Saturday, August 23, 2008
On our recent trip to Enders Island, we were treated to a marvelous display of a pair of Common Terns flying in formation as they hunted for schools of fish near the surface. The terns would hunt and swoop over the fish about 60-70 meters out into the sound, then race back to the rocks along the island. They repeated this at least four times before I noticed the juvenile sitting on a rock further down the island calling to the two adults. The lead adult had a small clupeoid fish in its beak and the trailing tern would not let the lead bird get clear. Eventually it did get clear long enough to and next to the juvenile and transfer the fish. The adult was airborne again in probably 5 seconds.
Terns are considered threatened in many states, including Connecticut and Rhode Island where the colony nesting sites are protected.
These two were hitting the water going after herring or some other clupeoid fish that were breaking the surface to escape submerged predators. Fish such as herring and sand lance make up the majority of the terns diet. They terns will also eat crustaceans, polychaetes and insects though that is less common.
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Subphylum
- Vertebrata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Laridae
- Genus
- Sterna
- Species
- Sterna hirundo
Update:
I should clarify that the common tern is not considered threatened on a national basis. Some states list them as threatened and there have been significant local declines in many areas – possibly tied to waterfront development trends and beach usage patterns. The IUCN considers them as Least Concern with a global population of 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 individuals globally (and they are truly a global species!)
Found in a lightly wooded area near the salt marsh I usually haunt in my search for egrets and other shore birds. This one was a bit peeved from near constant distractions by a bee trying to visit the same thistle.
I tried all morning to get this bird, between his shyness and hyper activity it was useless until he landed on this thistle with a large boulder between us. I low crawled up to the boulder and set up the tripod and camera to just clear the boulder. I was so happy to have gotten the shots when he finally did fly away I had to shout. No one noticed but the nearby grazing sheep who obviously already think I’m nuts.
While shooting water birds this mourning dove landed in a nearby tree and gave me time to turn and get just one shot.
