GANNETS

Press, 2 June 1989, Page 9

GANNETS

Serious bird watchers know the virtue of patience: sitting quietly, watching intently, maybe balancing a zoom lens within the fork of a tree.

The family and friends of a serious bird watcher also know the virtue of patience and quietness, maybe trying to unwrap a barley-sugar without rustling the wrapper.

Few opportunities exist for the two factions to harmonise their interests without frightening the quarry, but on the most southern point of Hawke’s Bay, at Cape Kidnappers, such an opportunity exists. Pack your picnic lunch. Drive .south from Napier for about 20 kilometres. Park your car where the road ends at Clifton. Make sure it’s low tide. By tractor, four-wheel drive. or foot, journey for two hours towards a lonely headland until you reach several large gannet colonies. Unpack the picnic.

Cape colonies accessible to all

Although gannets are not rare (about 46,000 pairs breed within New Zealand’s waters), they appear to prefer nesting upon offshore islands. Reaching one of their colonies is therefore normally a difficult task. There are only a few exceptions. The colonies at Cape Kidnappers are the largest mainland population in New Zealand. Birds at the cape are accessible enough for people of all fitness levels to view them. It is also sufficiently far removed from civilisation to maintain the elements of adventure and isolation.

Most visitors to Cape Kidnappers join the commercial tractor-and-trailer service which operates from Te Awanga. This entertaining four-hour round-trip acquaints visitors with the bumpy nature of the beach. For those desiring a little more comfort, an overland four-wheel-drive safari is available to transport visitors to within a few metres of one of the main colonies.

Walking to the sanctuary is also a viable option. It allows more time for exploring the beach and enjoying the peace. Important, however, is keeping an eye on the sea, as access along the beach is only possible for a few hours either side of low tide.

Upon reaching the top of the plateau, after a short steep climb from the beach, most visitors exhibit more than a little surprise. Before them, incongruously positioned on the far side of a grassy plateau, sit several, thousand gannets. Depending upon the time of the season, a variety of things may be going on.

Before the colony opens to visitors, the adult males compete for their old nest sites and wait for their partners to arrive. During that time the birds are wary of intruders; any disturbance could jeopardise the success of their breeding. Nestbuilding is well under way by October.

ber a single egg will be laid and both parents take turns to incubate it under their webbed feet.

The first chicks will also appear. Ugly at first, the small reptile-like chick quickly develops a coat of white down and soon appears larger than its parents. Later in the season, in the new year, the flight plumage of the juvenile develops. Rather like an ugly duckling, the adolescent chick resembles its stylish parents only in shape. By February most of the chicks are fully grown, well endowed with a grey-brown and white plumage, and are contemplating their independent journey to the coast of Australia. Flying without the aid of parental or peer guidance, each chick faces the uncertainty of the transTasman flight alone. Only 30 per cent survive to return in adult plumage within

Entertaining time of year

With trails of seaweed carried in their beaks, the males attempt to reach their nest site without losing their prize to a possessive neighbour. This is a particularly entertaining time of the year as seaweed is a highly desirable commodity as nesting material. A short tug-of-war solves most disputes. Through November to Decem-

One Aussie visit enough for most

Story and photographs by ROBERT GREENAWAY who has had three summers as a seasonal ranger with the Department of Conservation at Cape Kidnappers; he has recently been tutoring in recreation studies at Lincoln College and has a particular interest in ecology and conservation.

3 >/ 2 years. They seldom return to Australia but remain around New Zealand for their adult lives.

Only 30 p.c. survive for return in adult plumage

It is uncertain as to why such a hazardous journey is made. The adolescent chicks perhaps require a period free from competition for food from the more experienced adults. During their time away they develop the specialised skills necessary for high-speed diving. Many millions of years ago, when what was to become New Zealand was nearer to the Australian coast, a migration from the breeding colonies to easy feeding grounds would have been short and easily navigated. As continental drift occurs so slowly, the gannets may have never noticed that the journey became progressively longer. The term “as greedy as a gannet” has a firm link with

The gannet’s behaviour patterns are mostly, if not totally, a result of its extraordinary feeding technique. From a maximum height of 30 metres above the sea, upon sighting a fish, the bird folds its wings and plummets.

reality. The natural environment is a competitive place. If a species is to survive it has to concentrate on what it does well.

