Bird-watching
A slight smell of guano fills the air; the high-pitched yells of thousands of birds reach our ears as we walk through the forest toward them. The noise level is so high that with each step, we feel as if we're right beside them. When we reach the fence that surrounds the northern gannet colony, there's no longer room for doubt. As we enter the birds territory, the intense noise makes it impossible to talk.
The northern gannet colony of Bonaventure Island is the largest one in North America, and the second most important in the world. The birds don't miss an opportunity to let us know that they're kings around here; they don't tone down the noise for even a second. While the two cameramen set up their equipment, I take a moment to watch the birds behaviour.
Packed up against one another, they seem to be fighting for the same nest. "Despite appearances," explains our guide Gilbert Bourget, "every family has its own nest. The problem is that when the male comes back from the hunt, he doesn't recognize his female! In order to recognize his mate, the male attacks her at the neck. If the female bird lets him do it, he knows she's his mate. It's only once these preliminaries are over with that they'll eat. On top of fighting in order to be recogniged, northern gannets are always ready to attack when another member of the colony invades their nesting territory. The younger birds are particularly guilty of this. Not yet able to fly, their shapeless bodies still covered with down, bear the marks of these repeated attacks. By the end of the autumn, those who haven't learned to fly will be abandoned on the island. Life can be cruel when you're a northern gannet.
However, the behaviour of these birds when they're on the ground is in sharp contrast to their conduct in the air. As soon as they jump off the rocky cliffs of Bonaventure Island and spread their wings, they become majestic. Their wingspan is so impressive they look like sailing ship riding the currents. <Their wingspan can be as wide as 1.5 metres, says Bourget, which allows them to travel great distances to find food. Some birds can go as far as 150 kilometres from their nest!< Most of time, however, the birds only have to plunge into the waters off the island to fish for their lunch.
The waters surrounding Bonaventure Island are indeed very rich in vegetation, fish and other sea animals. Plunging headfirst into the sandy seabed, the gannets dig out sand eels, eating as they go. If this tactic doesn't work, they can always move under water with the help of their webbed feet. Most people don't know, explains Bourget, "but northern gannets are excellent swimmers. The hardest thing for them is to fly with wet wings. They may run for a long time, beating their wings, before they take flight."
We go back down to sea level to see the birds dive. The intensity of their cries diminishes as we get closer to the water's edge. The birds have stopped their war games and and are busy looking for food. We can see them in all their glory visions of graceful flight, the sun reflecting off their white wings. They're magnificent. As they fly over our heads, just for a minute, we feel as if we were in Hitchcock's The Birds. After a few hours of observation, we leave Bonaventure Island and it's northern gannet colony. On the way to Percé, we see a few more birds overhead. Once our boat is firmly attached to the dock and the island once again becomes the playground ground these curious birds, we look back and think that they must find us peculiar too. The idea of spending the whole day bird watching must seem just as weird to them.
"The more you look at birds, the more you learn about human behaviour Bourget tells us, feeling philosophical."
