Any of you out there reading this have probably figured out that I have been spending every moment possible in the highly variable weather conditions here in Newfoundland. The heavy fog is no exception. The largest Gannet colony in North America is on the southern shore, and I have spent a good part of the past week watching the frenzy that came from the caplin run. With fish tumbling ashore, you can image the sound of hundreds of seabirds gathering to strike. The Humpbacks are there as well, and even my beloved Beluga was out there somewhere(though I never sighted her) The fog closed in and out and in its sweeping motion, several hundred Gannets would be revealed above.
The video camera was soaked, fighting to focus on the water droplets on the lens, the wind was ripping through, and the gannets are fast flyers who begin their dramatic dives in unison when they locate a school of fish. Basically, it was chaos. Everything cut loose at once, filming with both eyes open and peering them through a slit in hood of my raincoat. It was so out of my control that I found myself laughing out loud at my desperate act to try to capture a bit of it on video.
The resulting footage shows the birds flying into the monotone fog bank and simply disappearing in a wingflap. Chaos is controlled at quarter speed as you can actually focus on the wingbeats.
My love of gannets began as I had to both be a spotter and photographer many years ago in Ireland. I had to hang out the door of a helicopter and yell the locations of the birds in relation to the chopper blades, so that we didnt collide and take us all down. It seems that I relate the swift gannets to chaos, although they were beautiful on their nests,they were not terribly serene even when perched as their fluffy chicks were at the edge of a two hundred foot drop.
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