Arguably the most elegant bird seen on our trips is the gannet, a bright white bird that makes a seagull look grey. Gannets have a gorgeous creamy yellow head, a bright, piercing blue eye and a wingspan of 6 feet! Their wings are slender and elegant, with jet black wing tips that stand out against their snowy white feathers.
A gannet’s wingspan can be up to 2 metres across!
Not only are they pretty birds, but they are quite the athletes and expert fishermen! When diving for fish, gannets can hit the water at 60 mph by making a perfectly streamline shape with their body. How do they do this? Well, if your squeamish perhaps stop reading…when diving, a gannet can dislocate its wings, folding them behind its body to make an arrow shape – ouch!
This arrow shape is characteristic of feeding gannets and is quite a sight to behold, as they look like darts being thrown into the water. What’s more, the gleaming white feathers of gannets are so bright that gannets can see each other hunting from 20 miles away and end up gathering in areas full of fish. The gannets we see here in the Firth of Lorne don’t nest here, but come for the shoals of fish.
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Gannets often travel in small groups, called a string
Here at Seafari Adventures we keep our eyes peeled for the dart-like gannets diving, as they often track seals, porpoise, dolphins and even whales to find their fish, acting as a tell-tale sign for us when other sea life is feeding under the waves.
Gannets track marine mammals such as porpoise to know where fish are
Scotland alone is home to 40% of the world’s northern gannets which nest inhuge, smelly colonies on remote islands like Bass Rock, St Kilda and Ailsa Craig. Most of the gannets we see here nest on Ailsa Craig, about 100km further south