We started off the day with a buffet breakfast at our hotel - La Normandie which is situated right on the waterfront with a clear view of Rocher-Percé, Île Bonaventure, the wharf, and everything else that's going on in front of the sea - grey seals bobbing up and down in the water, gannets flying overhead and then suddenly dive-bombing from 30 metres straight into the water with a splash, coming up a few seconds later and bobbing on top of the water before they take off back to their nest with the fish they have just caught.
We were watching all of this going on in front of us as we were eating breakfast, so we quickly decided that we had better get started with our day's itinerary. We bought tickets at 8:50 from un de croissieres - Les traversiers de l' Île Inc - who radioed ahead that they had two more passengers coming on board, which meant that they were 10 minutes late leaving the dock. The boat was packed to the gunnels with tourists who were interested in seeing Rocher-Percé and Île Bonaventure. First stop was a close up of the reason why this place is such the tourist spot.
This was the first time that I had seen the rock in person and this close!! That hole in the rock is very, very impressive! (at least it is to me).
Here's a couple more shots of the complete rock. Some people say it looks like a horse drinking water and others say it looks like an elephant drinking water. Me - I simply like to take a look at it as a rock. A nice beautiful hunk of rock.
On Friday, we're going to see if we can kayak around the island and get a closer view of it.
Our boat continued on to Îlle Bonaventure which is a continuation of the geology of Rocher Percé. The island is the home to the largest colony of northern gannets - about 52,000 pairs of "fous de Bassan" - Bassan's fools. We had seen the gannet colony of Cape St Mary's in Newfoundland back in 2006. That was quite the spectacular sight as we were on top of the cliffs looking down on skyscraper-tall cliffside "apartments" - nooks cracks, ledges and crannies, including the top of the needle-like spires of rock, completely loaded with gannets. The continuous "crrrawww, crrrawww, crrrawww" of the colony was deafening even though we were only 200' above the birds.
This time we were at water level as the boat cruised about 500'-600' off the shoreline. The cracks in the brown sandstone was a sea of white noisy birds. Some were returning to their nests. Others were taking off to catch the silvery caplin or mackerel that abound around the shores of Baie des chaleurs.
At the end of the 1800s, the gannet population had been reduced from about 4 million pairs to less than 100,000 pairs. By 1909 the Ile Bonaventure population was down to 3,000 pairs when they were declared a protected species - one of the first creatures to be so-declared. Since then the population has slowly increased to about 52,000 pairs with the colony growing about 3% a year. The birds do, however, suffer setbacks from time to time such as with the collapse of the cod fishery which was preceded by the collapse of the caplin. At that time hundreds of thousands of tons of caplin (females only) had been exported to Japan. With the disappearance of the caplin, the cod fishery collapsed as caplin are the major source of food for the cod - and the gannets.
Notwithstanding a 3% increase each year in the size of the colony, there is a high mortality rate amongst the young gannets. The eggs and baby chicks are prey to the seagulls who audaciously fly into the colony and snatch the eggs and chicks right off the nest - the parents have made the mistake of taking a break on egg laying for a few moments. Rain and the sun claim a whole bunch more as only 30% of the colony nests in the nooks and crannies of the steep cliffs. The other 70% nest on open ground next to the edge of the cliffs. It is this 70% that provide some close-up lessons in nature that you can't ever get out of a book.
As we cruised along the edge of the island, we could see grey seals sunning themselves on the rocks or bobbing their heads up and down in the water.
We continued our tour around the island until the boat arrived at the quai on Bonaventure Island.- l'entrée au parc national de Île Bonaventure. We disembarked from the tour boat and climbed up the hill to the welcome centre where we were given a short dissertation on the trails on the island and the facilities available. After paying our admission, we started along the sentier des colonies - les colonies des fous de bassan - the gannet colonies.
