Muriwai Australasian Gannet Colony

I cut short my visit to Tiritiri by a day in order to make sure that I got to Muriwai before I left New Zealand. I've been to gannet colonies before at places like Bass Rock, St Kilda, Noss, Fair Isle, Herma Ness and Bempton Cliffs and I wanted to see how this compared. I was not disappointed.

It might not have the numbers of birds, just a couple of thousand pairs I believe, but still really impressive.

Each nest is spaced so as to be just out of pecking distance from its nearest neighbour. Australasian gannets may look very similar to northern gannets but there are some important ecological differences. One difference is that they prefer to nest in relatively flat places rather than on precipitous cliffs. Another difference is that they are not quite so aggressive as northern gannets.

Whenever an adult arrives back at the nest a lot of pair bonding goes on. A major difference between this species and Northern Gannet are the black secondaries.

At Muriwai you can get within touching distance of the birds.

Note the black secondaries. These are white on Northern Gannet, leaving only the wing tips black.

Every now and then a dark shadow of death passes over the colony.

Many of the chicks are probably too large to be taken now, but the kelp gulls still patrol the colony on the look out for anything they can grab. If this was Shetland or anywhere in the UK, I'd call the chicks guga but can we still use that name in New Zealand??

Less worrying to the gannets but just as prone to attack from the kelp gulls, there is also a decent population of white-fronted terns on the edges of the colony and there must be 500 birds on an offshore island.