I had to visit some pet stores in Yarmouth and since I don’t get down that way very often I made sure to make some time for birding with a local birder, Laurel Amirault.  I had not met Laurel before but all of her posts in the Nova Scotia Bird Society’s Facebook group make me smile so I messaged her to get together.

I wasn’t really there to stack up lifers, but it would turn out that the first bird we saw ended up being my lifer 100, a Snowy Egret.  We saw two of them in Overton in fact.

There was a lot of fog so we couldn’t go looking for the Terns or Black Bellied Pipers at Chebogue Point, but we did visit a few local birding hot spots in the few short hours we had to spend.  Honestly we spent the bulk of our time watching ducklings, goslings, and baby Killdeer because really what could be better than newborns.  There was even some bird porn in progress as the Killdeer were trying to make new babies already on Cook’s Beach even though their youngsters were only a few feet away.  Prolific indeed, and funny too!

The “little birds” are definitely my favorite and one of the spots we visited was a hot spot for Warblers.  Lifer 101 showed up at this spot, a Chestnut Sided Warbler.  Not a great photo but great to see and good enough photo for ID.  You can click twice to zoom in.

There were a good variety of Warblers and other birds there but I didn’t get many photos.  I do love to be surrounded by these little singers even when I can’t snap them.

There was a Red-Eyed Vireo but I didn’t get a capture.  Laurel got some great shots of that one that I can’t wait to see.

We also got some nice clear snaps of a few birds who are common, but beautiful such as the Great Blue Heron, Yellow Warbler, and Barn Swallow.

If you have some time to spend in Yarmouth County it is full of many species of local birds and migrants, and gets a lot of vagrants as well.

Blake Maybank has quite a detailed list of hot spots on his site you should look over before you visit.

There are a group of birders from the same family in Yarmouth County who document and photograph many birds in the area, who have provided some of the best photos I’ve seen of Nova Scotia birds.

I do hope to have more time to spend in the area in the future.  A few hours is not enough time to really dig in but it was a fun afternoon with a great lady (thank you Laurel!) who was very kind to show me around.

We hope to do a day in Cape Sable Island sometime this summer if we can coordinate a time.  Thanks again Laurel!