Northern gannets share two maxims familiar to humans: “home sweet home” and “don’t tread on me.” They pack together on a Bonaventure Island plateau like New York commuters jamming a subway, only they’re louder. They are devoted parents and could teach humans a thing or two about loyalty in marriage. Year after year, gannet pairs come separately from distant, scattered Atlantic waters to reunite, mate again and raise new chicks on the precise nesting spots they called home before heading south for the winter. A northern gannet is visible on Bonaventure Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of Quebec, Canada's Gaspe Peninsula, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) The island just off Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula offers remarkable insights into the northern ga...
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On Quebec’s Bonaventure Island, the ghosts of human habitation from years past and the birds that breed there now in extraordinary numbers tell the same story: of lives lived hard in a place of fairy-tale beauty. You see this from the tender ages on the family gravestones of islanders who scratched out a living from the late 1700s to when Bonaventure went entirely to the birds a half century ago. A northern gannet flies above the colony on Bonaventure Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of Quebec, Canada's Gaspe Peninsula, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) You see it from the tenacious colony of 100,000-plus northern gannets as they plunge into the sea for prey, soar back to their nests and fight at the least provocation, sometimes to the death, for ...
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