Gannets Revisited!

The last time I reported on the gannets at Muirwai they were just beginning their courting and had not even thought of laying an egg.  I was there about two weeks ago with Nate and it is certainly a different picture today.  Most of the eggs have hatched and the babies are beginning to appear.  I am amazed at how big the babies are and that they still had only fuzz like a baby chick and no feathers at all!

You can see a couple of they just sitting or laying on the ground.  They are all white with just a black beak.  They look rather lazy to me.

Right in the middle of the picture below you can see one of the babies standing up.  It is as big as its parent although it just has fuzz. A smaller one is to the left just sitting there.

Couple of more here with their moms. (I assume...could be a dad!)

And just one more to look at.  My assumption is that those that are still sitting are on eggs and that they should be hatching soon.  It takes 44 days for them to hatch out.  They should all be hatched soon thought because those babes need to be ready to fly by the beginning on March!

I decided to do  bit more research about these birds, especially since we saw some of them when we were at Bay of Islands and they were diving into the water and coming out with fish. So I checked them out.  If it doesn't change when I post it then you can actually click on the blue words and they will give you a link to learn more.  I thought it was pretty interesting what there is to know about them.

It was a fun day to see them there.

(I have gone back and edited this because the part that I copied and pasted did not work and it was just white lines etc so you can google it if you want to know more!)