Northern Gannet

Île Bonaventure, Quebec. September 11 2021. I think if you want to see Northern Gannets and see them well, you’ll have to find a way to visit one of a handful of oceanic islands, stacks or rocks in the North Atlantic. Bonaventure Island is probably the most accessible to North Americans, and maybe it was a bit of a pilgrimage on my part to go. An easy pilgrimage because we boarded a well packed tour boat that made its purposeful way across a short stretch of open water, churning and wallowing comfortably to allow plenty of camera-worthy views of Rocher-Percé, a tourist landmark.  We got brief glimpses of a Minke Whale, its black back arcing slowly and saw colonies of Grey Seals hauled up on emergent rocks. But for me it was about seeing thousands of Gannets and their colony.

Northern Gannets’ breeding range is limited to the continental shelf waters around Quebec, Newfoundland, Iceland, Scotland and Norway, they wander far and wide from there feeding from the North Atlantic. They are a good-looking bird by any measure made for flight and fishing: larger than any gull, snow white overall with black wingtips and an apricot coloured head. They have the proportions of a glider, long of wing and slender of body, built for riding the steady winds of open waters and for managing steep cliff-faces. As far as I could tell they stick to open waters and either don’t, or wont, fly over the slightest scrap of dry land.

We watched them soar and search, circling watchfully for fish below.  With food in sight they make a side-slip turn to line up a vertical power dive, draw their wings back in a tight W and plunge headlong for the capture.  Sometimes a lucky wave-top sighting brings them in from much lower and they slice to the water at an acute angle. Whichever approach they take, it is only in the last half second, the last metre, that they pull in their wings, tight to body, plunging below a tidy splash.