Plum Island Highlights

From our morning on Plum Island, my favorite photo is this Common Tern carrying food ...

Common Tern

In the most interesting category is this Ring-billed Gull. Dark wing-tips on primary feathers strengthen the feathers where the stress from flying is greatest. Note how the ends of the primaries (particularly on the left wing) are curled up ...

Ring-billed Gull

 And finally, three additional "keeper" photos ...

Greater Yellowlegs

Piping Plover

Least Sandpiper

Whale Watch Highlights

Our trip to Newburyport was supposed to include a pelagic birding trip, but that was canceled and we settled for a regular whale watch. There were a few pelagic birds along the way, but they were too distant for good photographs.

As always, some of the most interesting photo are serendipitous ... unplanned, and even unknown until reviewed as the fact, as with the passing Common Tern in this photo of a Hump-backed Whale

The whale watching was quite good, with "Owl," a 30 year old Hump-backed Whale doing a series of picturesque dives ...

In the estuary of the Merrimack River, the outflow met the in-coming tide and stirred the fish in the water. The abundance of food at this point is evident is the number of Common Terns fishing ...

Good Birding!!

Parental Aggression

Recently we did a trip to Newburyport and Plum Island for birding and whale watching.

At Sandy Point, the Common Terns provided the most action and entertainment. In this brief series, a Mom (or Dad) brings food to Son (or Daughter). But he doesn't know quite how to swallow the food ... and drops it. A neighboring youngster sees an opportunity for food and moves in. But Mom springs to action and quickly disabuses the intruder and drives it off with a whack at the rear end.

Good Birding!

Wetland and the Shore

I am in the midst of a short stay in Philly and have squeezed in some walks at Heinz NWR and at Cape May. Here are a few images.

The waders at Heinz were stand-out, including as many Great Egrets as I have seen in one place in a long time ...

Great Egrets

Great Egrets

Great Blue Heron

Green Heron

Green Heron

Along the shore, terns were the stand-out (alas, :( no Whiskered Tern)

Common Tern

Forster's Tern

Royal Tern

Royal tern

Good Birding!!

Common Tern

Continuing last week's trip to the Sandy Point on Plum Island on the Massachusetts coast:

Common Tern - adult ...

Common Tern - adult

Common Tern - juvenile calling loudly for food ...

Common Tern - juvenile

Common Terns on the wing - adult in center, juvenile to right, still calling ...

Common Tern - adult on ground and above center - juvenile on right

Interestingly, while several juveniles were calling in the area, this adult male brought food to a female (note band on leg) with obvious courtship behavior (strutting and posturing). In late August, I would think that the hormones were beginning to subside for the year, and that feeding young and preparing to migrate would take precedence. On the other hand, not far from where this pair was doing their dance, Least Terns were feeding recently hatched chicks.

Common Terns - courtship, late August

Good birding!

One Good Tern Deserves Another

Peter Pan is the Never Land boy who never grows up, ruling his Lost Boys and constantly harassing the villainous Captain Hook and hapless Smee. He is guarded and assisted by the jealous pixie, Tinker Bell, whose voice is like the tinkling of a bell, and who sprinkles pixie dust to make you fly.

In the stage productions of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell was a bobbing point of light. When Walt Disney animated the story in 1953, animators made her into a sexy young woman rumored to have been modeled on Marilyn Monroe, which probably encouraged dads to bring their children to the movie theater. The pixie hovers and dips and darts; she pauses in mid air, does a deep “u” dip, and pauses again before dashing elsewhere.

The flight of the spritely Tinker Bell in Disney’s animated feature is like the flight of the terns, particularly the small terns, like the Common, Forster’s or Least Tern. These feathered, almost ephemeral, pixies swirl on the wind currents with delicacy and sureness. I was going to try to describe their flight and fishing style until I read Edward Forbush’s account. Here are pieces of his writing about Common Terns fishing off the Massachusetts coast:

“High in the sunlight they hover above the surging sea ... The whirling, screaming, light-winged birds ... alternately climb the air and plunge like plummets straight down into the waves – rising again and again, fluttering, poising, screaming, striking ... shooting down into the angry waves. They played with gale and sea. Rising, they shook the brine from their feathers, and towering high, hovered a moment, breasting the gale; then setting their wings like long, barbed spearheads, plunged again and yet again.”

I love watching the terns as they hover over some tidal marsh or impoundment -- as they troll the waters of an estuary, or balance on the wind above ocean waves. Their flight style has given them the name, “sea swallows,” but for gracefulness in the air, they make the land swallows look like lumbering elephants.

They are also very good at what they do - fish from the air - and that talent is the basis for their courtship rituals. A year ago when I was in Florida, I watched Least Terns in their prenuptial routines. The male has to demonstrate his ability to be a good family provider. The female finds a perch and waits while he goes off fishing. As he approaches with a small fish in his beak, she begins calling. He feeds her the fish, postures proudly at his own prowess, then hurries off to fish again. The intervals between his trips are only a few minutes.

