Lambert's Bay Bird Island

We started the new year with a daytrip to Lambert’s Bay, a village up the West Coast. If you look for it on the map, you’ll find on the coast opposite Clanwilliam. This used to be a sunbaked little fishing village (the sea is much richer than the land in this part of the world.) Now, thanks to the fishing factories (and a couple of them for potato chips, go figure!), it’s a sunbaked fishing town. In the harbour, the breakwater wall links the land to Bird Island, a famous breeding site for Cape gannets. Why is a bird breeding site worth visiting? Well, by ‘birds’ I mean, it looks like there must be a million of them, all crammed into the size of half a rugby field. How they each find their mate and individual breeding site is anyone’s guess! It is one of only six sites world-wide where Cape gannets breed, and it is also the only breeding site easily accessible to the public. Another interesting fact about the island is that guano was collected on the island from 1888 until 1990 for use in fertilisers. If you don’t know what ‘guano’ is, park your car underneath a tree for a couple of hours and then check the windshield… All jokes aside, there was a time when guano was literally worth more than gold by weight. We took a stroll to the modern lookout point.