gannets

Baby bird boom in Great Saltee, Part I

As I do every summer, I went to the Great Saltee once again, this time in July. You can find some of my previous posts here, and learn more about the history, geography and wildlife of the island.

Thanks to the kind Captain Bates we got an extra hour on the island – a treat! Here is his An Foracha – A Guillemot – waiting for us to board.

Overcast at the start of my trip, the sky cleared by the time I climbed to the highest point of the island.

To get there, I had to walk through the shoulder-high ferns, full of wildlife. Thankfully, I travel light, and I actually enjoy the steep climb. People often ask me how long it takes to walk to the Gannet colony, and I can honestly say – it depends on how fast you walk. The distance is less than a mile.

I quickly walked through the Black-backed gull territory leaving them for later. First, I would go to visit the gannets.

It was so exciting to see the Gannet colony get larger and nest on the former path. I also noticed that the Shag dynasty who used to nest under the rocks for years and didn’t mind the visitors walk over their heads, abandoned their nesting territory. Later I spotted a Shag family on the side of the cliff, far from the path. Fledgling time?

I climbed down and camped behind the rock in the right side of the picture. The birds didn’t mind.

Nothing like clumsy, fluffy, sweet and defenseless chicks! How many of them have been snatched and eaten by gulls… They have nowhere to hide on this bare rock.

This is what I love most – the facial expression of a chick looking up at his mother.

Looks like this chick is asking for food. It is what they do – only look, never flap their wings or move about the nest. Now and again some of the gannets take off, and some land. The colony is always in motion. Gannets never fly with fish in their bill. They swallow the fish under water and feed their young regurgitated fish opening their mouths wide for the chicks to fetch the food – I have a picture in one of my blog posts.

Gannets look beautiful in flight, but landing is not their forte.

This poor devil crash-landed on a wrong nest.

This one landed smoothly and displayed a dance.

This gannet landed right in front of me. I think it is a female. After displaying some moves I could not interpret, the bird walked away and finally found her nest.

These gannets are grown up but they are not breeding this year for some reason.

I spent an hour alone with the gannets. Sadly, it was time to leave. I quickly took some in-flight pictures and a video to send to my grandchildren. Till we meet again, beautiful birds.

Great black-backed gull chicks are cute, but their growing numbers are worrying. These gulls are opportunistic feeders and predators who attack and kill other seabirds and juveniles.

There are chicks on the top of every rock. Look at these skinny legs!

I took these pictures from the path. Mama gull wouldn’t let me come any closer.

This one is a Herring gull’s son.

Guillemots, elegant birds who remind me of a whippet, have a baby too. This baby is almost a fledgling.

A younger and fluffier chick.

This Razorbill daddy made my day.

There was a chick somewhere under the rock, and the daddy was feeding him with the sand eels, one at a time.

The last sand eel.

Done with the feeding. What a good daddy!

Thank you for reading! I will share more pictures in two weeks.

www.inesemjphotography Have a wonderful weekend!

Saltee Islands – All Things Beautiful

As I said in my previous post, to get to the Gannet place we have to first cross the Black-backed gull land. Great Black-backed gull is the largest of the gulls, and is described as a “merciless tyrant”. They can be fierce and aggressive at their nests, but I have no intention to bother them, and I know there are no chicks that early in the year. The gulls are perched on the rocks and become agitated as I get closer. Apparently they don’t understand the message I am sending them with my body language. One of them is trying to attack me. I keep walking and pretend I don’t hear, so he finally leaves me alone and returns to his rock. I turn around and take a picture 🙂 Then I hurry away.

Just before the Cat Cliff comes into sight, I see another Black-backed gull with a tiny crab in its bill.

Finally I reach the Cat Cliff. This place always makes me emotional and fills me with reverence for the mystery of life. Beautiful big birds are so vulnerable here keeping the eggs warm, protecting the young.

While climbing down the cliff, I have to pass by a clan of European Shags whose matriarch is an ill-tempered bird that starts hissing way before I come close. This year her young and very shy son finally has his own family. Now there are three nests altogether. I didn’t want to bother the hissing mama and the shy lad, and took a few pictures of the third Shag with two chicks and a Razorbill in background. Shag looks similar to Cormorant, but they are two different birds, easily distinguished from each other: Shag is smaller and has emerald green eyes and green sheen on the feathers. Also the European Shag’s tail has 12 feathers and the Great Cormorant’s 14 feathers. European Shag chicks hatch over a two day interval – it is why one chick looks much bigger than the other.

