Endangered
Cape Gannet
Morus capensis
The Cape gannet is a large seabird of the gannet family, Sulidae.
Appearance
When seen in flight the snow-white body with the black tail, primaries and secondaries, and dark bill makes them easy to identify. At closer range the distinctive golden crown and nape, that gradually becomes white on the neck, is noticeable. Juveniles and immatures are dark brown with a pale bill, and can resemble the dark-coloured boobies at first glance.
Adults are about 84–94 cm (33–37 in) long and have a 171–185 cm (67–73 in) wingspan and weigh ca. 2.6 kg (5.7 lb).
Published measurements include mass about 105.
Range and habitat
The breeding range of the Cape gannet is restricted to southern Africa in three islands off Namibia and three islands off South Africa. The largest colony of this bird, with over 140,000 birds, is found on Malgas Island, South Africa. The non-breeding range of the Cape gannet extends from the coastal waters off the Gulf of Guinea on the west coast of Africa, to Mozambique on the east coast.
Numbers of Cape gannets at the Namibian islands have declined considerably between 1956 and 2000 from 114,600 to 18,200 breeding pairs respectively, an 84% decrease in less than fifty years. This contrasts with the trends at the South African islands where numbers have increased about 4.3 times during the same period, from 34,400 to 148,000 breeding pairs.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Cape gannets begin breeding in August or September. Typically the clutch is a single bluish egg, that soon becomes soiled.
Gannets use their foot webs to incubate the egg. The foot webs, that are richly irrigated with blood vessels are wrapped around the egg.
In crisis
Cape Gannet is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Cape Gannet, Wikidata item Q923985. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
