Thursday, October 9, 2008
Juvenile
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
This juvenile
common tern reminded e of air more that any other picture I have taken recently. I really enjoy photographing birds in flight though it more often than not result in less than optimum photos. A skill I really need to work on more.
Among my favorites to photograph are swallows and terns. These are the acrobats, the sleek highly maneuverable species which remind me of the Thunderbirds flying precision high G passes. This juvenile tern for example is still being fed by the adults, but here it is carving a path through the air, twisting and turning with great control. Later in the same session I watched one of the adults approach and hand off a herring to the juvenile smoothly without landing. It hovered for a minute as it put the fish in the juveniles mouth then took of again like a rocket.
Watching a tern fish, alternately scouting, hovering and diving head first into the water is a great way to pass an hour or even two.
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Sternidae
- Genus
- Sterna
- Species
- Sterna hirundo
Life Photo Meme,
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!)
How about few more shorebird pictures…
Yesterday I had a dental appointment in Waterford, CT but I also had a new lens I was really excited to test out, so I took the camera with me. After the appointment I headed towards the coast and discovered a state propert known as “The Seashore Center.” It looks like it was once a school or some such, but now it is run down and looks abandoned. There is no vehicular traffic allowed, but pedestrians are welcome. The shore is only about 1/2 mile from the entrance.
I took tripod and gear down to the sandy beach and was greated by a dozen or more cormorants, a handful of gulls and a few common terns. One of the terns eventually landed on some pilings set out from the beach a ways. The cormorants took up the remaining pilings as well as the stone jetty. I enjoyed watching the terns much further up the beach diving for fish from 20 to 30+ feet up, straight down and in. When this common tern finally came back to one of the pilings it fluffed it feathers and posed for me for a while. It also started calling, turning every o often to begin calling out to a different quarter.
Just as I was about to leave the beach, this Great Egret swooped onto a piling. Balancing on one leg it began preening it beautiful feathers. I quickly lowered one leg of my just put away tripod and used it as a monopod to get a few good pictures.
This was the first egret I saw that landed anywhere nearby. During the hour I spent on the beach I had seen a number of them flying up and down the coast, so I was very excited to have this one stop right in front of me, especially with the new lens combination so I could get right up close to him. Just a quickly as he arrived, he launched himself into the air and flew off down the coast.
Unfortunately I discovered when I got home that I had had the ISO set to 1600 the whole time! Fortunately I shot entirely in RAW mode and was able to remove the more offensive ISO noise at the expense of a little image softening. A hard learned lesson to be sure.
