19 October 2024
Good Morning Everyone,
We hope that this post finds you having a great weekend. Full of curiosities and birds! Maybe cats, too!!!!!!!!
Update: First gutter stomp at Collins Street! Gosh, wonder what Mum is going to do now? https://youtu.be/uUg0pXetEOo?
Friday was just another gorgeous fall day near the Minas Basin and Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. We returned to the Grand Pre Memorial Site, the church and the land of the Acadians that were deported by the British Planters. We enjoyed our walks here in August, the discovery of the juvenile eagle, and re-learning the history of the French settlers, the Acadians. Today, the adults raising the juvenile were soaring above their nest near the Blacksmith Shop. They were so high above me that any iphone photos were positively inadequate. Today, circling and soaring they went til finally they stopped and headed north towards the farmer’s fields. They are two of the eagles that feed on the fields near where I am staying. It felt wonderful. Seven or eight Blue Jays flitted about and the gulls continued scavaging on the newly plowed fields, too.
There was hardly anyone on the grounds of the UNESCO Heritage site. Peaceful would be the best word to describe the morning. It was precisely what I needed.
Saturday will be lovely, too, and it is Homecoming weekend at Acadia University where I taught and chaired the Fine Arts Department eons ago. We fly home early, early Monday morning so we will take full advantage of the wonderful fall weather today – and the good food to be found in the small villages up the mountain.
Ah, but moving on…We were here in August and I wrote about the Acadians. If you missed it, this is your brief refresher.
The Acadians began to settle the area just east of Wolfville, Nova Scotia in 1682. They worked very hard building dykes and taking advantage of the soil left by the tides. Their area became known as the ‘Breadbasket of Acadie’.
The Memorial Church: “The Memorial Church expresses the Acadian’s strong attachment to Grand-Pré National Historic Site of Canada. Built in 1922, with funds raised from Acadian communities throughout North America, the Memorial Church symbolizes the spirit of Acadian nationalism and the deep-seated desire to commemorate the tragedy of the Deportation. Architect René Fréchet of Moncton, New Brunswick, drew up the plans for the church, which reflect Normandy-style architecture of the 1700s. The design does not duplicate the original pre-Deportation church whose appearance is unknown. Archaeological excavations in 2001 suggest the Memorial Church was indeed built approximately where the original Grand-Pré parish church stood (Parks Canada)”.
Evangeline is the heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem of the same name. She was not a real person, and you will not find her name on the list of deportees. Many believe, particularly those Acadians living in Louisiana, that she is Emmeline LaBiche, who reunited with her lover, Louis Arceneaux, in Saint Martinsville, Louisiana. The tragedy of this tale, unlike Longellow’s poem, where they never met again, is that Areneaux had wed someone else. It was too late for the couple.
Longfellow’s poem is symbolic of the breaking up of families and potential families caused by the British deportation of the Acadians. Many settled in Louisiana if they survived. The Treaty of Paris (1763) ended the Seven Years War and the hostilities between the French and British. It had a clause that allowed the Acadians to return to their land in Nova Scotia. Most never did.
The original well used by the Acadians and a piece of one of the original willow trees on the land.
The Deportation Cross. There are several deportation crosses – the one at the UNESCO site in Grand Pre (below), another at Hortonsville just 3.2 kms away that marks the site of the deportation of 1755 of more than 2000 Acadians, and at least one other in St Martinsville, Louisiana.
A view of the farming lands of the Acadians inside the dykes.
We had hoped the Memorial Church would be open as we did not go inside on our last visit. It wasn’t. You can walk through the grounds at your leisure, but the church and the interpretative centre are closed for the season. Everyone is preparing for winter and the falling leaves, now crunching beneath our feet, are a reminder that snow and much colder weather will be here sooner than we think.
Moving on to the birds…
F23 can get them back in the scrape and shelter them from whatever the Melbourne weather throws at that nest site! https://youtu.be/q9RZZgnuQv4?
At Port Lincoln, Wilko and Kasse had a nice early morning breakfast. Dad delivered fish, everyone ate and there was plenty left when Dad removed it so he could have some breakfast, too. Well done, Dad!
Oh, these two are changing right before our eyes. Look at all the down off that little head and the pin feathers coming in.
Later…Wilko and Kasse are wanting more fish, but nothing is arriving.
