferry at 9am, we headed to town at 8:15am, but it wasn’t early enough. There was a very long line on the dock already. It didn’t really matter though because we had all day. The last ferry leaves the island at 5pm. Wonder what happens if you don’t make it on board? Do you turn into a pumpkin? Or maybe that’s how they raised their Northern Gannet population? 😊
At any rate, they actually had several ferries to handle the crowd.
Most days, it’s been lined with probably 40-50 cars.
This morning, we’re early enough to be about 10th in line.
That’s the mountain Blaine wants to climb, but we’ll not think of that today . . .
There were a couple of merchants plying their wares, and also a couple of singers looking for tips.
The music was good, the wares, not so much . . .
As you’ve seen from previous pictures, the island is only a hop, skip and a jump from the Perce boat dock, but your ticket gets you more than from here to there. They take you to around to the other side of Perce Rock and then almost the entire way around the island for fairly close-up views. They also “tell stories” (as our ticket seller informed us), in both French and English, but we couldn’t hear or understand them – sounded a lot like Charlie Brown’s teacher.
And we had the best spot! A lot of people were ahead of us and when we came on board, a guy shooed us up through this narrow hatch and onto the front of the boat, where we were able to stand at the rail, in the splash zone. What fun! Of course, this morning was fairly calm seas, so there wasn’t much in the way of splashing. Later this afternoon, we saw a couple of boats rounding the island that had their bows practically dipping underwater! Not sure I would’ve had quite as much fun arriving with soaking wet clothes and shoes!
This is where the second hole was until the afternoon of June 17th 1845, when the village witnessed the huge collapse.
Those are seals taking a peek at us. : )
and something (seagulls?, gannets?) flying in and out of those caves.
You can tell the difference between gulls and gannets by the wings.
Gannets have tapered, black wing tips – well, actually about the bottom 1/2 is black.
And we’re wondering how we’re going to be able to see them from the land.
He could see it with his eyes better than the camera on his phone picked it up. : )
But you don’t just get to go walking around.
There’s a process.
It took another 15 minutes before we gained our freedom. : )
So now we’re on the island and we’re told that we have to wait to listen to a speech. French on the left, English on the right. There was a horde of people and we were getting impatient to explore. The French side was right next to the building where you buy your entry ticket. We stood on the French side and waited patiently. We figured the instructions were pretty basic based on the gestures by the lecturer – “stay on the trails, don’t disturb/pick the foliage, walk around this way to see that, and this way to see this. And most importantly – – – the last boat leaves at 5pm. Don’t be late.”
We were quick to get in line and on our way. Oh! By the way, as we were listening to their schpiel, behind us was a very large Asian group doing a lot of talking themselves. One French/English-speaking man we met at the boat dock in Perce, raised his voice and asked them to be quiet, using hand gestures. They all turned and looked, but quickly resumed their banter. He’s pretty good at eye-rolling. . . .
So. We bought our tickets and then stood off to the side to see which way the Asians were headed, then we went the opposite way. It turned out to be the opposite way of all but one young couple. Yippee! While everyone else went off to see the birds, we went to see the restored historic homes. You know. The places where families actually lived before they were forced to leave them. And in all the information boards we read today, none of them mentioned that these people were kicked off the island. Such a gorgeous place to live! They must have been devastated. Made us feel a little sad that they didn’t choose to leave.
The history they chose to share was pretty interesting, and the walk itself was spectacular!
The building turned out to be where we all had to file through and buy our tickets.
Most likely, he was waiting to see if we were going to eat something. : )
It seemed like a long time, but really it was only about 5 minutes. : )
Still, it’s not the same as being there!
I don’t know what it means. All the signs of this type said that. (???)
We couldn’t get into this one.
Let’s visit the Waugh house first.
I think he must have been a fairly prominent man on the island.
We noticed him in pictures throughout the day.
We didn’t learn that here, I looked her up because her name seemed out of place.
She moved to the island in 1961 and lived and worked here in the summer until 1971.
We learned later that the tables are for visitors to use if they want (kinda like picnic tables)
and there’s also talks and other activities sometimes.
That’s the window behind the toilet! Can you believe it???
Must live in deeper water.
Numerous times while we were eating here!
Much more turbulent waters than when we came over!
Wonder what they do on stormy days? Maybe they keep everyone off the bow . . .
Which is why, once we started seeing people walking towards us,
some of the women’s pristine white shoes were spotted with muck.
Hopefully that doesn’t mean anything . . .
And then we began to hear a sound. And that sound turned into noise and a very distinct, stinky ‘bathroom’ smell. And that noise turned into . . . . birds! Thousands and thousands of birds!
What a sight! And what a ruckus they made! We spent 1 ½ hours bird watching! I kid you not! Course, part of that time was spent walking along the path in order to see more, but still. We spent 40 minutes at the observation tower area! Fortunately, for whatever reason, and unbelievably, there was no smell once we got up close. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have stuck around so long if it smelled. It was pretty awful.
Downy feathers coming out and new ones not in yet.
We’d sometimes see an adult pecking on a young one,
but discovered as we observed, they were actually pulling out the loose downy feathers.
If you want the full effect, turn your volume all the way up. : )
sometimes right over the babies in their nests!
Seems like the smart ones to me. : )
But they don’t winter here, they leave October/November.
It’s the only tag we saw.
It’s wandered away from the flock
and kept moving ever so slowly, in the wrong direction. . . : (
They were covering the stems of all these flowers.
Wonder who moved first – did they close the place, or did the birds move in?
I’m not sure this could be done in America!
Some idiot would still wade in and chase them (or let their kids or dogs), or try to pet them, or feed them . . .
This sign translates to “The Foam”.
Don’t have a clue why.
We couldn’t see them though, except the ones flying around.
Makes you wonder about that “Less Mouses” trail sign though . . . : )
There were still quite a few people walking about, so it was hard to take pictures without people in them. : ) It’s the fishing company’s Agent’s house.
But to where? Did it just lay in there, slowly rotting the wood from the inside out?
Hard to imagine this water would freeze over!
We spent 5 ½ hours with our feet on the island. It was a wonderous day! What a place for God to showcase His creation! How in the world people can think there’s no Creator, is certainly beyond me! How do they explain that “all this just happened”? I don’t care if you want to give it millions of years, or even billions. The kinds of things we saw today didn’t “just happen”. The Lord God made them all!
Guess who was waiting on the boat dock when we were ready to return? The Asian group! We weren’t sure we’d get on. In addition, the family that was standing in line in front of us kept growing while we waited, so that’s additional ten or so. But not only did we get on the boat, we found seats at the very back. Another great spot!
This time, the ferry took us straight to the opposite dock, were we got out and set about finding a place for dinner and stepping inside a very small museum – the entrance fee was included in our island ticket.
We were just going to have something quick, but the fish restaurant where they seemed to provide fried fish baskets, didn’t have an English menu. We ended up at a wonderful place though, where we spent more money than we’d intended and ate waaay too much very excellent food!
The soup and the bread and butter were soooo scrumptious!
But it was excellent!!
What an incredible day we were blessed with!! Thank You, Father!