The Australian Gannet (Morus serrator or Sula bassana) is a large seabird of the gannet family, Sulidae.
Young birds are black in their first year, and gradually acquire more white in subsequent seasons until they reach maturity after five years.
Adults have a white body with dark wing tips, and the head is yellow with a pale blue_grey bill.
Their breeding habitat is on islands off Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand. They normally nest in large colonies on coastal islands.
Gannet pairs may remain together over several seasons. They perform elaborate greeting rituals at the nest, stretching their bills and necks skywards and gently tapping bills together. The adults mainly stay close to colonies, whilst the younger birds disperse.
These birds are plunge divers and spectacular fishers, plunging into the ocean at high speed. They mainly eat small fish which school near the surface and squid.
The Australian Gannet numbers have been increasing since 1950, though some colonies have disappeared and others have decreased in size.
Gannets are seabirds in the family Sulidae, closely related to the boobies.
The biggest Northern gannet colony is in the Scottish islands of St Kilda; this colony alone comprises 20% of the entire world's population.
It is interesting to note, however, that gannets are today restricted to temperate oceans whereas boobies are also found in tropical waters, but that several of the prehistoric gannet species had a more equatorial distribution than their congeners of today.
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