In search of the Elegant

Went with Eileen Schwinn to Dune Road yesterday and again today (with our house guest Mark Grant) in search of the true and the elegant -- that is, the fabled Elegant Tern, originally seen at Cupsogue and later also at Tiana Beach. After some brief stops at Shinnecock Inlet and a couple of other places along Dune Road, we pulled into the bay parking lot at Tiana and set up at the eastern end of the town park facility. The wooden boardwalk at this point looks over a large stretch of salt marsh. The area between the boardwalk and the salt marsh, where the bay extends almost to paved road, has long been a popular area for Horseshoe Crab nesting and hence a required stop-off point for many shore and water birds that eat Horseshoe Crab eggs. Last year, when my granddaughter Juliette had swimming lessons here in the town park, I sat in the little gazebo and watched the shorebird migration which was notable for the presence of several Whimbrels, flying high and calling and also dropping into the somewhat distant marsh. The ocean came over the dunes at this point during Sandy and formed new sand flats that are bird friendly and easily visible from the boardwalk. At one stroke Sandy transformed this spot into a birdwatcher's delight.

The Elegant Tern has been a sometime visitor here in recent days and, with thunderstorms predicted for the East End on both days, Tiana seemed a better (safer) bet than the wide-open mud flats of Cupsogue. What's all the fuss about this tern? The normal range of the Elegant Tern is on the Pacific Coast from California (mainly southwestern CA) to Peru and Chile. Apparently one of the birds, heading north to the breeding grounds took a right tern (errr, turn) at the Panama Canal and ending up in the Atlantic.

Well, wherever that bird is now, it wasn't at Tiana Beach either afternoon. There were three Royal Terns (somewhat larger cousins of the Elegant) and several dozen Common Terns plus Herring, Great Black-backed and Laughing Gulls. Also a small flock of Black Skimmers (some actually skimming in approved Skimmer style), a few peep (Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers), Sanderlings, one or two Black-bellied Plovers, Ruddy Turnstone, numbers of Willets, an Am Oystercatcher or two, several Piping Plovers (including young ones) and hundreds of handsome dowitchers (as usual, mostly Short-billed but with one or two possible Long-billed mixed in). There was a definite movement of swallows both days, mostly Barn and Tree but with a few Bank mixed in.

Yesterday and this morning (in between the raindrops) was notable for the appearance of numbers of young Baltimore Orioles. These fledglings announce their liberation from the nest with a persistent triple-note call that is easy to recognize. They generally forage high but yesterday, as I took a time out on a neighbor's porch, one of them appeared in a bush in front of me right at eye level. 

Eric Salzman