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Northern Gannet | Morus bassanus
Jan-van-gent | Alcatraz atlántico
The Northern Gannet is the large gannet of the North Atlantic. Birds from the Canadian colonies winter along the eastern United States and in the Gulf of Mexico; immatures in particular travel farthest south. Small numbers reach the northern Caribbean in winter, and records have increased in recent decades.
Voice
Usually silent at sea; when feeding sometimes a harsh arrah-arrah.
Recording: Christian Kerihuel — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
87–100 cm, with a wingspan of about 1.75 m: larger than all other boobies in the region. Cigar-shaped body, long, narrow, pointed wings, a pointed tail and a dagger-like, blue-grey bill. Adults are white with a yellowish head and neck and sharply defined black wingtips; the tail is white. First-year birds are dark grey-brown, finely speckled white, with a white V-shaped patch on the rump. Adult plumage is reached in four to five years, through intermediate plumages with white and dark irregularly mixed. It plunges from great height into the sea with folded wings.
Confusion species
Masked Booby Sula dactylatra is smaller, with a black tail, a black facial mask, a yellow bill and a broad black trailing edge along the whole wing, not just at the tip. Young Masked Boobies have a brown head with a white collar and a white belly. Brown Booby Sula leucogaster has a sharply demarcated dark breast and white belly; young Brown Boobies are more uniform brown than young gannets, without white speckling.
Habitat
Coastal waters and open sea over the continental shelf, wherever there are shoals of fish. In the region mostly seen at sea, from shore or boats; sometimes resting on the water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Mainly in the Bahamas and along the north coast of Cuba, scarcely also off Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands. A few records further south, including off Guadeloupe, Martinique and Hispaniola. Outside the region it breeds on both sides of the North Atlantic, in America in eastern Canada; American birds winter from Nova Scotia to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
How and when to look
The best chance is in winter from headlands and ferries in the northern Bahamas, especially after northerly storms. A large, whitish or speckled booby plunging from great height is worth a closer look; photographs of tail and wingtips allow identification.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The North Atlantic population grew strongly during the twentieth century. Recently many birds have died of avian influenza, especially in European colonies; at sea birds become entangled in nets and fishing lines.
Scientific name
Morus bassanus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Pelecanus Bassanus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Morus was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Morus goes back to the Greek mōros 'foolish, stupid': early travellers remarked that gannets and boobies at their colonies allowed a close approach and were easily killed. bassanus means 'of Bass Rock', the rock in the Firth of Forth that holds one of the largest colonies. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bass Rock, Scotland.