Watching Northern Gannets is fun, except when it's not

(Warning: disturbing images)

The high point of my visit to my birth place in Germany in 2009 was a trip from Hamburg down the Elbe River to the diminutive island of Helgoland in the North Sea, 29 miles off the coast. The side facing the sea is a 200 feet high rock cliff, home to thousands of sea birds, mostly Northern Gannets, Common Murres and Black-legged Kittiwakes. It was a gorgeous day, bright sun, blue skies. I had only a few hours to photograph the birds, no way of avoiding the mid-day sun with its harsh lights and shadows. But losing myself  in the moment, I was happy and kept firing away at the awe-inspiring assembly of nesting Northern Gannets.

Parental care: placing a feather

Macabre Discovery

Closely examining the photos after I got home, I discovered the tragic consequences of the Gannets' method of nest construction. The rocks were covered with tons of man-made indestructible trash: plastic lines and pieces of nets that the Gannets had dragged up for nest material in place of their customary sticks and seaweeds, and that ended up trapping many of them, leading to their slow and agonizing deaths.

The living and the dead:  a recently dead adult bird in the left upper corner and the skeletal remains of one near center right among apparently oblivious  adults and chicks

Is this adult going to be able to free itself from the sling around its neck?

These juveniles didn't make it

Fortunately this  appears to be the only known Northern Gannet colony in the North Atlantic suffering such  calamity. The North Sea is a shallow shelf sea ideal for shrimping with drag nets over its bottom. Nets are lost or torn apart and remain floating in the water or washed up on the beach. Gannets are known to resort to beachcombing for their nest material. Or perhaps they grab it when the nets are  pulled in for mending. 

Scottish trawler

Trawl nets on Belgian boat

Part of a trawl head on top of the rock. How on earth did it get up there?

Until then I had been content to archive my photos on my website; but now I had to write about it, hoping to bring this debacle to the public's attention. That's how I started my blog.

More Terns - Least Terns renesting and courting

On August 9th I went on a whale watching/birdwatching trip out of Newburyport, MA. We didn't see many birds, nor many whales. On the way out we passed a beach. The air was shimmering in the heat. I focused my camera on a tern as a couple of beach goers and their dog were walking by

We passed the breakwater at the mouth of the Merrimack River. Terns and Ruddy Turnstones were lounging and preening on the rocks.

Roseate Terns

Roseate Terns

Out in the open water on our way to the Southeastern edge of Jeffrey's Ledge we encountered a Minke Whale and a Right Whale , unusual in this location - they are ornery animals; there was a report from South Africa a couple of weeks ago that a Right Whale breached on a sailboat; luckily no one was hurt. We stayed at the safe required distance of 500 ft.

We also encountered isolated Wilson's Storm-Petrels, several  Northern Gannets and Great Shearwaters (no longer "Greater")

Adult Northern Gannet

Great Shearwater

Great Shearwater

Great Shearwater

We returned to port at 4:30 PM. I didn't want to get stuck in the rush hour traffic around Boston and decided to head out to Plum Island. I parked at Sandy Point and walked to the tip of the peninsula. It was low tide. As soon as I skirted the roped-off area off the beach I was being dive-bombed by irate Least Terns, defending their territory. I had to raise my arm to ward them off and saw one coming pretty close squirting white poop at me. Fortunately it missed. This kind of behavior seems to be universal in the animal world  - I guess  it's  the ultimate insult. I retreated a few paces and after a while they left me alone.

I took photos of a tern settling down in the sand. When I looked at  them at home I saw that it was settling down on a couple of eggs. Here is a sequence of shots:

Tern settling on speckled eggs

                          

This is quoting from Cornell's Birds of North America site: "Renesting commonly follows nest or chick loss; up to 3 nests/season. Least Terns display second wave of nesting, involving birds that have lost clutches in the same colonies, renesting birds from other colonies, or younger birds (2–3 yr old) that are breeding for first time (Massey and Atwood 1981).
These late-nesting birds usually insert themselves within existing colony, selecting sites used by earlier pairs or areas with little or no prior use (Massey and Atwood 1981)."

I also observed courting behavior with the male presenting a small fish to the female. I didn't actually see the female accepting the fish.

I also saw several Piping Plovers in the same area, but did not take any photos since I already had so many from my previous trip. I did not look for the Scissored-tailed Flycatcher, although I saw a couple of birders in the distance who apparently were. It was getting late, time for me to drive home.

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