780 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



THE GANNET IN IMMATURE PLUMAGE 



This young gannet has the livery of the species when it has attained the age of about five 

 months. The plumage of the young bird is dark brown with a tinge of olive, spotted or 

 streaked everywhere with white. On the head and neck the spots tend to form streaks. 

 On the back and wing coverts they are triangular, usually one on the end of each feather. 

 The primaries and tail are dusky. It requires three years for the bird to attain perfect 

 plumage. 



planted and restored, while no legislation known to man 

 can ever restore any species of bird after it is once utterly 

 exterminated. Our Wild Pigeon is gone and gone for- 

 ever, and other forms are rapidly following it. Ages 

 ago, the Great Auk and the Gannets flourished in hun- 

 dreds of thousands on the rocky islets and islands of the 

 mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the eastern coasts 

 of Canada, or on Gannet Island 

 to the north of it. As is well 

 known, the Great Auk was a big, 

 heavy bird flightless, but a 

 good swimmer. Then, off those 

 coasts came the fishermen with 

 their boats, and it was soon 

 found that these Great Auks 

 made good fishing bait "off the 

 Banks." So they went ashore ; 

 and for this and other purposes, 

 these fishermen slew the Auks 

 by the thousands. Their last 

 stand was on Funk Island, the 

 largest of all tlie islands men- 

 tioned; and there, before the 

 middle of the last century, the 

 last of all the Great Auks in the 

 world was exterminated. 



Next, these fishermen and 

 their descendants got after the 

 gannets, which they likewise 

 used for bait ; probably they 



used these also for food as they 

 did their eggs. Gannets then 

 bred in hundreds of thousands 

 on five different islands and at 

 one point on the coast, namely 

 on Gannet Rocks. Besides the 

 two mentioned above, these 

 islands were Perroquet, Bona- 

 venture, and Bird Rocks, and 

 here, in due time, utter extermi- 

 nation seemed to be their fate, 

 when fate determined otherwise 

 and it was averted. Now they 

 breed by the thousand on but 

 two of these islands Bird 

 Rocks and the Island of Bona- 

 venture, and, at this writing, 

 gannets seem to be increasing in 

 numbers every season, which is 

 fortunate, as these breeding 

 sites constitute one of the inost 

 picturesque features of those 

 coasts ; and as to the gannet ex- 

 terminating the fishes in those 

 waters that is clear moonshine, 

 belonging in the same class of 

 myth as that of the cormorants 

 eating up all the fish in the sea off the coasts of southern 

 Australia. The timely efforts of the distinguished ex- 

 plorer of the Commonwealth, Captain S. A. White, avert- 

 ed that disaster. 



The first mention of these North American gannets 

 was made by Jacques Cartier in 1534, who said, "we 

 reached land on the seventh of July, landing at Bird 



AN ADULT GANNET ON ITS NEST 

 This view was taken on Bass Rock, one of the wonderful "gannetries 



, - o ., of history; it is at 



the entrance to the Firth of Forth, Scotland, quite close to the shore on the southern side, 

 and not so many miles from Edinburgh. 