Early this month in Cape May, I watched the same prenuptial routine along a narrow tidal estuary, this time by a pair of Forster’s Terns. She perched on a piling, while he went off fishing. She signaled his return by calling. But on several occasions, it took him an inordinately long time to return - at least in her opinion - and her calls were not to welcome him back but to protest his delay. Even so, she must have been satisfied on the whole, for after being fed to her fill, bowing and posturing with him, she allowed him to perch on the same piling. Finally they took wing together, perhaps for an aerial courtship, flying high and gliding downward.

The terns may have a pixie-like, Tinker Bell-ish character to their flight, but this feeding courtship is all practical. The female needs a mate who will help her feed their voracious young. Last summer at Plum Island, I watched Common Terns feeding their recently fledged young. The young vocalized their demand for food with an insistence that made my impatient female Forster’s sound like the epitome of laid-back patience.

Here’s a brief run-down on our New England terns, Genus Sterna. The Caspian Tern is the largest tern and can be found on Lake Champlain and the southern New England Coast. Least Tern is the smallest tern and is generally close to the coast. Roseate Tern is only found on the seaboard and is considered endangered in the northeast; a few are nesting with other tern colonies on offshore islands. A few Arctic Terns breed on offshore islands in the northeast; seldom seen from land, this tern spends most of its life at sea and is the champion long range migrant, ranging from the high Arctic during our summer to the Antarctic during our winter. The Common Tern is common in the northeast; further south along the coast and inland it is outnumbered by the Forster’s Tern.

Common Tern and Forster’s Tern are readily identified in their winter plumage (check your field guide to see the differences). But they are identification nightmares in breeding plumage. Then differences are subtle. John James Audubon correctly identified the Common Tern of North America as the same species as the Europe’s Common Tern. However, Audubon only knew the Forster’s Tern in its winter plumage: “I shot several individuals of this species out of a number congregated on the broad eddies opposite New Orleans, in 1820 .... Since that time it had not been my fortune to meet with any birds of the same species, until I visited Texas in the spring of 1837, when two of them were procured.”

Forster’s Terns winter along the Gulf Coast; some (probably young birds) retain their winter plumage through the summer. Common Terns winter in the tropics. When they return north, they may mingle with the almost indistinguishable Forster’s Terns in breeding plumage. Audubon certainly saw Forster’s Terns in breeding plumage, and probably collected some. He just did not recognize them as different from Common Terns.

Parenthetically, Forster’s Tern is named in honor of Johann Forster who accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage around the world in 1772, and who wrote an ornithological treatise on the birds of Hudson Bay. Thomas Nuttall, an English and American ornithologist, bestowed the name. Audubon named it Havell’s Tern, in honor Robert Havell, “one of the best ornithological engravers in England.”

Audubon’s failure to recognize the difference between breeding plumage Forster’s and Common Terns, puts him in a crowded company. I am beginning to get some handle on the differences between the two, but ... if you bird with me and I tell you we are looking at a Common Tern, I will reserve the right to change my opinion (as I will also do with many other species). I have recently reexamined all of my photographs of Common Terns and Forster’s Terns and find that I need to reclassify a number of those photographs.

What I will not reclassify is my delight in watching these birds fly. The terns are masters on the wing - delicate waifs - flimsy, feathery wisps - pixies of the air. Yet they are undeterred by the storms and gales that pound our shores and roil the oceans.

(Post of "Tailfeathers," Brattleboro Reformer, 5/29/09.)
Quotes: Forbush & May, A Natural History of American Birds, 1953. John James Audubon, The Birds of America, 1840-1844

Notes on Photographs (in order of appearance):
Forster's Tern - silver-white primaries, long forked tale, beak orange w/black tip (05/09, Cape May)
Least Terns - (04/08, Green Cay, FL)
Forster's Terns - (05/09, Jake's Landing, NJ)
Common Terns - juvenile & adult - adult's beak orange-red (usually darker than Forster's), tail shorter than wings & primaries dark (08/08 - Plum Island, MA)
Forster's Tern - (05/09 - Brigantine, NJ)

Additional Photos:
Common Tern - Note dark primaries (05/08 - over ocean, Jake's Landing, NJ)

Common Tern - dark wedge on primaries - red-orange beak w/o black tip which is sometimes lost mid to late summer. (08/08 - Plum Island, MA)

Least Tern - smallest tern, yellow beak, short wedged tail - (05/09 - Nature Conservancy, Cape May, NJ). (For photos of Least Tern in flight, see Steve's "Shooting My Universe" in the blogs I follow.)

Forster's Tern - courting pair at rest - light primaries, yellow bill - (05/09 - Jake's Landing, NJ)

This exercise was done mostly for my benefit as I try to get a firmer handle on IDing Common & Forster's. I hope I got it right, and I hope it might also be helpful.

Good birding!

A Weekend of Good Birding

The by-line at the end of this column says that I am a birding hobbyist, but that doesn’t mean that I always have time to pursue my hobby. For some reason, this summer has been like that, with many distractions and not enough time to walk in the woods or wander in search of birds - until last weekend.

