Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Birds of Tern Island

I've been studying the nesting birds of Tern Island so I have some idea of what I'm seeing. There are 18 seabirds that nest on the island with populations that range from 78,000 breeding pairs of Sooty Terns, the most numerous, down to 20 pairs of Christmas Shearwater and trace numbers of Sooty-storm Petrel and Blue-gray Noody. Some of the birds that breed on the island I have seen before but others will be new to me. There are also a handful of migrant shorebirds that cross huge expanses of the north Pacific on their migration route and somehow find 35 acre Tern Island to land on. Amazing!

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