These two Gannets are familiar to me. Their nests are perched at the very edge of the cliff so I always have to pass by them.

I make myself comfortable on a big flat rock, and when the Gannets take off and land I feel like on Maho beach 😉

gannet

This is not a fight, but an act of affection 🙂

A perfect bird.

Synchronized flight.

Watching gannet landings, I forget about time.

I would sit on that rock and admire the gannets until dark, but it is time to start moving as the boat is back in an hour.

I safely pass the Black-backs territory and stop at the highest point to enjoy the beautiful view. You can see the Little Saltee in background.

I walk through the carpets of blue and white.

And of course, Sea Pink.

Oystercatcher’s loud, panicked voice calls me back from my daydreams.

I take one last glance around. This is the Makestone, the largest islet at the southern side of the Great Saltee.

Little Saltee looks close when zoomed out. In fact, the channel between the islands is about a mile wide and 30 f deep.

At this time of the year, puffins spend most of their time at sea. I have only seen four puffins during this trip. They will return later, after we leave the island. I am glad they are safe here.

An Crosan – The Razorbill – will take us back to Kilmore Quay. Two seals bathing in shallow waters are not afraid of Cap’n Declan and his dinghy.

Thank you for visiting, exploring and discovering all things beautiful. Hope you put Saltee Islands in your itinerary for next June.

Have a wonderful week!

Saltee Island: meet the Gannets

Visiting the Gannet nesting site was so much fun. I didn’t get the picture I wanted, but I got something really cool, anyway.

Sometimes Gannets bring in nesting materials – sea weeds, grass, any rubbish they can pick up in the water. This one had got a great catch!

His lady wasn’t impressed though.

Their body language was so expressive and funny that I couldn’t stop smiling. I know, I humanize them too much, and it could be that the gift was totally accepted and relationship established. As to me, I have got many funny pictures.

The Gannet dances is something to see. I have some pictures of the courtship dances in my previous blogs, but this time I caught a single young male Gannet dancing like no one is watching.

I hoped to get a good picture of a landing Gannet, but they all landed in an opposite direction or sideways. Gannet is a huge bird that takes a whole frame to fit in, even diagonally.

I have got many ‘portraits’ and played with them in Photoshop.

This photograph of a landing Gannet is here to show you what exactly I wanted to capture: the bird ‘stalling’ in the air, its legs positioned towards the rear of the body, and its webbed feet stretched forward. Everything like in this picture, but from the front.

Another dance.

On every ledge of rock there is a nest made of seaweeds, feathers and multicolored bits of rope and fishing net. This female has a very young chick, featherless, with the dark blue skin.

This chick is at least two weeks old ball of fluffy down.

Gannets could be very aggressive, both males and females. In this picture you see two gannets trying to kill the third one. Its neck is almost snapped in half, and I don’t know about the outcome because we were leaving the colony at that time.

It is what I saw from the cliff when I turned back to look at the Gannet nesting site one more time. The main colony looks much smaller than last year. May be the sub-colony on the left side is growing bigger? I hope so. I stood there in awe – you cannot get used to the sight like this one. The air was filled with the sound of the wind, breaking waves, and the distant harsh cries of the Gannets. See you next year, beautiful birds!

A Youtube video for you to enjoy 🙂

Thank you for joining me in my trip!

More to follow.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Saltee Islands – treasure bigger than money -part 2

(Click on the photographs to enlarge them)

First three hours were gone in a blink. It is the magic of Puffins. I was on my way to the Cat Cliff on the Southern end of the island – the land of the Northern Gannets.

Great Saltee island ascends from 3-5m high shore on the mainland side to 20-30m high cliffs on its south-eastern side. The Southern Summit rises to an altitude of 58m.

I was walking along a stone wall, and after it ended the path took steep up through the waist-high ferns.

On the summit I made a stop to take a picture. It was still foggy.

A Great black backed gull was standing on a rock. I came closer. It is a large bird, a predator attacking and killing even the far larger animals and birds, and I didn’t want to take a risk. Yet, I didn’t notice the chicks until they ran and hid themselves, and only then I knew I was in trouble. The last thing I needed was to be struck by a gull! I turned back and walked away as fast as I could without running in panic, while the gull’s partner repeatedly flew over my head diving low enough to touch my hair. With its wingspan of 150-170cm the attacking gull was as good as a small aircraft.

I caught up with the other photographers and we headed to the Cat Cliff barely visible in the mist.

There was another gull – a male with no chicks around ( we will see them later).

To get to the Cat Cliff takes an effort, but it was a fun climb because of the many species of the sea birds and their young we met on our way. Look at these Razorbills with their soft fluffy bellies.

