Category: Notes

The Sable Island Institute hosted a raffle for a Trip for Two with Kattuk Expeditions to the Sable Island National Park Reserve in early October 2021.

Prizes for creative prose about Sable Island! If you live in Nova Scotia, are 10 to 13 or 14 to 17, and are interested in the island, you could be a winner! Entries due by March 12, 2021.

I imagined it as it was when we lived here: the beacon slowly turning, grey wooden swings, clothes flapping on lines, chickens in the yard, and adults busy with chores while children played in the sand.

A year late, but this September they finally made it to Sable Island! Their visit, originally scheduled for 2019, had to be postponed due to poor weather and beach landing conditions.

Moth larvae, which may have an ecological role on the island far bigger than their tiny size suggests, will be the focus of the Sable Island Institute’s first major terrestrial research program on the island.

In a study of life stages and survival, researchers are banding sparrows on Sable Island and on the Delmarva Peninsula with combinations of coloured plastic leg bands that identify individual birds.

Since I was on the island when the national parks were closed, I was able to stay and continue work on some of the Institute’s projects. For the island itself, it has been a mostly normal spring so far.

Three watercolour paintings by 12-year-old Laurie illustrate features of the island’s landscape and wildlife, expressing a sense of the energy of sand dunes, waves, grey seals, ponds and horses.