My weekend of birding started with a day trip to Plum Island. On the way, we stopped in Newmarket, NH, to check on the nesting Mississippi Kites which I wrote about two months ago. These southern birds of prey have never been reported nesting so far north before now. As we walked down Main Street with binoculars and scope, the local woman who monitors the nest daily greeted us. Pointing toward different tree tops, she said, “Mom’s there. Dad’s there. Baby’s still in the nest.” We watched Mom preen. We watched Dad fly gracefully, swoop, and then carry food to the chick in the nest. And through the thick leaves, we could just see the growing youngster moving about in the nest, still a week or so from fledging.

On to Plum Island and the wildlife refuge near Newburyport, MA. There we saw both the waning of summer and the beginning of fall. The summer breeding season was coming to an end as Common Terns were busy feeding their fledgling young. There was so much movement that it was hard to figure out how many families and how many young were being cared for. Young terns gathered in a loose group of three to six, impatiently waiting while parents fished over the open water. Sometimes patience was in such short supply that one or two or more would chase an adult. Other times a chick would wait quietly until it spied an adult carrying food, then scream loudly. The chicks were not far removed from independence, and it sometimes seemed that the adult was carrying food and delaying the feeding, as though to say, “Look this is how it is done.”

Shorebirds represented the beginning of fall. They were resting on the sand and feeding along the shore. Most of the small sandpipers, the peeps, nest in the Arctic. But their stay is brief. They court; they mate; they incubate. When the eggs hatch, the young are precocial - relatively well-developed and able to leave the nest soon after hatching and feed themselves. When the young leave the nest, the adults leave the Arctic and their young and start south. The young follow some weeks later. We saw adults: Sanderlings, Semipalmated Sandpipers and Plovers. The sandpipers and Sanderlings were in various stages of molt - some still showing their breeding plumage, some in winter plumage, and many somewhere in between. All reminded me that the best any field guide can do is to give an impression or suggestion of what a shorebird’s plumage may be.

But the real attraction for a mid-August day on the Massachusetts coast comes down to one bird: the Tree Swallow. Finished with their breeding season in New England and the North, they begin forming their winter flocks. Along the entire length of the island, swallows swooped and swirled over the dunes, salt marshes, and tidal pools, feeding on nature’s bounty in the form of mosquitos and green-headed flies. Near the southern end of the island they must have been staging for a flight across the bay. There we stood among scattered small trees and shrubs and watched the chaotic roiling of some 10,000 swallows. It was breathtaking.

Saturday morning, an Audubon walk through a private preserve provided this same mixture of impending fall and waning summer among songbirds. A pair of Scarlet Tanager and Baltimore Oriole were just sort of hanging around. A Canada Warbler was on the move, but not hurriedly so. A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker was keeping on eye on a juvenile.

But here, and everywhere else last weekend, the greatest activity was coming from the Cedar Waxwings. They nest in loose colonies; when one family fledges, there are likely to be other families fledging in the same vicinity and at the same time. The waxwings rushed from tree top to tree top, swooping out to flycatch, returning to feed young - young swooshing out, trying to feed on their own. Constant movement, constant activity, and all accompanied their thin, buzzy “sreee.”

Back in my yard in the afternoon, I continued to watch waxwings as they fed over the river. In a couple of months they will turn to the berries and crab apples hanging thickly on branches, but for now they are gobbling the insect protein.

The wren in my yard was still protecting his second brood. A House Finch fed a youngster, as did a Purple Finch. Young Rose-breasted and Evening Grosbeaks, pretty much on their own now, came by for a meal, as did young hummingbirds. The male seems to have moved on; at least he is no longer trying to defend his territorial prerogatives.

Sunday evening we kayaked on Sunset Lake. A pair of loons lured me from one side of the lake to the other, and from the west end to the east end and back again. They were just beginning their molt from breeding to winter plumage - still sleekly handsome. They seemed to have little concern as I drifted nearby and one came on its own to within a few yards, its red eye gleaming in the evening light before it slid quietly beneath the water.

We closed out one of the most pleasant weekends of this summer sitting on the edge of the river behind our home, slowly eating a bowl of ice cream. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and the hills were growing dark. I looked upstream. The remaining light of the dusk sky reflected on the river, giving it an almost mirror like glow. In the fading light, I saw small forms floating along the current, dark against the river.

We sat very still as the dozen forms approached on the current. But we were not unnoticed. A few yards upstream from where we sat, the mother Hooded Merganser went into a frantic half flight. Her brood followed suit. Half formed wings lifted them enough that they could scurry-run on the river’s surface. Quickly they ran past us and continued running downstream until they disappeared around a bend.

The last light of the day faded away, and we said a good night to a weekend of good birding.

A Weekend of Good Birding

Went on to Plum Island where shorebird migration is beginning - lots of semi-p plovers and sandpipers, and Sanderlings. A few other things. Highlight was the Common Terns, which were busy feeding recently fledged chicks.

Bringing a meal for a demanding chick.

Everywhere this weekend, the Cedar Waxwings were present in abundant numbers, with some young still being fed and many more learning how to fly-catch for themselves. Then there was this one who paused for a dip in our river.

The weekend concluded with an evening kayak on Sunset Lake, where a pair of Common Loons consumed my intention and led me from one side to the next to the other end, occasionally talking with one another, and often fishing.

What a treat!!