Part of the reason for our late 2025 visit to the gannets at Muriwai was that Edin has been involved in GPS tagging some to gain some insight into their foraging behaviour. It was good to see this DOC funded research reported in the media recently. I had been scheduled to be involved with this but weather windows pushed it into a clash with me resuming work after our Southern Africa travels so I was keen to get out there to see the tagged birds.

Having been involved in capturing, banding and tagging the birds, Edin knew exactly where in the colony to look for them and we were happy to find some located cooperatively for photography.

The solar powered GPS tags transmit data back via the cellular network enabling essentially live tracking of their movements and already yielding some interesting information which hopefully will be published in a sharable form eventually.

As an obsessed bird in flight photographer my hope had been to photograph a tagged gannet in flight but despite focussing on gannet central tail feathers until my eyes ached, I hadn’t encountered one in flight. It was going to require another visit.

An opportunity arrived in early January when I was travelling up to help Edin with another of her projects. We managed a quick Muriwai evening trip and were a bit more successful with one pair.

I was lucky to catch a reflex shot of the tagged bird in flight as it passed over briefly before landing. Not quite the type of image I was after but at least a photo of a tagged gannet in flight showing the GPS tag and leg band.

We had some lovely light again and I will share more photos from this visit.

Photos with Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 VR S