On a recent trip to Auckland, AUIP’s Sheena visited the West Coast beach of Muriwai.

Muriwai is approximately 45 minutes north-west of Auckland city centre but it feels like a different world. It is a 60km beach with rolling black sand dunes and a roaring surf which has keen surfers dotting the water.  The real treat though wasn’t the dramatic beach but the gannet colony that had taken up residency at the beach for the next few months.

Gannets return to Muriwai between July and October to find and re-connect with their life-long mate. After mating, one egg is laid and incubated in shifts by both birds until the chick is born, 45 days later. Chicks are born blind and naked and then as they mature, they grow juvenile feathers and start to test their wings in preparation for their one-chance jump off the cliff. Once airborne, the young gannets leave the colony and cross the Tasman Sea to Australia. A few years later, surviving birds return to Muriwai to secure a nest site at the colony, find a mate and lay their own egg.

About 1,200 pairs of gannets nest at Muriwai and their nests are just centimeters apart which makes for a very busy (and very loud) sight.

Check out this very amateur (shaky!)  video that Sheena took of the colony.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXdgYHjQqTI]