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Date:         Fri, 8 Mar 2013 18:35:05 -0500
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Fryeday Gannet video
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Over the thirty-year span that I cruised the Maine coast both osprey and loons recovered remarkably. I wouldn't be surprised if the osprey achieved "nuisance" before too long, instead of exotic rarity; and toward the end we'd see a loon every day or two instead of once or twice on a 2-3 week cruise. And it was a treat to once make landfall from the Abacos at Charleston, South Carolina, where the brown pelicans flew in wing-beat-synchronized formations and dove down to smash into the water, raising a great splash and bobbing on the surface as the white water fell back.

But I have always been in absolute awe of the gannet, who enters the water like a flight of arrows and simply vanishes. I once spent some time in the water with one of these large birds in a light fog off the Maine coast. He (she?) had gotten his beak fouled in a lobster pot warp, and when I came alongside him in Scamp he was pretty tired, too tired to object to being handled. As I learned that day, the gannet's beak is edged with a very long and shallow sawtooth that provides a one-way route for fish; so that having once stabbed the pot warp he couldn't withdraw his beak. It took me ten minutes or so in the water to cut him free without injuring him or cutting the pot adrift; and he was able to give me a dirty look and make it back up into the air. He did *not* help me back into the boat, the ingrate. Thirty-two foot sailboats are a lot bigger (and go a lot faster) when you're swimming next to them in 60F water than otherwise.

Anyway, if you're wondering how a bird can get its beak stuck through the middle of a piece of skinny line hanging off a pot buoy, this video should help. Watch it in 1080p if your connection is fast enough. I don't know where it was shot -- we never saw them in such numbers in Maine, and ours nest farther north. I've never seen one on shore.

The long takeoff run is common to various fast-flying water birds. Another Maine seabird is a small auk called the Black Guillemot, as petite as the gannet is imposing; and it's always amusing to watch its little feet buzzing away as it takes off from the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQlX0WJd_5g

Yrs, David


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