Wildlife Wonder of the World

Back in June, D. and I ventured to the eastern coast of Scotland for a day in North Berwick. We had planned to join a seabird cruise and were highly anticipating seeing PUFFINS, especially, BABY puffins, but were thwarted by gusty winds. With boat trips coming to a close at the end of the month until next spring, we decided to give it another go. Thankfully, the weather was perfect – little wind, sunny and not too cool.

Unfortunately, we missed the puffins again! They had already started to make their way into the North Sea and on to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans for their winter dining pleasure.

We were introduced, however, to another bird, the gannet, which has a very large nesting colony just off the shore of North Berwick on Bass Rock.

Seeing Bass Rock from afar, you can see it has a white hue to it and there are those dots just above the rock, but really it is hard to imagine how many gannets there are on that rock until you get up close and see that just about every nook and cranny of the rock is home to a nest. In peak season, there are approximately 150,000 gannets on Bass Rock and is considered the world’s largest colony of northern gannets. My pictures don’t show this nearly as well as the video below from the RSPB, a conservation group.

Our guide told us a few interesting things about gannets:

• Pairs mate for life and meet up on Bass Rock each year. At around 30 seconds in the video, you’ll see how they rub their bills against each other as a way of connecting.
• Their young will shortly migrate to the west coast of Africa where they’ll stay for five years and eventually return to Bass Rock to find their own mate.
• The rock itself was home to a chapel, prison and manned lighthouse over time. Now the lighthouse is remotely operated.

While I am still keen on seeing puffins, it was truly spectacular to see what my beloved Sir David Attenborough calls one of the twelve wildlife wonders of the world.

To see some more great photos of the gannets on Bass Rock, look at this article from The Guardian newspaper.

P.S. North Berwick town offered a little wildlife bonus close to my heart – Hares!