Of Caribou and King Eider

I was certain this would be the morning. We are eight days into our three-week stay on Fogo Island, off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland, where caribou, they say, are prolific. “Any caribou yet?” Shirley asks each time she sees me. No, but that’s because I still don’t believe they exist. Shirley, who takes care of Anouk so Rich and I can get some work done, declared a few days ago, “I saw some this morning on my walk.” And yesterday at the harvest festival, she tells me her husband Mart called from camp to announce with relief that he got his caribou; it was the last day of the season. Fifty permits were allotted this year up from last year’s 25. The population is on the rise, perhaps because the newly introduced coyote on the mainland (what Fogo Islanders call the island of Newfoundland) is driving them out. Shirley’s son tells me of the time he was coming home from hockey practice and had to wait for several minutes as a whole heard was crossing the road. “They kept coming and coming and coming….” Our landlord Basil saw some this morning on the road near the beach. Even Rich came home from his run the other morning saying he saw a few up the creek by the edge of Tilting, the town we have settled into this month.

The habitat looks right, I tell myself, with berry brush-covered hills, and boreal fen amidst rocky outcroppings. It is a stunning landscape, the tuckamore – impenetrable weather-stunted spruce-fir forest – lines some of the hills, standing short enough to see the view beyond and tall enough for its limbs to paint the direction of the wind. Caribou, I promise myself, will make an appearance on our hike today. My binoculars are around my neck. Even Anouk on my back is ready with her own binoculars: two toilet paper tubes taped together with a string for a strap Her daddy made them two days ago and she won't take them off. They have become her most prized possession! She, too, is hunting for caribou.

And so, we look. My eyes swivel between horizon and trail, horizon and trail. I am losing sight of what’s more important, seeing caribou or keeping me and my baby upright. “There!” cries Rich… but then he continues, “There was once a caribou there.” ARGHHHH. He got me. We’ve played this game all summer with whatever wildlife is known to frequent certain parts of Newfoundland. Moose, humpback whale, ptarmigan, caribou…forever the elusive caribou.

The trail comes around a hill and into a cove. The wind is howling. Waves crash on the ledges and rocks at the entrance of the cove. I know if I asked a local fisherman, he could name every one of those ledges. The sea being the main highway for generations, the features under water are more important to name than any hill or hummock on land. Waves in the distance horserace their way towards shore where they lift and curl into a translucent blue tube. I bump into Rich who has paused along the trail to put his binoculars to his nose. It is shorebird migration season.

“How much do you love me?” he asks with a grin in his voice. “How much do you love me?” he repeats. My heart joins the horserace. “You see a caribou? You really do?” “How much do you love me?” He asks one more time…. I look at his binoculars. They are not pointed to land. They are pointed towards the cove, where those waves are crashing in the shore. I lift mine and look. “KING EIDER!” There it is, a male King Eider in winter plumage. His head looks pink, his bill an oversized shnoz. He is smaller than his Common Eider cousin. Darker. He swims with a female common eider. A winter plumage Black Guillemot darts among them. A bit behind, on the back side of the waves, two Red-throated Loons. Up on the hill flying by in a flock, Snow Buntings. But in the middle of it all, yes, it really is: a King Eider.

This week, well this whole summer actually, I have been desperately hunting for caribou. Though my hunt has become frantic this week on Fogo Island, it pales in comparison to my multi-year search for King Eider. I have wanted to see a King Eider since I was 21, when I first started guiding kayak tours on the coast of Maine. I had read a bunch about Common Eiders, information to pass on to my kayaking customers. I had learned about the King Eider and how, if I was lucky, I might see one mixed into a raft of Common Eiders in the late fall. They looked so cool in my first Peterson's Field Guild to Eastern Birds. So northern and bright. Since then, I have searched for this colorful sea duck to no avail. What luck, I thought a few years later, to meet, fall in love with, and marry an ornithologist. He’ll help me find a King Eider. And so he has, many years later, on an island off the northeastern tip of Newfoundland where King Eider apparently swim in a sea of would-be caribou…