Welcome to Bird Rock

One of the more impressive bird colonies I have been to is Bird Rock at Cape St Mary’s Ecological Reserve in Newfoundland, Canada. I have been to Bosque del Apache in Arizona, Bird Island in Homer, Alaska, but never have I seen such a large colony of birds that gives you so many photo opportunities. Bird Rock at Cape St Mary’s is home to a colony of over 40,000 Norther Gannets that make the trek back every year. Once they have found a colony, they tend to stay with that colony and will return back to this particular breeding site year after year.

Space is at a premium and one of the parents heads out to sea to find food for the young. With 30-40mph winds across the rock, the gannets use the updrafts to soar over the rock and hover over the colony make for great photographic opportunities. 

Light will soon present its challenges to you as the clouds pass over head, waiting for the god scrim to give you that diffuse light to bring out the details in the feathers.

In this case, I waited for the clouds to diffuse the sun. I wanted to show the number of birds inhabited this rock cliff. There is always a few that are either jumping off and waiting to catch the updraft to soar out to see to find fish or waiting for the moment to land back at their nest. To capture the vastness of the rock face, I used the Nikon Z 7 with the Nikkor Z 24-70 f /4 lens.