I feel the need, the need to breed…..

June 6, 2015

After celebrating it’s third year “Ganniversary” on the island – commemorated in the great wooden plaque in our kitchen, our male Northern Gannet has changed it’s behavior radically. Even though this Atlantic bird, the only of it’s kind in the Pacific that likely traveled through an ice free Northwest Passage, can’t find a mate here on the Farallones – it’s breeding season hormones are definitely raging. The bird is displaying regularly and disrupting Brandt’s Cormorants in their breeding colonies (see video below).

The bird has also been seen regularly on the mainland, travelling back and forth from the island as it did last year around this time. Even though the bird can’t breed here, it is definitely feeling the urge to do so!