July 5 - Domaine Taschereau Parc Nature

I woke fairly early in the charming la municipalité de Sainte-Marie, and took my breakfast at La Barbaque located right next door, which serves a pretty good breakfast beginning at 7 a.m.  As I planned to make some miles (kilometers, actually, since I’m in Canada) this afternoon, I decided to do some birding here this morning.

Toward the Rivière Chaudière, there is the Domaine Taschereau-Parc Nature.

There are 14 km of trails in the parc

This is an "ecological park", and a historic site, of 53 hectares extent.

The parc was established in the summer of 2013, exactly 275 years after the founding of the seigniorial estate Taschereau under the French Regime, in 1738.  It is touted as “the most flooded ecological park in all of Québec!

The little yellow tab at the bottom is the "Every Other Year" flood expectation

The top one is the "100-year flood" mark, which comes pretty regularly nowadays

From town, you access the Parc, crossing the 3-meter high Placide-Poulin aerial bridge, where 14 km of pathways connect the Éco-refuge Desjardins to town.

In this park, the main attractions are the wetland ecosystems and quite a few interpretive panels.

Many of the fir and spruce trees have "witch's brooms".

  
The birding was pretty good here, and the village has placed quite a few bird boxes, which were welcomed by the nesting Tree Swallows.

Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats were, well, common.

Yellow Warbler

I enjoyed the little gems of artwork, and met some nice people.

Random Act of Artwork

One that I met was a proud Beauceronne named Elise, walking her dogs on the trail.  She told me of the terrible flooding this past April that washed away 100 houses and damaged the 1891 Chapel Sainte-Anne.  This is the third chapel on the site, the first being built by the Taschereau family in 1778.

I could have spent all day here, but it was getting time to move along.  Leaving Sainte-Marie around 10:30 a.m., I returned to the Route Transcanadienne (Highway 20), stopping at Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly to pick up some artisan cheeses at Fromagerie Bergeron, before heading west into Ontario.

White Admiral Limenitis arthemis from Domaine Taschereau

I ended up in the early evening near Shannonville, where the Google search suggested that the Salmon River Motel might be a relatively inexpensive place to stay.  When I got there, I had to call the власник, who finally came out to show me a room, which was pretty bare-bones; there was a bed, a small fridge, and a fan.  And . . . well, that was about it.  She charged me $80 cash.  There was a bathroom with a shower, but after I’d cleaned up, the adhesive that held the shampoo-conditioner container to the wall loosened and it fell off.

Ah, well . . . I’ve stayed in some worse places on my travels this year.

The eBird indicated that there had been Whip-Poor-Wills seen and heard in the area, so I thought I’d go to supper and then stop to listen in a few places.  The motel was close to the Tyendinaga Mohawk Community Reserve, and there was a nearby pizza place - D’Pizza Bus with D’Best Pizza.  The friendly folks there made me a great medium-sized pizza, which was half-eaten for supper and half went back with me to serve as breakfast-lunch-or-supper for tomorrow.  I listened for the nightjars in a few places on my way back to the motel, but the woods were pretty quiet.

There was a nice large stonefly on the wall when I got back to the motel

Domaine Taschereau Parc Nature eBird Checklist is Here