Least Terns!

Our least tern colony on Sandy Point had ~430 nesting pairs this year! Last summer only 9 pairs attempted to nest and all of them unfortunately abandoned their scrapes. I counted ~420 chicks for this years population and in two days the chick count went down to 56! It was devastating.
The culprit? Herring and greater black backed gulls. I witnessed one b.b. gull eat four chicks in two minutes! After the weekend the gulls officially claimed the least tern colony as their own. The remaining chicks were experienced survivors of an all out slaughter! The hand full that made it were mostly all fledged. ~100 probably successfully fledged (some of the terns were already fledged prior to the incident) I think this number is conservative but it is still heartbreaking! The least tern parents work so hard!

Least Tern Eggs!!!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone