“I will praise Thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will show forth all Thy marvelous works.”
Psalm 9:1
One of our earlier articles, entitled “Birds of the Cliffs,” mentioned gannets along with petrels, puffins and others and their group-nesting habits. Today we’ll look at the common gannet in more detail. In the summer they live along the north Atlantic coast, as well as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They migrate as far south as the coast of North Carolina for the winter.
The common gannet is a large bird, about three feet from the tip of its bill to the end of its tail and weighs about six pounds. It is snow-white except for black-tipped wings. It has a long, narrow tail, as well as four-toed webbed feet and a strong, sharp bill for catching and eating fish. Its long, tapered bill is sharply pointed and makes a good weapon. Nostrils that seal keep water from seeping in when it is underwater.
Gannets eat nothing but fish. Sometimes they search for fish in groups or they may search alone. Depending upon the weather, they may look for fish while flying just ten or twelve feet above the water’s surface or as much as fifty or sixty feet high. Spotting a fish of the right size, a gannet will break away from the group in a quick dive, pulling its wings close to its body at the moment it hits the surface. It is such a swift swimmer that the fish rarely gets away.
A gannet can swallow a foot-long fish in one gulp. However, if there is a hungry baby in the nest, the parent will take the catch back to the nest. Then he or she will eat it and bring the digested food back up to a pouch in its throat where the hungry little one can reach it.
Mothers usually lay just one egg on a grass-lined spot of bare rock which is sheltered under an overhanging part of a cliff. It takes about a month to incubate the egg, and the mother does this by placing it under her warm webbed feet. After it is hatched, both parents guard the baby bird from vicious birds until it is able to fly. At that time it boldly leaps off the cliffside, perhaps as much as two hundred feet above the water, and promptly discovers why the Creator has given it such strong wings. Reaching the water, it swims around for a long time, gaining strength in legs and body and never returns to its parents.
Isn’t it nice to know that the Creator is always watching over these interesting birds? A Bible verse tells us this: “Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made . . . the earth, and all things that are therein . . . and Thou preservest them all” (Nehemiah 9:6). What does He see as He watches over you?
ML-04/08/2007