This is my favorite picture from our visit to a gannet colony last month just south of Napier, New Zealand.
We almost didn’t get to go there. Last summer when we were planning our trip to Australia and New Zealand, we had booked an excursion with a company that takes people along the beach and up to the gannet colony. But about two weeks before we were to go on the excursion, we heard there had been a landslide at the beach, effectively putting that tour group out of business for a while. We called them and they confirmed this bad news. But they also mentioned another tour group that took a different, overland route to the gannets. We called them and reserved our spots.
We rattled along narrow dirt roads in a bus filled about about a dozen other bird lovers, mostly Dutch. And once at our final destination, we were able to walk right up to our fine feathered friends and their babies.
These sea-going birds hatch and raise their chicks here. When the babies are ready to fledge, about a year after birth, they jump off this cliff and fly about 1200 miles to a spot in Australia. They spend a few seasons there, and eventually return to this spot to raise their own families.
We got as close as a few feet to some of these birds; they didn’t mind us at all. The only thing we minded was the smell. As they feed their young be regurgitating fish they’ve caught and eaten, well, enough about that.