Читать книгу Nature’s Babies - Mike Dilger - Страница 9

With its torpedo-shaped body, long, narrow wings and its dagger-like bill, the gannet is a very lean and very mean fishing machine. It is also an incredibly sociable bird during the breeding season and nests in densely packed colonies on steep cliffs and raised slopes around the coasts and islands surrounding Britain, northern Europe and northeast America.

Gannets are usually faithful to both their partner and to their breeding location, and pairs of birds will often return to exactly the same tiny territory of guano-stained rock each year. This special area will be stoutly defended against all neighbours and any newcomers by ritualized displays between the pair. If trespassers don’t get the earlier, more subtle messages, they will receive a quick jab of the gannet’s sharp bill.

Once the single chick is hatched it is initially guarded around the clock by at least one parent to ensure that it is not snatched by any opportunistic gulls eager for an easy meal. As each adult returns from a fishing mission, the black, naked youngster reaches deep down into its parent’s mouth to feed on regurgitated fish. The youngster will grow quickly on this rich diet of mackerel or herring which it is brought by its conscientious parents several times a day. But then, at around 90 days, the parents suddenly stop feeding their offspring in an effort to force it to fledge. Egged on by hunger, the still flightless chick has to make a kamikaze-style jump down to the waters below before it can begin paddling south for the winter. Only once it has lost a bit of weight from such energetic paddling will it finally be able to take to the air and hunt for itself.

United Kingdom

© Yva Momatiuk/john Eastcott/FLPA

A gannet chick waiting to decide whether it is mother or father who has to go and catch breakfast.