Here, wildlife photographer Richard Shucksmith presents his expert guide to gannets, with details of where to see them, how to identify, anatomy, hunting techniques, what they eat, and mating patterns.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Where do gannets live?<\/h2>\n
The preferred breeding grounds for gannets are towering sea cliffs on remote and windswept offshore islands. Safe from large mammalian predators, these refuges are surrounded by the gannet\u2019s favourite food: oily fish. Feeding is important to the gannet: these birds carry a lot of fat, providing both the insulation that allows them to save energy while in icy waters and a fuel store to tide them over in lean times.<\/p>\n
Gannet colonies are also windy places, and wind is especially important to the gannet. Its long narrow wings are adapted for distant foraging out at sea, but they make landing and taking off difficult without assistance from the wind. Remote island cliffs provide strong updraughts, which the gannet uses to land and take flight.<\/p>\n
Visiting a gannet cliff on foot provides a different experience. Approaching a cliff edge, before you even see the birds, the noise of thousands of gannets and the strong, acrid smell of guano hits your senses. Looking down from the clifftop, you see a swirling mass of gannets, like a throbbing giant white organism, encrusting the cliff face.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Looking closely at the white-covered ledges, however, you will see organisation, a remarkable pattern of thousands of evenly spaced nests about 80cm apart \u2013 just enough to accommodate two large adults, including room for mutual display and a large chick.<\/p>\n
Gannets build substantial nests, often using seaweed to form the base. A sticky gelatin found in seaweeds helps stick the nest to the rock. The finished structure is around 30cm across, with a nest cup in the middle. Grass and other material floating in the sea are incorporated into the nest. It is rare today to find a gannet\u2019s nest without some form of plastic in it, such as rope and old fishing nets. This causes problems \u2013 mainly entanglement. It is not unusual to see a gannet hanging from the cliff by a piece of rope and suffering a slow, painful death.<\/p>\n
With adjacent nests so close to each other, the collective noise and pair-bonding displays, from bill-tapping to mutual preening, stimulate all the birds, enhancing reproductive success throughout the colony. This helps gannets lay their eggs early, so their young fledge before the winter storms.<\/p>\n
Gannet mating patterns<\/h2>\n
Gannets mate for life and return to the same nest year on year. They lay one egg, and both sexes incubate, taking about 44 days to hatch. The newborn chick is about 11cm long and weighs 70\u201380 grams. Just 13 weeks later, the chick is eight times bigger at about 90cm long, and \u2013 at over four kilos \u2013 more than 50 times heavier.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> To get the chick to that weight, the gannets must feed on rich, seasonally predictable fish such as herring, sand eels and, in particular, mackerel, which are rich in nutrients and oils. The latter are plentiful inshore from June to September.<\/p>\n Offshore, the gannet is virtually the only seabird<\/a>\u00a0that feeds on them; only a gannet has the weight to plunge deep enough to catch a mackerel, and the strength to handle these powerful fish.<\/p>\n The evolutionary adaptations required to catch these relatively large fish are remarkable. Gannets will plunge-dive anything from nine metres to 15 metres above the sea, reaching up to 60mph when they enter the water. Their wings fold right back, turning their bodies into a tight, streamlined shape, so they travel further and faster into the water without their wings being damaged on impact.<\/p>\n To reduce the chances of impact injuries, air sacs in the head and neck inflate \u2013 like airbags in cars. The gannet\u2019s nostrils are fused, preventing water from entering the sinuses. They have binocular vision and the ability to adapt their eyesight by changing the shape of the lens in a split second to give them pinpoint vision both above and below the waves for catching fish.<\/p>\n The dive only allows the bird to reach depths of a few metres, but gannets can swim very well underwater, using both wings and feet for propulsion \u2013 this enables them to plunge even deeper, pursuing fish down to around 30 metres.<\/p>\n Gannets have two dive types: one V-shaped, which lasts only a few seconds; the other U-shaped, in which the bird swims and may be submerged for around 20 seconds. The U-shaped dive is about 50% more successful at catching prey.<\/p>\n Having built their strength on fish, the juvenile gannets soon migrate south up to 5,000km, almost to the equator of west Africa. At the same time, adult gannets migrate to the Mediterranean and as far as Morocco and Senegal.<\/p>\n Many UK seabird species have gone through some difficult times over the past few decades, as changes in sea temperature affect their food supply. Gannets, though, are a rare success story. Gannet populations are increasing by between 3% and 5% per year, thanks to well-managed mackerel and herring stocks. The gannet now has a UK population of around 600,000 (240,000 nesting pairs). That\u2019s internationally significant, comprising 60\u201370% of the global population.<\/p>\n All of which means that, with luck, gannets will remain in Britain\u2019s wild places for generations to come \u2013 and their vibrant, thronging, noisy colonies will continue to be one of the must-see places to visit for an unforgettable wildlife experience.<\/p>\n The best time to see gannet colonies is in summer, from May to August.<\/p>\n Trying to shoot a natural feeding frenzy of thousands of gannets diving on a shoal of fish has proved impossible in the UK<\/span> \u2013 so we photographers have had to improvise.<\/p>\n Gannets have learned to follow fishing vessels, feeding on discards or bycatch \u2013 the unwanted fish thrown back overboard. So I mimicked a fishing vessel to create a gannet feeding frenzy. That was 10 years ago; the technique is now perfected. By building chutes that release dropped fish two to three metres below the surface, I can mimic shoaling fish. I have tried several ways \u2013 hanging over the side of the boat, using a pole-cam, snorkelling and diving \u2013 and they all work. By far the most exhilarating is to be in the water myself. The gannets dive incredibly close, within a few inches, but never hit me. I may get an occasional wing in the face, but with the gannet\u2019s ability to pinpoint the fish, I never get hit \u2013 it\u2019s not in the gannet\u2019s interest to hit an object when diving into water.<\/p>\n Every summer, I photograph and film this dramatic spectacle and help other photographers and film productions.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Richard Shucksmith Published: Sunday, 31 July 2022 at 12:00 am Gannets are large white seabirds easily recognised thanks to their unique diving methods.\u00a0The sight of gannets hunting is like no other, a spectacle that ranks as one of the greatest wildlife wonders to be seen in the UK. Here, wildlife photographer Richard Shucksmith presents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":18503,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"8"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-scaled.jpg",2560,1709,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-768x513.jpg",768,513,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-1024x684.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-1536x1025.jpg",1536,1025,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/gannet-guide-how-they-dive-mating-identification-and-where-to-find-them-2048x1367.jpg",2048,1367,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Richard Shucksmith Published: Sunday, 31 July 2022 at 12:00 am Gannets are large white seabirds easily recognised thanks to their unique diving methods.\u00a0The sight of gannets hunting is like no other, a spectacle that ranks as one of the greatest wildlife wonders to be seen in the UK. Here, wildlife photographer Richard Shucksmith presents…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/18502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How do gannets hunt?<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Gannet migration<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Anatomy of a gannet<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Where and when to see gannets<\/h2>\n
How to photograph gannets<\/h2>\n
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