Our trip to Scotland this summer took us from a starting point in Glasgow; up through the Hebrides Islands on the west coast of the country; down through Inverness and past Aberdeen; before ending up at the terminus of our trip in the capital of Edinburgh. It took us by lochs and glens; past mountains (such as they have in Britain...); over seas and straits; and through fields and fields of sheep. Sometimes literally through fields of sheep. There was actual waiting in some spots for sheep to move off the road.
By the end of all that traveling, we were ready to settle a bit. We spent more nights in Edinburgh than we did in any other city. We wanted to root ourselves a bit after bopping between five prior hotels in various other towns and cities, but we also wanted to take advantage of Edinburgh's proximity to sights around the city by day tripping out of town for a couple of days. Including our last opportunity for a truly excellent and intimate look at some of the seabirds that nest in the summer months of the coast of Scotland before they head out to sea for most of the year.
When we were on the west coast of the country, we spent a couple of hours on the Isle of Lunga getting up close and personal with a whole lot of puffins. On the Edinburgh side of Scotland, our target was Bass Rock, home to a whole lot of nesting gannets. We've seen quite a few species of seabirds on our travels over the last nine years or so but we hadn't managed to get up close and personal with some gannets until Scotland. We couldn't let this opportunity pass.
The point of departure for our trip to Bass Rock was the town of North Berwick, specifically the dock next to the Scottish Seabird Centre right on the shoreline of the town. The day we tripped to North Berwick was rainy and cold, so we figured there would be little chance of us actually going out to sea. After the 45 minute or so ride from Edinburgh, I was ready for some disappointment. But we were pleasantly surprised to find the trip still a go despite the lousy weather. In fact, the staff at the Centre seemed a bit shocked that I would even ask the question. Good thing. We didn't want to have driven all that way only to turn around, and the weather when we actually got on the water turned out to be just fine.
Bass Rock, by the way, is just that. It's a very, very large rock in the middle of the Firth of Forth (or the mouth of the Forth River). Despite being a giant rock, it has, over the years, been inhabited by a number of different types of people. The first recorded inhabitants were early Christian hermits, and there's nothing like getting away from it all to live on a rock. I mean, how did they even survive out there without a reliable source of fresh water? I guess from reading wikipedia's entry on the Rock, it wasn't always as barren as it is today. Probably the guano is making it that way these days.
Eventually, the Rock fell into the hands of the Lauder family who ended up holding the it for several hundred years before losing it to Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s. The Lauders certainly made their mark on the place by building a castle there, the ruins of which are still visible today. After the Lauders built their castle, the island was used as a couple of different kinds of prisons or jails (or gaols, if you prefer), until it made its way into the hands of the Dalrymple family in 1707 who still hold it to this day. The lighthouse on the island (visible in the picture above) was added in the early 20th century.
Today, all of that is all abandoned and the entirety of the island is used as a nesting colony by some 150,000 northern gannets. Not a typo. One hundred and fifty thousand.
So about those gannets.
The northern gannet, much like those beloved puffins that we found earlier on in this same trip, are predominantly a seabird, which means they spend most (like 9-10 months) of the year at sea feeding and ultimately sort of homeless. But in the summer, gannets return to their traditional breeding grounds and raise a chick for a couple of months. And by a chick, I really do mean just one. One single chick per pair. And the pair is generally the same every year.
Now, if you think you might want to see some gannets, the coast of the United Kingdom in the summer is definitely the place to do that. Fully 2/3 of the entire global population of northern gannets returns every year to the islands and cliffs of the British Isles to do their part to perpetuate the species. If you decide you only want to visit one spot in Britain, Bass Rock is a pretty darned good choice. If that 150K number seemed like a big number, it should; there are more breeding gannets there during the summer than any other spot on Earth.
The gannet, like a lot of other seabirds, are an incredibly well put together and perfectly groomed bird. There's not a feather out of place. I feel this same way about the puffins we saw last year in Maine and on this trip on Lunga and the mollymawks we saw off the coast of Stewart Island in New Zealand. I'm guessing they have this appearance because they need to shed water efficiently on a day to day basis.
Gannets are not the cuties that puffins are and they are not the spectacular gliders that the mollymawks (or lesser albatrosses) are but they are incredibly appealing just the same. The majorities of their bodies are almost pure white, with the exception of their yellow-tinged heads and the black tips on their wings. They really do stand out on the open water from all other species like kittywakes and various types of gulls due to their bright white color.
