Today we went to the end of the Point at low tide to count terns. We were looking for Common and Little Terns in particular, in areas where nests had been counted from a boat over a week ago. We found eleven Common Tern nests and only one Little Tern nest. A week ago there had been twelve Common Tern nests and fifteen Little, so it wasn't good news. There were also two Common Tern nests on Middle Point as well as four Arctic Tern nests.
We also found this nest. It looks to us like eleven Grey Partridge eggs and seven Gadwall eggs... in the same nest! A female Gadwall was incubating the eggs and there are at least two pairs of Grey Partridges in the area. Sometimes two female Grey Partridges will lay eggs in the same nest and it looks like on this occasion the female Grey Partridge misidentified the nest it was laying in. The Gadwall eggs were hatching when we found them so it will be interesting to see what, if anything, will incubate the partridge eggs once they've hatched......
-Edward Stubbings
No comments:
Post a Comment