Scatarie Island, Day 1

For a few months I have been looking forward to a couple days in August with members of the Wild Flora Society of Nova Scotia: a couple days exploring Scatarie Island, which is a wilderness preserve. I love the island experience! This island is on the far east of Cape Breton Island, the easternmost land in Nova Scotia. Above, you can see some scenes as we approached by zodiac. (Second picture above shows a deceased fin whale decaying on the beach.)

Above, you can see the route we took to get there, by boat and walking on the easternmost part of this island. Professor Bruce Hatcher of Cape Breton University was our excellent guide and transport; he gave a great tour on the way over - history, biology, geology and all. As a boatman he certainly knows these waters well.

We started near the northeastern end, where lighkeepers once lived and worked. The open barrens are carpeted with black crowberry and associated plants - lovely for exploring. A few cabins are still in use on the island by locals, and there were other visitors there for the day we were there - the first of our two days in a row. Her are some shots from the old lighthouse, no longer in use.

I did not get any photos of the birds, including beautiful migrating shorebirds on the rocky beaches. (How I love the ruddy turnstones.) I got shots of plants and some of the landscape. I neglected to get a group photo of the five of us from the Flora Society and Bruce H. :(

We had been provided with lists of plants on the island, form surveys from the past decades. A few rarities we looked for - and found a few, such as spurred gentian, first picture below. Most of us from the Society are or will be posting our findings to iNaturalist, as always. 

 

We looked for some orchid species, and eventually found a few. Above: little club-spur and rose pogonia. Below: heart-leaved twayblade, a rattlesnake plantain, and blunt-leaved orchid.

 

You never know what you will find, on a day of exploring a mostly-deserted island. It was a beautiful day. At northwest cove we met up with a couple groups of folks also visiting for the day. We went back the next day also, and think we had the island to ourselves then. Another post about that, in the days ahead.