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Gannets have highly visible behavioural displays and thanks to Brian Nelson's years of study, we can understand what they mean. Billing occurs between the pairs. It is a mutual greeting that they do every time they meet, even if they've been mated for 20 or 30 years. It is a pair-bonding display and they do it all season from February to October. Sky-pointing is a message to say that the bird is about to leave the nest. If both of them felt like leaving and went, then the eggs and chicks would be vulnerable. So they need some means of communicating that one is about to go. It's sign language. There is a lot of aggression in the colony. They nest so closely together that individual pecking distance is almost always being breached. You couldn't ask for a more photogenic bird or one with more interesting behaviour and ecology - it's got the lot.