From Student to Professor: A Week with the Terns

I'll start with the highlights and end with all the rest of the photos.

To give you a sense of the island:

They aren't kidding about don't land. Between Common Terns and Roseate Terns there are over 10,000 nests, which means 30-40 thousand birds, half of whom are tiny and under foot. You have to be so careful walking around.

That's a little blind on the left. There are maybe 10 of them scattered around the island. Then the big blind on the right which was the only one tall enough to fully stand in.

Sunset on the 4th of July.

If you do a google map search for Great Gull Island you can see it, but not at this time of year because most of the island is covered with vegetation like this and the map looks mostly dirt and open.

Morning chick check. The commons like to hide under the brush.

So here are birds and more birds. The first set is all roseate terns. They have mostly black bills, and when compared to the common terns they are lighter grey on the back, lighter grey at the wing tips, and have longer tail feathers. Also they like to nest among the rocks, so if you see chicks or nests out in the open that's definitely common.

adult with 2 chicks

adult with chick

chick and 2 eggs

adult with chick

Roseate chick with egg. The only one we got really close to.

I managed to get footage of this one getting banded.

The common terns nest more in the open and are easier to see. Also there are way more of them. Both the roseate and common teams say they're having a good year, but while I was there the roseate team had found over 1500 nests, and the common team had found over 8500 nests.

The common tern has black only at the tip of the bill, has dark feathers along the tips of the wings, and has shorter tail feathers. (Yes there are official words for those kinds of feathers, no I don't remember what they are, but as my audience doesn't know those words either I'm aiming for more clear communication.)