Touring Newfoundland: Part I

I keep forgetting my notes, so I'll do it from memory. The first day of touring (after the conference, where my sparkling wit was absent from the podium) saw Mom and I going to see the puffins in the afternoon. In the morning, we walked around St John's, along the aptly named 'jellybean row' composed of houses, each a different color, and yet not provoking the apocalypse which neighborhood committees so fear. The close packing of the churches was conspicuous, and the names of the two cathedals (Anglican and RC) seemed a sign of silent provocation.

In the afternoon, we boarded a van with several other remnants of the conference and their significant others and headed south to the town of Bay Bulls. This was the first Mom and I had left the confines of St John's. At Bay Bulls, we embarked. Our guide ws Deirdre, a local young woman. We rounded the southern cape, because the destination was directly in front of Witless Bay, the next cove to the south, which possessed its own outport (which means "not St John's" in the Newfoundland dialect). Someone had seen whales off St John's the week before, but these were probably the first of the season.

We arrived at Gull Island, where the puffins resided, rather swiftly. There was no stench, despite the densely packed birds and the puffins' habit of reinforcing their burrows with their own excrement. The puffins were ungainly in flight, but masters of diving, even compared to the other birds in the island. The herring gulls knew the fishing superiority of the puffins, and therefore waited outside puffin burrows to steal the catch. A different species of gull specialized in consuming puffins mid-air; each of these gulls ate six puffins a day. A third species of gull, the kittiwakes, preferred the small ledges of the island to raise their young; even though the kittiwake egg was shaped to guard against calamity, the mothers hatched up to six per season - which raises some doubt about the evolutionary efficacy of egg shape.