Northern Gannet
One of my favorite events of the year is the Space Coast Festival in Titusville, Florida. Not only do I see great birds but get to see friends from around the country. Mike has already blogged about some of his highlights of the Festival, I add a post of my own. The past two years my undisputed highlight has been the pelagic trip on the final day of the Festival.
I love being out on the water and looking for pelagic birds no matter where I am. Partially because you never know what you are going to see. Virtually every east coast boat trip I been on someone has at least whispered about how fantastic an albatross would be. This despite the vanishingly low chances that it will happen. Such is the magical optimism that infects pelagic birders as they leave the harbor and motor out onto the open ocean. But the mega rarity rarely shows, that is why they are rare. What typical makes a good boat trip are intimate view of common pelagic birds that can only be glimpsed from shore with a good scope (like, for example, the Nikon 82mm Fieldscope!). This was certainly true on the Space Coast Pelagic as both on the way out and on the way back an unbelievable show of Northern Gannets made the trip.
Gannets are very large seabirds with a wingspan that reaches six feet, but they maintain their own brand of elegance despite their size. Like large gulls gannets go through multiple different plumages before reaching their adult appearance. This rarely complicates the identification process, however, since their structure is unmistakable no matter what the plumage looks like. Enjoy the gannet photos below. I have included one from each age group, starting with adults and working back to juvenile plumage.
Adult Northern Gannet. What an incredibly striking bird. All white with black wing tips and a rusty wash to the head. Note the body is slender and tubular. Gannets are diving birds that feed on fish. Instead of diving from the surface of the water like a loon, gannets dive while in flight, dropping almost vertically, tucking their wings to their sides just before striking the water. They enter the water like a large feathered dart and disappear under it with a small splash. Under the water they use their wings as well as their feet for propulsion and can reach depths of over 70 feet. Often they dive underneath their prey, grabbing fish as they head back to the surface. Smaller fish can be consumed underwater while large fish are brought to the surface and gulped down while resting on the water.
Third-cycle Northern Gannet. Much like the adults but notice the black feathers in the secondaries and the tail. Note the shape of this bird. The long, slender body is capped with a wicked, dagger-like bill and ends in a narrow, wedge-shaped tail. The wings are extremely long, but unlike the other well-known diving seabirds, the pelicans, they are very narrow with pointed tips. For this reason gannets are sometimes nicknamed "The Compass Bird" because they are pointed in all four directions.
Second-cycle Northern Gannet. Lots of black invades the plumage, particularly above as the entire back and upper surface of the wings are sooty brown. The bodies shows variable amounts of brown smudges; this is a fairly pale bird. It still has a touch of the yellowish/rusty wash that will be more pronounced as an adult. This bird will not breed for another couple of years and therefore has not reason to go back to the northern breeding areas in summer time. Instead these immature birds wander around the the wintering areas eating and molting and biding their time until they can breed! If you run across a gannet in the summer time outside of the Canadian Maritime Provinces it will probably look much like the bird above.
Juvenile Northern Gannet. Quite a change! All brown except for a pale band across the uppertail. This individuals can sometime be confused with a Brown Pelican at great distances. Juvenile gannets however, have quicker, snappier wingbeats and the pointed wing shape can be seen at almost any distance if you look carefully.
Let put everything together with this photo of a distance flock of gannet going away. The birds on the top and bottom with dark heads are juveniles. You can just barely make out the pale band across the uppertail that separate them from immature Masked Boobies. Far right is a second-cycle individual with a white head and stronger white band across the tail. The bird center left is a third-cycle individual with black secondaries and black central tail feathers. Also look at the silhouettes of these birds in different wing positions.
Added bonus! In addition to pelagic birds sometimes you see other pelagic forms of life on a boat trip. Here are two members of a huge pod of Spotted Dolphins we saw on our way back to shore. I believe these are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins but they might be Pantropical Spotted Dolphins. Either way this species is not likely to be seen from shore like some more cooperative cetaceans like Bottlenose Dolphin or Harbor Porpoise. It was a real treat to see hundreds of Spotted Dolphins churning up the water on three sides of us as a flock of gannets feed behind the boat.
