The Gannet is Back

Every so often if you’re observant enough life will present you with lessons to learn from. For example it is important when working in the field or traveling around interesting locations to always have ones camera ready for the unexpected. I have been observant enough in my experiences to recognize this lesson; however I seem to have failed to learn from it.  A few days back, during my routine evening Common Murre resighting at North Landing, I missed a unique opportunity to photograph a very lost and likely confused seabird. After spending just over an hour staring through a scope at murres incubating their eggs, a decided to take a break and do some initial tripod setup for photographing the stars later that night. My goal was to get the islets of Fisherman’s Bay and the North Star Polaris in frame and leave the camera out for 2 hours while shooting continuous 30 second exposures, to capture the rings of star trails around the northern point of the sky. As I was framing the shot and working out the best focus, Western Gulls which are now setting on eggs of their own, began giving out warning calls. They persistently scream at us whenever we walk down the paths and give out a high pitched repetitive shriek when they’re threatened, so I looked up expecting of seeing a Peregrine Falcon pursuing a helpless victim. Instead a saw a large white bird with black wing tips and a pale yellow head hovering above me. It took me a few seconds of disbelief before whispering to myself…”the Gannet!”. There it was, a Northern Gannet, a bird that should be hunting fish off the Eastern Seaboard, was holding stationary in the wind a few meters above my head. I happened to have my camera in hand, pointed it up at the bird, pressed the shutter release, heard the click of the shutter, pressed review to check the exposure, and read the following words “ERROR NO MEMORY CARD” on the LCD screen. Here was my one chance to photograph this highly unusual once in a lifetime sighting of a misplaced bird on the Farallones, and I had no memory to record it. Blast. This has happened to me on many occasions, American Oystercatchers in Baja, Yellow Nosed Albatross in Australia, Little Penguins in New Zealand, so I wasn’t surprised to be greeted with the error message again. I ran back to the house to grab a card, yelling ‘NORTHERN GANNET IS BACK’ to Ryan and Emma as I passed them by, but by time a had made it back to North Landing the bird was nowhere to be seen. Oh well, at least I still had enough memory space in my brain to see it again, and this time close enough to look it straight in the eye.

 Fortunately my plan to photograph the stars moving around Polaris (well the earth spinning in such a way that the stars appear to move around Polaris from our perspective) was a success. The photo is looking across Fisherman’s Bay at the most scenic cluster of islets and SE Farallon, from left to right: Aulon Islet, Arch Rock, Chocolate Chip, and Sugar Loaf.

Aside from unobstructed views of the night sky, this has actuallybeen an interesting month for celestial events. We witnessed a partial annular eclipse on May 20^th just before sunset. I had been watching the fog moving in and out throughout the day, and I was worried it would block our chances of seeing the eclipse, but actually it worked as a natural filter and made it easier to view. I set up a tripod and my long lens with a piece of welder’s glass tapped to the objective end to photograph the transit, and grabbed another welder’s helmet for others to look through. I was working out the exposure levels when I noticed a slight round sliver encroaching the bottom left corner of the Sun,  “It’s Happening!” I yelled as I ran for the others. We thought it wasn’t going to happen for another hour, so everyone was spread out on the island finishing up their daily tasks. Eventually everyone was alerted and we gathered to watch the entire event, beers in hands and smiles on faces. An annular eclipse is when the Moon is too far away from Earth to completely block out the Sun, instead leaving a thin ring of fire around the Moon during the climax. Our location on the Farallones was just outside the alignment for seeing a complete ring, but the crescent Sun was still impressive. On June 5^th an equally impressive and rarer celestial event will take place where Venus, the second planet from our star, will pass between Earth and the Sun. With the appropriate filters, or a pinhole camera, you can watch the tiny dot of Venus track across the surface of the Sun. This only happens twice in a lifetime. The first of our lifetime was 8 years ago, with the transit in June being the last; it won’t happen again for another 243 years, so it’s worth the effort to see.