birding-aus

birding-aus Black naped Terns nesting.

To:
Subject: birding-aus Black naped Terns nesting.
From: "jon wren" <>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 01:00:17 PST
Gooday birders,
During December and January this year a group of Black naped Terns 
nested on the long sandspit of Stone Island, just offshore from Bowen 
Queensland, for International subscribers the location is the "Top of 
the Whitsundays".
David James reported sighting imm.BN Terns early in 1998 and thought 
there was a possibility of a mainland breeding site. The area the birds 
nested would be about 5Km SE of this site where James observed the young 
birds. 
What I found interesting was the adult birds behaviour during the 
nesting period. Quite a few adult birds would fly from the sand spit and 
fly that low over the water that they almost touched it, they always 
done two or three circuits then returned to the nest site. At this time 
the days were extremely hot so you can imagine the temperature of the 
sand spit. I concluded that the birds were cooling themselves as none of 
the birds were feeding, during the time that they were absent from the 
nest Silver Gulls would move in and actually attack and succeed in 
getting a chick, this caused great commotion.
With hot days continuing for a further fortnight I would have expected 
the nesting site to be decimated, but actually they have succeeded in 
raising a number of young. All observations were from a dinghy and I was 
pleased that the locals gave the island a wide berth during this nesting 
period. 

Jon Wren
PO Box 868
Bowen
Queensland
Australia 4805  Phone 07 4786 2614H or  
Visit the birds of Bowen, click Tourism
www.lgaq.asn.au/bowen.nsf
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
To unsubscribe from this list, please send a message to

Include ONLY "unsubscribe birding-aus" in the message body (without the
quotes)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • birding-aus Black naped Terns nesting., jon wren <=
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU