Gannets Galore

What a magical day we had today. We booked for the Overland Gannet experience this morning, and it was worth every cent we paid.

We arrived to the tour in plenty of time and were loaded aboard a 4wd minibus and we were driven over the vast Cape Kidnappers Station, a sheep and cattle farm of about 2500 hectares. Parts were very steep, and the terrain seems very friable and chalky. The owners have put a considerable effort into pest eradication, with some success – all possums gone and 85000 rabbits culled, and an ongoing program to control rats, stoats etc. A lot of native birds, lizards, tuatara and even wetas have been reintroduced and are now thriving.

The drive of around 30kms took us to Cape Kidnapper’s gannet colony, but on the way we had a couple of stops to look at the scenery. In the distance we could see Mt Ruapehu (about 90km as the crow flies) and the steep cliffs of the coastline where you could see the fault lines in the rock patterns. There had been a slip here a few years ago which temporarily halted tours to the gannets, and we were shown photos that were taken as that slip happened.

We were traveling around a windy and hilly metal road when we came around a blind corner and there were thousands of gannets – just right there! Oh Wow. We stood no more than 3 metres from the birds who seemed unperturbed that we were there. At times they were coasting in to their nests flying over our shoulders, so close that we could have reached out and touched them.

There were three colonies in this area. The one we were next to were on a plateau at the top of a cliff, near the Cape Kidnapper’s lighthouse. This allowed the birds a bit of wind current to help them become airborne.

But there was also a colony on the rocky beach below

and another one on a flat rocky area of an outcrop, called the Saddle Colony.

The nests are little more than a small mound of seaweed, weeds and gannet poo, and the birds are very territorial of their patch. They can be quite vicious if another bird lands too close to their mound.The male birds are the ones who forage for seaweed to bring back to their mate. We watched as one poor male, with a beak full of seaweed, had to circle 8 times before he found his girlfriend and their nesting site. Pairs of gannets mate for life, and produce only one egg. The egg is incubated under their webbed feet which have blood vessels near the surface making the bottom of their feet nice and warm. We occasionally got a glimpse of an egg when a bird was changing position.

When the male comes back to the nest there is an affectionate welcome dance the two of them perform before they get down to business.

The tour went for 3 hours and by that time we were a bot hungry so we went to visit a cafe down the road. It looked lovely but was booked out – we had forgotten to account for the holiday weekend. It was the same story when we visited a place called Birdwoods, so we finally drove into Havelock North and found a lovely cafe there to have a bit of lunch.

It was then off to the chocolate factory, Silky Oak Chocolates to purchase a treat or two before heading back to the motorhome park. Overall, a lovely day.