It’s not often that you receive a gift without knowing it. But a few weeks ago it happened.  The people of Quebec gave us (well not just us in Maine but in fact the people of the whole world), an incredible holiday present – a new national park in Quebec. The park is far north on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay and is a jaw-dropping six and a half million acres in size. In short, this new Tursujuq National Park is the size of the state of Vermont or three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.

That’s room for a lot of birds. Those common redpolls that many of us have been enjoying at our feeders this winter may have come from there. Same with the common mergansers that we saw on the Kennebec last week. And the long-tailed ducks and black scoters in Linekin Bay. 

The list goes on and on. In fact it goes on to include at least 130 birds species, most of which pass through or winter in Maine. 

The new park likely supports millions of birds, the same birds we enjoy in our backyards, fields, forests and shores in migration and winter.

Tursujuq National Park will be one of the rare parks in the world that also includes virtually the entire drainage of several rivers. One river, called the Nastapoka, supports a population of the small, white Arctic whales called belugas. 

One of the things we find so interesting about what the park protects is its population of a mysterious and rare form of landlocked, freshwater harbor seals. 

It’s hard to image how those seals have survived in these northern inland lakes for thousands of years in the winter when it is hard to find open water. 

There is even one very large lake in the new park that was formed by an ancient meteorite strike.

The park is also the winter home of species we used to have in Maine, the caribou. Unlike the more sedentary woodland caribou that were in Maine up until the beginning of the 1900s, these caribou are highly migratory. They come to the park in fall and winter before leaving to calving grounds further north in the spring.

The protection of a jewel like this is not something that most of us expect to hear about in North America, certainly not in such a close neighbor as Quebec. 

It’s nice to know we have friends to our north watching out for our birds. Thanks, neighbors, for a great holiday gift!

Dr. Jeff Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative. During his time at the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology and as the Audubon Society's national bird conservation director, Dr. Wells earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. Jeff's grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, also formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a widely published natural history writer and a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Together, they have been writing and teaching people about birds for decades. The Maine natives are authors of the highly acclaimed book, “Maine's Favorite Birds.”