PERCE, Quebec — Even at the height of its human population in the mid-18th century, the sea birds of Bonaventure Island would still outnumber the people more than 200 to one.
Though a few abandoned homes still stand among the rocks, trees and meadows, this 1.5-square-mile island off the tip of Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula today is the summer home to nearly a half-million nesting seabirds, including the largest nesting colony of northern gannets in the world.
The island is a sanctuary for 11 different species of seabirds, including the gannets, common murres, blacklegged kittiwakes and razorbills.
The sheer number of birds combined with arguably the most accessible viewing opportunities on the planet combine to make Bonaventure Island a birdwatcher’s paradise.
Getting from the mainland to the island via the 45-minute boat tour only hinted at the spectacle waiting for us as seabirds whirled overhead, making me feel just a bit like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
Boats ferry tourists, researchers and outdoor enthusiasts from the small town of Perce to Bonaventure Island daily throughout the summer season.
The crossing with Croisiere Julien Cloutier (www.quebecmaritime.ca/croisierejc) included a swing around the famous rock that gave the town its name.
Formed about 400 million years ago, the massive Perce Rock, with its distinctive arch, rises from the St. Lawrence Seaway just offshore of the village and is part of the geologic formations once connecting the peninsula to Bonaventure Island, and erosion continues to take its toll.
“We lose about 350 tons of rock a year,” Carole Couet with Parks Quebec said. “That is why it’s very dangerous to walk around Perce Rock.”
While visitors are not allowed on Perce Rock, they are welcomed with open arms to its baby island brother Bonaventure — a formation which Couet explains is a mere 310 million years old.
Guides like Couet meet every passenger ferry arriving on the island with information on its flora, fauna and the best way to see it all.
“We have 60,000 mating pairs of gannets on the island for the summer,” Couet said. “That’s not counting the 12,000 juveniles or the 40,000 hatchlings we expect.”
The quickest way from the landing to the colony is over a mile-and-a-half trail that cuts straight through the island.
A second 6-mile path takes walkers around the island’s perimeter on its way to the colony.
Before arriving on the island we had gotten a pretty good view of the gannets with some razorbills and puffins clinging to the crags among the cliffs and flying overhead.
But the real action is up on the plateau where tens of thousands of the gannets jockey for position and protect their little two-foot section of real estate just inches from their neighbors.
So focused on that small territory are the birds, Couet said, the birds could care less about the thousands of tourists who flock to observe them from just a few feet away.
Each spring staff at the park carefully observe at what point the birds stop defending their territory.
From there they set up a protective fence about three feet back to keep birds and watchers separate but happy.
“We don’t bother them and we give them all the space they need,” Couet said. “They arrive on the island about a month before the park opens and that gives them time to establish their territory.”
Walking up the trail toward the colony I got a real sense of what was coming as I could hear the birds before seeing them.
Just before breaking out of the trees and on to the plateau about 400 feet above the water, I could see what looked like snowdrifts up ahead.
What I was seeing actually was a blanket of gannets extending as far as the eye could see.
Gannets, Couet explained, are far more loyal to their little patch of Bonaventure than they are to each other.
Every spring the males arrive before the females to stake out a claim and begin preparing a nesting site.
When the females do return, Couet said, they reunite with a previous year’s mate not because of any personal feelings, but because they both return to the same plot of land.
They are so focused on protecting their real estate, Couet said, the gannets will actually kill their own chick if it falls from the nest.
“If they see a chick outside the nest, it’s seen as a trespasser and a threat,” she said. “Even if it is their own chick, they don’t recognize it.”
Behavior like that goes a long way in explaining the birds’ 60 percent mortality rate in the first year of life.
At 12 weeks the chicks actually outweigh the parents by more than two pounds, which is a good thing as by the end of the short Gaspe season, they are on their own.
“They are not like teenagers who can come home and raid the refrigerator,” Couet said. “When they leave the nest they need about a month to figure out how to fly and get their own food [so] they need those stores of body fat.”
In fact, the whole family takes to the water after the chicks leave the nest.
“A gannet’s only need for land is for reproduction,” Couet said. “They spend the rest of their time out at sea.”
But while they are on the land tending their single egg of the season, the nesting gannets of Bonaventure Island offer an unparalleled opportunity to observe this bird in its natural habitat.
Over on the mainland in Perce, it’s an opportunity Nicole Ouellette is eager to share with visitors to the region.
Ouellette, along with her husband, Paul, and son, Francois, run Hotel Le Mirage (www.quebecmaritime.ca/lemirage) perched atop a bluff overlooking Perce Rock and Bonaventure Island.
“You really get a feeling for nature and for the culture of the people here,” Ouellette said. “We love to welcome people and talk to them about the ocean, the birds, the whales and the fish.”
It’s a love shared with folks like Couet and her staff over on the island, but this year there is great concern, too.
Couet said she is worried about the future of her birds because when the gannets leave Bonaventure they head to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We know there’s an oil spill and we know our birds go down there, but we don’t know what they will do when they sense the spill,” Couet said.
Hopefully, she said, the birds will detect the toxic oil and chemicals in the waters and head toward safer locations and feeding grounds.
As it is, the birds spend the first three years of their lives in the southern waters.
“The gannets you see on Bonaventure this summer arrived before the spill could effect them,” Couet said. “But we don’t know about the ones that are still down there.”
Tragically, she said, this could be the last summer for a long time that gannets can be observed in such high numbers on the island.
“It just breaks my heart,” Couet said.
For the moment, however, Couet’s Bonaventure gannets are home and safe and she hopes what is happening with the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a wakeup call.
“It’s up to us humans to make sure it does not happen again, to clean it up and to put pressure where it is needed,” she said.
