watching the gannets go ~

I was very lucky yesterday to be able to sit on a wooden structure right on the basalt rocks by the lower Bay of Fundy and watch the gannets fly by (very close) on their way south. Apparently, they go as far as Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Their flight is exquisite and fast (series of wingbeats and a glide). They are fairly large seabirds with a wingspan of approximately two meters (about six and a half feet, Leila) .

Sometimes they would swoop down ever so close to the water and dip the very tips of their wings just slightly in the waves. Their wingtips are black like they have been dipped in ink.

These gannets were on the move, not fishing, but winging their way down the shore. You could feel their focus.

Gannets are a bright (in the sunlight) white bird, and when they flew towards the sun, they would for moments become invisible, sort of disappearing and reappearing depending upon how they were angled toward the light. The most i saw in one grouping was nine. Nine gorgeous gannets.