After days filled with dramatic mountains, fjords, ice, and wildlife, the Fabled Lands of the North expedition is drawing to a close. For our final shore excursion, we took Zodiacs to a sheltered beach at Spillars Cove, near Twillingate on Newfoundland's northeast coast. From a rocky pinnacle high above the beach, three ospreys–Mum, Dad, and Junior–watched guests disembark and navigate the cobble beach to a stairway leading to a system of trails.
Some guests did a full circuit around the Spillars Cove promontory, peering down from jagged clifftops to sea stacks and sparkling water. The interior of the promontory is a sort of basin, and the restricted drainage has produced a small lake and surrounding bog. Gulls drifted overhead, and yellowlegs (wading shorebirds) patrolled the shallows in search of small invertebrate morsels. Bogs are low in nutrients, so some plants make up the shortfall by eating insects. The "pitcher" of pitcher plants contains water salted with enzymes that digest any insect that falls therein. Guests, not fans of biting insects, cheered the pitcher plants on.
