Today's
Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
least tern (10)
herring gull (10)
ring billed gull (7)
Bonaparte's gull (2)
great black backed gull (2)
common tern (4)
double crested cormorant (2)
Forster's tern (2)
common grackle (1)
Today's
Reading: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella
Bird
Today's
Starting Pitcher:
Pedro Martinez
2001
Book List
2001
Plum Island Bird List
Plum
Island Life List
Photos:
Sign showing
least tern with chick - raindrops clearly visible
Fat
Free?
Beach -
looking south
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I
wimped out after an hour and a half on the beach as a rain
shower passed directly over me and I got soaked. I actually
radioed the gate house that it was only raining on me. As I
was leaving, the geologist guy I was talking to last week
arrived to take over so I felt better about leaving. The
beach was not busy anyway. The early shift person had not
had a single visitor and I didn't have any in my hour and a
half either.
Gulls
and terns were the main attraction the whole time I was
there. The least terns put on a good show catching little
bait fish all over the place. A Forster's tern caught a fish
and flew up with the fish in its beak. The wind blew the
fish right out of its beak so the tern dove again after it.
The wind blew the fish out again. The poor tern repeated
this a third time and then finally flew off. The wind was
pretty powerful.
The
biologists started the survey about an hour before I left,
so I don't have the most up to date information. Jean said
there were about 10 chicks so far, and a couple of the
unsuccessful pairs have renested.
It felt good to have the wind blowing
and cooling me down, but once my long-sleeved thin cotton
blouse got wet the wind felt downright cold. Strange we've
been having an almost heat wave and today everybody on the
beach but me (hardy to Zone 5) is wearing a
jacket.
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