Gannets at Muriwai

[David Lawrie]

On the second of January Tony Habraken, Gwenda Pulham, Sue Frostick and I visited the Gannet colony at Muriwai looking for the Boobies that were visiting.
While the rest of us were looking for the Boobies Tony decided to check the Gannets for leg bands. He quickly found a couple and spent the next couple of hours trying to read the numbers on the bands. He managed to read the full numbers on two bands and he has now received the results from the banding office. He was working from the lower platform, and the banded birds were reasonably close to the platform.

Metal band number Date banded Location Age/Sex
M-75636 3/02/2001 White Island/Whakaari, Te Matawiwi (-37.4982 / 177.1669 Juvenile / Unknown
M-66709 22/01/2008 Muriwai Beach, Takapu Refuge
(-36.8333 / 174.4333 Adult / Unknown

There are a couple of interesting aspects to these recoveries. The first is that Tony was at the colony in April 2017 and partially read a combination which was likely to be the first bird in the list because the numbers match. But even more interesting is that according to Tony's sketch from that time the bird is still nesting on the same cup. So how site faithful are Gannets to their nest cup?
The other interesting thing is that the bird was banded on White Island at the colony there. So how often do birds move to a different colony and in this case on the other side of New Zealand?
Brent Stephenson is that something you found during your studies? Or is there anyone else undertaking Gannet study?
There are obviously things we could find out yet.