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
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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