A young Common shag looks from under the rock…

…and makes a careful step with his clumsy webbed foot.

An adult bird is different, all shiny and beautiful.

This is the place. A small colony of Gannets are settled on the left from the Cat Cliff. We don’t go there – it is a steep cliff and very little room for a tripod.

This is the Cat Cliff itself.

I sat there enjoying the sight, and took this panorama. Unfortunately there is no sky because of the thick fog.

We came very close to the nesting birds, but they didn’t mind. They have lived a long life, and have seen it all…

In my previous posts, there are more facts and more different photographs. If you are interested, you can go back and read these post – I have reblogged them.

Here you can listen to the gannet call. Multiply it by couple of thousand 🙂

The sky is crawling with Gannets.

After landing the birds perform a “dance”.

Sometimes they bring some weeds.

Under every rock there is a chick. I have no idea what bird they belong to.

This one looks different.

And finally I see them – the chicks of the Great black backed gull I photographed in the flight. Their mother is standing next to them and looking at me with the menacing red eye. They are so tiny and innocent, but the fact is that three more killers will join the party soon. Sorry for the Puffins…

Look at this tiny wing 🙂

Who can find the chicks in this photograph in 10 seconds? 🙂

On the way back the sky cleared for a few minutes and I took another picture of the island.

We also got to see the seals.

The boat was coming in an hour. I started getting nervous. This photograph of a tiny rock that stuck between the big rocks forever shows exactly how I felt.

We went down to the Boulder Beach and sat there looking in the mist. Our motorboats finally came, the inflatable boats took us six at a time on board, and off we went again. Lucky me. The wind was not that strong, and I had never left the deck this time, all soaked in seawater but perfectly well and happy.

Thank you for reading about my adventures!

Have a great weekend!

Golden faces, silver eyes and blue eyelids.

It started raining. Creeping from one rock to another I was finally done with photographing the puffins willing to pose.

I looked around and saw that my peeps took off and started to disappear one by one in the sea of ferns. So I hurried after them.

Our next destination was Gannet Headland, a nesting ground for the Northern gannets. You cannot see the place before you climb up to the highest point of the island through the high ferns and then walk down to the rugged cliffs. Then you just stop there, speechless.

The gannet is Europe’s largest sea bird with a wingspan up to 2 metres. The adults are white and the young birds are very dark brown. It takes 5 years for them to reach maturity and start breeding. They say there are two thousand couples nesting there on the island. The gannets make their nests from seaweeds, feathers and human made materials found in the water.

Gannet with a bunch of seaweed to furnish the nest.

Gannets hunt fish by plunge-diving from a remarkable height into the sea and then using their wings and feet to swim deeper. After returning from the sea they have this gentle ritual of affection with the other partner, preening and touching the bills.

The young chick reaches deep into its parent’s throat for its meal of partially digested fish.

The parent birds take turns warming the eggs and protecting the chicks.

The gannets are very vocal:)

As you can see, there are some couples with very young chicks, naked and helpless, and some with the older ones, covered with soft white down.

Gannets have very interesting features. For example, they have no external nostrils: they are located inside the mouth. Their eyes are positioned slightly up to the front which gives them a better view.

There is my reflection in the gannet’s eye:)

Clumsy on take-offs and landings the gannets are powerful fliers with an impressive wing span.

Now I want to share something sad. Please read this article…

Gold-faced, silver-eyed, gracious birds… Isn’t there anything else to eat in this century?

There are also other species of birds on the island. This is a Herring gull in its flight.

This is a Fulmar.

These are the Blackback gull chicks.

This angry bird is a Shag. Shags breed colonially between the rocks and in sea caves.

This is the island owners’ house. We were heading to the shelter to hide from the rain and wait for our boat.

The ferrying boat could not come closer, so we had to be carried over there by an inflatable boat.

Little and Great Saltee islands on the horizon. It was one of the most memorable trips in my life.

I hope you enjoyed this trip with me. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger. They are all resized for the web with resolution 72, so you won’t have problems opening them. Same for the previous post about the Puffins.

Photography tip of the day: When you are going to take pictures of sea birds, not having a telephoto shouldn’t stop you – the birds let you come close enough. These pictures were taken with a 70-200, but you can bring any lens you have. The settings matter, as I wrote in the previous post, and your vision matters. I wanted to get dreamy, a little bit grainy pictures with blurred background. Also watch your white colors. It is important to see the details on the white feathers, otherwise they look like burnt-out spots.

Have a great week!