Sunday, March 17 - Up close with Gannets

      We first saw, and photographed gannets, which are one of the largest seabirds, while crossing Cook Strait, .  Their wingspan reaches over six feet, and they feed by plunging from 100 feet  into the water at speeds up to 60 mph, which seems like would hurt, but I guess they've figured out how to make that work for them.  When we saw that there is a nesting colony at Cape Kidnappers south of Napier we figured we had to hike out and take a look.

The road ends at Clifton Station.  This is the station house. It would be
a good setting for a Daphne du Maurier novel.

There's a funky campground at the last bit of road. This is a pretty
nice set-up.

You have to time your walk around the tides, because for the three or
so hours on either side of high tide the sea laps the base of these cliffs.
The gannet colony is at the far left side of the land and is a good two
hour hike.  

We finally get to hike in the New Zealand rain.  There has been a ruinous
drought here, and in the two months in NZ we've only had about four days
of rain.

The sedimentary cliffs along the walk display
interesting geological history. On one stretch
we heard clicking sounds and realized it was
small rocks being washed out by the rain and
falling from several hundred feet to the
beach not far from where we had to walk
to stay out of the surf.  A bit exciting.

The colony resides on a few large rocks just offshore
and on a large landslip resting against the cliff that
protects the nests from predators.  They are unafraid
of humans and we could walk right up to the rock.

They are magnificent birds, and we were thrilled to get to watch them feed
their young ...

... and do their greeting dances.

This mother, or father, keeps an eye on us.  They both care for their young.

Groups of gannets return to the nest in the afternoon, bringing bellies
full of fish for their young.  The chicks stick the beaks almost all the way
up to their eyes into the parents mouth to pull out dinner.  Made me gag.

Sometimes they flew quite close to us.  I'm sure they could hurt us if they
wanted to.  You have see The Birds, haven't you?

This chick waits patiently for a parent return to feed it.

The young are at different points in their development.  The fuzzy white
chick in the previous photo was among the youngest.   This guy is fully
grown and has all his feathers.  He kept flapping his long wings as if ready
 to take off and fly.  In fact, the earliest hatchlings left in the past couple
weeks. Gannets don't get their adult color until they're five years old, and
once they leave the nest they spend most of their time on the wing until they
get old enough to mate and return to raise their own young.

We're a little wet, but happy to be watching the gannets.

The sun started to come out on our long walk back to the car.  Time for a
little rest.

     Since it was Saint Patrick's day we decided we might like to go to an Irish pub for Guinness and dinner.  We drove back into Napier looking forward to just sitting and maybe listening to a little Irish music with dinner.  But the three Irish pubs in town were packed with people wearing funny green hats and we decided to pass.  Instead we bought some cabbage and potatoes and canned corned beef, and a four pack of Guinness, and returned to our campground for a proper Irish meal.  Erin go bragh!