Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE STORK-LIKE BIRDS

THE GANNETS (Family Sulida)

Gannet Habits

A few years later (1869) the Canadian government erected a lighthouse on the Rock and this was the beginning of the end, for several means of reaching the summit were provided, and the locality was resorted to by fishermen, who killed the Gannets, and other species as well, by the thousands, using the bodies as fish-bait.

The eggs were also gathered in quantities, and by the year 1872, when the Rock was visited by Mr. C. J. Maynard, a well-known ornithologist, the number of Gannets occupying the summit had decreased to about five thousand birds, and in 1881, Mr. William Brewster could find no more than fifty pairs. Others have since visited the Rock, and for nearly twenty years no Gannets have been reported as nesting on the summit. Mr. F. M. Chapman paid this interesting locality a visit in the summer of 1898, when he secured many photographs of the bird inhabitants. He estimates the total number of Gannets at fifteen hundred, which are all that remain of the one hundred and fifty thousand noted by Bryant.

Another common and widely distributed species is the Booby Gannet, or Booby (S. leucogastra), as it is commonly called, which is found in tropical and subtropical seas practically throughout the world, except the Pacific coast of America, where its place is taken by the closely allied Brewster's Gannet (S. brewsteri). On the Atlantic coast it is found as far north as Georgia, nesting on certain of the West Indian islands, where, according to Bryant, it deposits the eggs, always two in number, on the bare sand or rock. The habits of life are much like those of the former species, except it is frequently made the victim of the Frigate-birds.

Brewster's Booby was found by Goss on the San Pedro Martir Isle in the Gulf of California, where, he says: “The birds were not wild; they seemed to prefer the shelves and niches on the sides of the rocks as nesting places. They lay two eggs, and in all cases collect a few sticks, seaweed, and often old wing- or tail-feathers; these are generally placed in a circle to fit the body, with a view, I think, to keep the eggs that lie upon the rock from rolling out."

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