Anyone who has seen them crowding their nesting grounds on Bonaventure Island off the Gaspé Peninsula, will know, from close observation, how spectacular these birds are. They allow tourists to come almost as close to them as chickens in a yard. Thousands of pairs nest at the top of high cliffs or along their ledges above the water, each with its established square foot or two of nesting territory. A loud, rattling cry goes up, out of a multitude of hoarse croaks and groans. I felt a great sense of pressure and establishment in this bird city, this singular society with its consistent behavior and ceremony. The pairs greet one another bowing, or with heads raised and the long thick bills fencing. Their stiff carved heads are always in motion, always in response to one another. It is a pressing, elaborate spectacle, ancient and authoritative. Gannets are awkward landers. They come in stiffly and do a kind of top-heavy tumble when they hit the ground; but as ocean flyers they have no superiors. When I see them again silently gliding over the waters off the Cape, I greet them for their earth-honored mastery. At a distance they might be mistaken for herring gulls, but they are much larger, and their long black-ended wings are typical. When you see points of spray going up far out on the water, and white birds diving, you have unmistakably seen the gannets. Earlier this month, during an easterly storm, with pouring, blinding, deafening wind and rain, a few gannets were flying close to the shore off Paine’s Creek where the water was a little calmer and the atmosphere less overcast than farther out in the bay. The birds flew low, since the fish they were hunting were in shallow water and presumably close to the surface. On this stormy morning they flew in an almost leisurely way over the surface, flapping their wings and gliding. They would turn casually and dive, their wings half spread. Then they rose and flew steadily on with power and ease, their wings feeling the stiff wind, using it like the ancient professionals they were. Now the north wind is blowing hard in the late afternoon. There are slate-gray cloud masses in the sky, with a steely light where the sun rays through, and the temperature has dropped to about 40 degrees. Offshore over rocking, ponderous, gray waters, I can see the crowds of gannets following a shoal line in the distance. They catch the light from the sun when it strikes occasionally through the clouds, intensifying their whiteness and turning the water green. They seem to drift and turn continually, their arrowed bodies plummeting down, the splashes appearing against white bordered waves. As I walk inland the sun goes westward behind massive clouds and the gannets, far out, high and white, keep diving with exact abandon.