Wilko is such a reptile!
Two Sea eaglets still on the nest in the Olympic Forest.
Mum either headed out to get prey or went to the pantry. The triplets are sooooooo cute and they had a lovely breakfast while the sea eagles wait for theirs.
The chicks at Orange had their breakfast starting at 0811. It looks like it lasted 6 minutes before Diamond stopped feeding.
At the Growing Home Osprey platform, Bubba looks to have all of his/her juvenile plumage. Don’t you love how Dad spends so much time on the nest with Mum and Bubba? Except when he is fishing, of course!
Wondering about Gabby and Beau? Both were at the nest tree on Friday.
It was windy at Captiva – I only caught one eagle on cam, but that doesn’t mean that Connie and Clive were both not there! In fact, the mates are often on other branches and we can’t see them on the streaming cams and so we worry for nothing!
At SW Florida, F23 has brought in at least one pine cone to the nest along with lots of twigs. We are now past the middle of October. Eaglets are born in late December and early January with incubation being, on average, 35 days in Florida. Things will start to get serious in another month.
‘A’ sends us news of the recent Royal Albatross fledglings with trackers: “The leading two chicks from Taiaroa Head are more than halfway to Chile now. We have GPS data for five of the fledgees from this season and we can see their progress towards their summer fishing grounds off the coast of Chile. Meanwhile, previous seasons’ fledgees are returning to Taiaroa Head for their breeding season. We have lovely footage on the chat of a previous chick from the colony, now a nine-year-old male, returning to where he was born, presumably to find a mate. Let’s hope he is successful this season in finding Miss Right. These birds are exquisite and their wingspan is astounding. It never ceases to amaze me that they live for so long without setting foot on dry land and that after all those thousands of kilometres, they return to within 50 metres of the nest from which they fledged. Is that not just awesome? Nothing we as humans can do compares with the feats of some of the birds and animals we observe. How do we not have the utmost respect for these creatures instead of treating them as somehow inferior to us, fatally flawed humans? The outrageous arrogance of it never ceases to astound me. We should be breathless with wonder. Seriously.”
Geemeff sends us the 2024 season highlights from Loch Arkaig: https://youtu.be/pgLrWvnETSY?
In the UK there is growing concern over laws to make it legal to carry chickens by their legs (don’t even get me started on animal cruelty) and by bird flu which seems to be reappearing in articles about various species from shorebirds to pheasants.
Culling controversy in Denmark!
Do you live in Pennsylvania? If so, you might be interested in visiting the nocturnal animals! Here is the info for Zoo America. Thanks, ‘RP’.
Zoo America allows guests to meet nocturnal animals after hours at Creatures Of The Night
The program allows guests to learn about the Zoo’s nocturnal animals
HERSHEY, Pa. — For the next two weekends, you can explore ZooAmerica in Hersheypark after the sun goes down to meet their “Creatures Of The Night.”
The program allows guests to learn about the Zoo’s nocturnal animals, like owls, gray wolves and even skunks. This is the only time of the year the zoo is open after-hours.u
Organizers say it’s a fun way to get into the Halloween spirit and educate people on the animals’ nighttime habitats.
“It’s nice to learn about the animals we have in our environment,” Alicia Snyder, education specialist at ZooAmerica, said. “So since we’re ZooAmerica, we only have animals from North America. You might see them around your house. So usually if people see a skunk, they’re not gonna get close to it, which is good, but we should know that we should still take care of their environment.”
Creatures Of The Night also features Halloween crafts, a magic potion scavenger hunt, animal enrichment activities and special educational displays.
It runs Friday – Sunday over the next two weekends (Oct. 18 – 20 and Oct. 25 – 27) from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online.
Thank you so much for being with us today. Please take care. We look forward to having you with us again soon.
Thank you to the following for their notes, posts, videos, articles, and streaming cams that helped me to write my post today: ‘A,Geemeff, J, RP’, Sharon Pollock, SK Hideaways, Port Lincoln Ospreys, 367 Collins Street by Mirvac, Charles Sturt Falcon Cam and Cilla Kinross, Olympic Park Eagles, Growing Home Osprey Cam, Window to Wildlife, NEFL-AEF, SW Florida Eagle Cam, The Guardian,BirdGuides, Zoo America.