The impact of hitting the water at speeds up to 145km/h requires some special adaptations. Inflatable air-sacs under the skin on the chest and lowerneck cushion the shock.

Leathery eyelids prevent damage to their eyes (it is a commonly held fallacy that blindness is the ultimate fate of the aged gannet). A lack of external nostrils prevents another nasty surprise.

For the sake of streamlining, they have also forgone a brood pouch: an area of feathers under which most birds incubate their eggs. Instead, the gannet has a strong blood supply to the webs of its feet, and it is under these that incubation takes place.

Limit of one

chick per year

There is only room for one egg and so the gannet is limited to one chick a year. As 70 per cent of the chicks fail to survive the migration to Australia, the species requires of its members a long breeding life — up to 28 years. During this time the gadult gannet should have produced enough chicks to help maintain the population. They have also sacrificed the ability to land gracefully. Highspeed diving requires a streamlined body shape — long, narrow wings and a sharp tail. Landing gracefully on flat ground requires the ability to gradually reduce speed until the bird stalls precisely at the right moment. The process calls for relatively wide wings and a large tail, like a fantail. The gannet sadly lacks landing equipment and on windless days performs some remarkably poor landings, either skidding for a short distance upon its chest or falling heavily from a height of up to two metres. The Kidnappers gannet colonies have become progressively more famous since first records of their existence were made in 1879, when about 50 birds formed the first nesting site in a saddle near the tip of the cape.

One of the earliest regular visitors to this colony is said to have been a Hastings baker, who apparently made the lightest of sponges during the summer nesting period.

Soon afterwards, in 1914, a strip of land which encompassed the original saddle colony was gifted to the Crown by the owner of the farmland surrounding the cape. Ten years later the area became a reserve for protecting the gannets.

Birds, visitors

steadily increase

Since then both the number of birds and visitors has increased steadily. The saddle colony has overflowed on to an adjacent

plateau (the plateau colony ) and also to several large rocks below which visitors pass on their way along the beach. Each year some 10,000 people visit more than 5500 nesting gannet pairs during the reserve’s open season, which extends from the Wednesday preceding Labour Day to June 30. The gannets do not suffer as a result of the attention they receive. Each nesting adult has a very small territory, indicated by the distance between it and its neighbour. They show little concern for what goes on outside this area, and so visitors are able to stand within two metres of the colony. Young adults, however, who have not established territories,

need space around the edge of the colony in which to feel at ease. The Department of Conservation has therefore placed a low chain barrier around the “plateau colony,” which indicates how close it is possible to get without upsetting the birds.

Cottage view of whole bay

A ranger is employed each season by the Department of Conservation to keep an eye on the reserve and provide information for interested visitors. She or he has to also clean the toilets, but in spite of that, the job must certainly be one of the most pleasant seasonal positions, in New Zealand, if solitude is considered pleasant. Visiting times are limited to within the low tide and so there is usually company for three or four hours each day. Outside this time, the ranger’s only links with civilisation are a telephone and a long four-wheel-drive farm road. Lack of electricity adds to the atmosphere. The view from the ranger’s lockwood cottage encompasses the entire seascape of Hawke Bay and compensates by far the lack of television. Two solar panels power the telephone and recharge batteries to run a water pump and several 12-volt lights. Cooking is done over a gas stove, and a pot belly provides heating for cool evenings.

Lincoln College provides rangers

During the ranger’s fourmonth stay the cottage quickly becomes a true home and often presents a higher standard of living than the student flats to which many rangers return. Many “seasonals” have been drawn from the parks and recreation management course offered by Lincoln College.

After several seasons as a ranger at the reserve, the attraction of the place becomes clear. Cape Kidnappers offers a rare opportunity to be ignored by a gannet — possibly the kindest thing a bird could do to an interested observer.