Our route was uphill all the way from the west side of the island to the east side. As we crested the top of the island, we could hear the constant "crrrawww, crrrawww, crrrawww" of the gannets getting louder and louder. Finally we broke through the forest and onto a sea of white - a colony of gannets stretching wing-tip-towing-tip covering about 8-10 acres all along the edges of the cliffs that dropped straight down into the sea. And this was only a fraction of the total population!
(Those empty spaces in the photo above aren't empty spaces - they're nests. The gannets have gone out to sea to catch fish.) The only thing that matters in gannet life is the nest (if one can call a square metre of bare rocky ground a nest_ - the amount of space covered by a pair of outstretched wings. Neither its mate, the egg or the baby chick matter. Only the nest. That's it! That's all! Wing-tip-to-wing-tip the top of this 8-10 acres is occupied by gannet nests. Only problem is they aren't nests in the the sense of a nest made out of sticks, grasses, pebbles or feathers. Some of the nests were identified by a small clump of soil - much like an over-turned low-profile soup bowl. Other nests were simply...... well....... a bare batch of ground. And each gannet can spot and identify that small square metre of ground from 100 metres up in the air!.
Coming in like a helicopter landing on the helipad, the gannet slowly comes down and, with a final awkward crash, lands in the middle of the nest - sometimes in a bare spot, sometimes on top of its mate, and even on top of its chick. Or maybe on the edge of the nest of its next-door neighbour. And then all hell breaks loose - the squawking and fighting begins. Because the gannet is very territorial about it's square metre of nest, any intruder, including its mate, is seen as an intruder. It's the male who starts the aggression, lashing out with its sharp-pointed beak and aiming for the head.
If it's the female who's landing (and it has to be the male's mate!), the male (who's sitting on the nest) lashes out. The female quickly retaliates as if to say "Back off dummy! It's me, you jackass!". She then bows her head in submission. The lunges again but quickly turns the lunge into a caress of her neck. This caressing continues for 30-45 seconds with the beaks raised from time to time as if in a mock sparring match.
If it's the male who's landing, the male immediately lashes out with his beak at whoever is sitting on his nest - including his mate. Again, the female retaliates (she doesn't take any shit off of anyone, including her mate) and then bows her head. And the caressing ritual begins again.
But woebegone the poor gannet who lands in the wrong nest! They are dead meat - literally - if they can't escape the sharp beaks of their neighbours. However, it's not the adult birds who fall foul of their neighbours - it's the chicks. Shuffling around from time to time, the chick sometimes falls off the nest and trespasses onto its neighbours' territory. The sharp beaks lash out, the chick is too feeble to move, and no pity is taken on the wandering chick. All over the ground, the carcasses of dead chicks littered the nesting area. Which probably accounts for the high mortality rate amongst the chicks.
If the chicks can survive this far (and very few do), they are covered in a soft feathery down that they lose as they grow larger - larger than their parents.
An animateur from the Parcs Québec gave a presentation on the life of the gannets and their habits. It was quite the presentation as she mimicked the actions of the gannet in its landing, its caressing, and even its mating habits. Of course, throughout the presentation, we could loudly hear the squawking of the gannet colony that would almost drown out the animateur from time to time. And of course, how else could you mimic the smell of the gannet colony when you're right in the middle of it - the smell of stale ammonia mixed in with rotting fish. Quite a combination.
After a quick lunch, we took off down the 5km "Voie du Roy" - the King's Road trail. This trail took us past another four colonies, each one larger than the previous, and along the southern edge of the island. 2 1/2 hours later we could see the quai in sight. However, our feet were very fatigued from going up and down the nooks and crannies of the islands. The last kilometer seemed to take almost as long as the previous four.
We caught the next boat back to Percé and up to our hotel where we crashed out on the beds for some rest. By this time, it was supper so we decided to head back to La Maison du Pecheur for a long and relaxing supper over a bottle of wine. All in all, quite the day, eh!?
Tomorrow we're going back to Gaspé - the village, that is.
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