Northern Gannet
Percé, Québec
A northern gannet coming in for a landing at the Bonaventure Island colony in Percé, Québec extends its wings to their full span to lose speed before touching down. Gannet wings are purpose-built for flying fast, diving deep under the ocean surface, and pulling double duty underwater as flippers. The wing's narrow width and long length allow gannets to excel at these tasks with ease, but when it comes to making soft landings, it's exactly the shape you don't want, since the same streamlining and lack of resistance in the water means that there isn't a whole lot to push back against and slow down in the air. Rather unsurprisingly, the average gannet landing is more or less a controlled drop without ceremony onto the ground.