The pale flash of a large white tern banking over the creek caught my eye almost as soon I got down to the water this morning and I watched it set its wings and dive into the creek, gobble its small catch in midair. and then wing its way down the creek and back out to the bay. It was a Royal Tern in full breeding plumage with a yellow-orange bill and a complete black cap (many of the birds we see here are in nonbreeding or juvenile plumage with white foreheads).
Usually I recognize the presence of Royal Terns by hearing their distinctive finger-on-the-teeth-of-the-comb calls (I can hear them all the way back at the house). But this one wasn't calling, probably because it was alone (the calls being most likely a means of communication between birds). Royal Terns breed south of us (nowadays as close as southern New Jersey) and at the end of breeding season they spread out along the coast, moving north as well as south. I don't know whether to call this early fall migration or simply summer visitation but whatever label you want to put on it it happens every year, often as early as mid-July.
Great Crested Flycatchers have been calling all around the house this morning. The calls, although recognizably Great Crested, are somewhat softer and noticably different from the rasps and mocking laughs that we hear in the spring. These birds, probably a family of adults and young, are keeping in touch by sound as they spread out through the woods around the house. Hard to estimate how many birds but there seem to be at least three or four.
Eric Salzman
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