All photos were taken by Cameron Cox with a Nikon D200 and 300mm Nikkor lens.
I love being out on the water and looking for pelagic birds no matter where I am. Partially because you never know what you are going to see. Virtually every east coast boat trip I been on someone has at least whispered about how fantastic an albatross would be. This despite the vanishingly low chances that it will happen. Such is the magical optimism that infects pelagic birders as they leave the harbor and motor out onto the open ocean. But the mega rarity rarely shows, that is why they are rare. What typical makes a good boat trip are intimate view of common pelagic birds that can only be glimpsed from shore with a good scope (like, for example, the Nikon 82mm Fieldscope!). This was certainly true on the Space Coast Pelagic as both on the way out and on the way back an unbelievable show of Northern Gannets made the trip.
Gannets are very large seabirds with a wingspan that reaches six feet, but they maintain their own brand of elegance despite their size. Like large gulls gannets go through multiple different plumages before reaching their adult appearance. This rarely complicates the identification process, however, since their structure is unmistakable no matter what the plumage looks like. Enjoy the gannet photos below. I have included one from each age group, starting with adults and working back to juvenile plumage.
Adult Northern Gannet. What an incredibly striking bird. All white with black wing tips and a rusty wash to the head. Note the body is slender and tubular. Gannets are diving birds that feed on fish. Instead of diving from the surface of the water like a loon, gannets dive while in flight, dropping almost vertically, tucking their wings to their sides just before striking the water. They enter the water like a large feathered dart and disappear under it with a small splash. Under the water they use their wings as well as their feet for propulsion and can reach depths of over 70 feet. Often they dive underneath their prey, grabbing fish as they head back to the surface. Smaller fish can be consumed underwater while large fish are brought to the surface and gulped down while resting on the water. 
Third-cycle Northern Gannet. Much like the adults but notice the black feathers in the secondaries and the tail. Note the shape of this bird. The long, slender body is capped with a wicked, dagger-like bill and ends in a narrow, wedge-shaped tail. The wings are extremely long, but unlike the other well-known diving seabirds, the pelicans, they are very narrow with pointed tips. For this reason gannets are sometimes nicknamed "The Compass Bird" because they are pointed in all four directions. 
Second-cycle Northern Gannet. Lots of black invades the plumage, particularly above as the entire back and upper surface of the wings are sooty brown. The bodies shows variable amounts of brown smudges; this is a fairly pale bird. It still has a touch of the yellowish/rusty wash that will be more pronounced as an adult. This bird will not breed for another couple of years and therefore has not reason to go back to the northern breeding areas in summer time. Instead these immature birds wander around the the wintering areas eating and molting and biding their time until they can breed! If you run across a gannet in the summer time outside of the Canadian Maritime Provinces it will probably look much like the bird above.
Juvenile Northern Gannet. Quite a change! All brown except for a pale band across the uppertail. This individuals can sometime be confused with a Brown Pelican at great distances. Juvenile gannets however, have quicker, snappier wingbeats and the pointed wing shape can be seen at almost any distance if you look carefully.
Let put everything together with this photo of a distance flock of gannet going away. The birds on the top and bottom with dark heads are juveniles. You can just barely make out the pale band across the uppertail that separate them from immature Masked Boobies. Far right is a second-cycle individual with a white head and stronger white band across the tail. The bird center left is a third-cycle individual with black secondaries and black central tail feathers. Also look at the silhouettes of these birds in different wing positions.
Added bonus! In addition to pelagic birds sometimes you see other pelagic forms of life on a boat trip. Here are two members of a huge pod of Spotted Dolphins we saw on our way back to shore. I believe these are Atlantic Spotted Dolphins but they might be Pantropical Spotted Dolphins. Either way this species is not likely to be seen from shore like some more cooperative cetaceans like Bottlenose Dolphin or Harbor Porpoise. It was a real treat to see hundreds of Spotted Dolphins churning up the water on three sides of us as a flock of gannets feed behind the boat.All photos were taken by Cameron Cox with a Nikon D200 and 300mm Nikkor lens.
1 comments:
Cameron: These are great gannet shots! Mine turned out almost as good, but many were just slightly too blurry. Good info here, too. Keep up the interesting posts!
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