Photo: Chris Bell / Friends of Mana Island
Nigel dies surrounded by concrete gannets
Nigel the gannet who lived for the past five years on Mana Island, just off the south coast of New Zealand's 'North Island', has died. He was surrounded by 80 life-sized concrete replica gannets. The concrete gannet decoys were installed to attract live mating gannets to the island which had not seen a gannet in 40 years. But Nigel was the only live gannet to appear on the island between 2013 and 2018. He wooed many of the concrete gannets and built love nests for them but his affections were never reciprocated. Then, early this year, three more gannets appeared at Mana Island. Sadly, Nigel did not befriend the three newcomers and he inexplicably died shortly after their arrival. Nigel's vigil may have been in vain, but all the people who observed his last five years are hopeful that a colony of gannets is about to spring forth on Mana Island.
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BarrytheBirder
1 comment:
The Washington Post has the Nigel story this morning.
A few years back on a maritime holiday I was lucky enough to watch hundreds of Northern Gannets feeding off the Cape Breton coast. Seeing 100s of these birds fold their wings and fall out of the sky into the ocean for me was one of the hi-lights of the trip.
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