At 17:20 15.03.03 +1000, you wrote:
Russ, thanks for that. I have just seen something new to me. We see a lot of
White-winged Black Terns (Caloundra, SEQld), but I never see the behaviour
that is shown in motion on the website below. I went to update, terns, and
it took a while to load. However, there was a White-wing scooping food from
the sand. We only see them behaving as sea-terns, and not feeding at all
once they are inside the Pumicestone Passage. Fascinating. And a marvellous
site, and that's something coming from me, because I don't like the web - it
devours precious time.
I once spent a morning on the web trying (fumbling is a better way to
describe my searches) to find info about their nesting habits in the
northern hemisphere, and all I could come up with was the fact that they are
"wet nesters". I didn't find any pictures of nesting, though I found plenty
of other pics. Has anyone else ever found anything about them nesting?
Cheers,
Jill
Jill,
I do not know White-winged Black terns all that well
either---they do not occur in Norway except as strays in the SE, some
2000km from here, but I have seen them nesting in Poland (Biebrza valley),
and as far as I could see, the nesting localities wre very much like those
of the Black terns I know from my naive Holland, i.e. on small islets of
floating vegetation in the middle of freshwater ponds---in fact, the Black
terns readily accept artificial nests made in the same way in ponds that
have no natural nesting habitat. One often wonders how the whole structure
can survive, and I should think high winds may well cause havoc occasionally.
The Birds of the western Palaearctic notes: "nests on
floating vegetation, occasionally on the shore".
Wim Vader, Tromsø
Museum
9037 Tromsø, Norway
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