They are also spectacular divers. When they spot a school of fish below them in the water, they can fashion their bodies into virtual missiles, dropping from the sky at speeds up to 100 kilometers (or 60 miles) per hour. In this respect, they remind me a lot of the boobies we saw fishing down in the Galapagos a few years ago. Indeed, the long, razor-sharp gannet bill very much makes their head resemble a booby head, although the gannet body, particularly for its size (they are the largest seabird in the northern hemisphere) is far sleeker than the blue-footed booby.
Our trip from the Scottish Seabird Centre took us out of the harbor at North Berwick, past Craigleith Island and to Bass Rock. The entire duration of the tour was supposed to be one hour long and I guess that was true, but both Craigleith and Bass Rock are so close to the shore that this ride really does get you a lot of time to get close up looks at the gannets on the Rock.
Craigleith is home to about 15,000 nesting puffins in an average year. In a sign of how good our visit to Lunga earlier in the trip was, we barely paid much attention to the puffins on this part of the trip, preferring to try to spot some kittywakes while really wanting to see a ton of gannets. There are almost no puffins on Bass Rock, by the way, most notably because puffins burrow to make their nests and you can't do that in rock. There is one nesting pair of puffins on the Rock who have made their home in the crevices of the old castle wall built by the Lauders.
There are an astonishing number of nesting pairs of gannets (and their chicks) to watch on this tour. There is ample time to to watch them sit around (lots of that); take off and fly (sort of awkwardly); land after fishing (definitely awkwardly); and interact with each other. On the last point we managed to see a few couples bill fencing, a greeting ritual performed to strengthen the bond between pairs. The picture immediately below shows the end of that ritual.
Now, I am sure to the untrained eye, it appears that there are a lot of gannets in the pictures on this blog post. And no doubt, that is probably true, but maybe not the 150,000 that usually nest there in a typical summer. The islands around Britain had been hit this summer with an outbreak of avian flu, which had started to devastate some of the populations of birds nesting on the outlying islands, including at Bass Rock.
The Seabird Centre does run trips to Bass Rock that land and allow you to walk around closer to the gannets but those were at least partially cancelled this summer due to the flu outbreak. We also heard after getting back home that landings at Lunga had been stopped due to the flu. I feel like we got really lucky with the spread of the flu. I can't imagine missing that puffin experience. We elected not to take the landing tour of Bass Rock specifically because we knew we already had the same thing scheduled at Lunga. I'm glad we didn't swap those two tours out. We definitely got lucky with the flu and our vacation plans.
The effect of the flu was devastatingly visible on our boat trip our of North Berwick, by the way. All kidding aside with the fact that we got lucky with the flu and our trip plans (because that's really way less important than dying birds), we did see a lot of dead birds around Bass Rock. Our guide told us some were likely victims of their own ability to land safely, but there's no doubt that some of the carcasses we sailed past were avian flu victims.
I don't have a list of bird species that I want to see in the wild before I leave this world. That would be a bucket list and I will never, ever make a list that once everything on it is done then I can die. But I for sure wanted to make getting close to some gannets a part of this trip to Scotland. I didn't really see when I would get this good an opportunity.
The gannets on Bass Rock weren't the only gannets we saw on this trip. We spent time on several boats that were being followed by a couple or a few dozen of these birds. But the opportunity to see these spectacular creatures at Bass Rock was a real treat. One more species off the list (the list that doesn't exist, of course). I feel we did this one pretty comprehensively in just an afternoon that started out rainy and ended up being pretty much perfect.
As a closing note to this post, I will point out that gannets are heavily protected in Scotland, but there was a time when people used to eat these birds. The methods of cooking that our guide relayed to us were less than appetizing. Apparently, the birds were either traditionally cooked in rhubarb leaves or the young gannets used to be plucked from their nests and the flesh fermented. That second method sounds similar to what goes on in New Zealand today with the sooty shearwaters (or mutton birds) although I'm not sure they ferment the meat. The plate I had when we were there in 2019 didn't taste fermented in any way.
I stuck to seafood or haggis in Scotland. No gannets on the menu for me.
I found it very difficult to photograph gannets in the air on this trip. I would have loved a close up shot of one in flight. Need to work on that skill. And quickly.
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