Tern Banding

We arrived on a small sandy island out in the sound at 6:30 am to band a new batch of Tern babies.

Any time you enter a rookery you are going to upset the moms

We had to be extra careful walking about as there were eggs everywhere.

There were so many small chicks still in their nests it was some times hard to find a safe path.

This small one was only a few hours old and the egg shell was still in the nest .

One mom was trying to protect this batch of little ones and was herding them into the bushes to protect them.

As we tried to herd the chicks across the beach to our make shift corral. It wasn't going well. they had there own thoughts on where they were going.

How could such little birds out smart 14 adults. It was easy. We would go left and they would go right and then turn around and just stop.

We finally broke them into smaller groups and had some success. We brought down the wire corral and banded them on the spot.

Just so cute. One of the three thousand little one we helped to band on a really sunny hot day out in the Pamilico Sound , about 10 miles in from the Oregon Inlet . It is just a beautiful location for the rookery as they are all posted " no entry " and they really are just for the birds.