Another Red Bill
Photo by R. Dietz, & provided as a courtesy by the Utah Department of Natural Resources
They're in the same family as gulls, but are generallty smaller, more slender, streamlined and graceful. Most have long, pointed wings and forked tails. Their bills are sharply pointed as opposed to somewhat hooked at the tips as gulls.
But a cursory look at a beach with mostly white birds coupled with the thought or words that "they're probably just gulls" means that we could miss seeing some strikingly handsome seabirds, namely terns.
And I nearly missed more closely viewing a considerable group of them on a nearby beach recently for this very reason. But fortunately I did raise binoculars for a magnified look-see. And this time I was rewarded - the birds were terns - Caspian terns.
With their heavy, bright coral-red bills, dark to jet black crowns and dark legs, a quick refresher glance at my field guide indicated that, indeed, because of such field marks and range, the only logical choice was Caspian terns.
And the behavior that would have been the frosting on the cake would have been to see them in the air with bills pointing downward in fishing mode - then watch them hover above and plunge-dive in to Sound waters below for fish prey, although they do also feed from the surface of the water. (If higher in the sky, terns are generally not soarers, but fly with almost constant beating of their wings.)
Wintering primarily in waters south to Columbia and Venezuela, Caspian terns hang together in colonies - rarely solitarily, and are considered by ornithologists to be the largest, strongest and fiercest of terns.
Why Caspian? The bird from which the species was named was collected at the Caspian Sea, a salt lake 85 feet below sea level between Southeast Europe and Asia - the largest inland body of water in the world.
Pat Nash
Beach Watcher
Class of '94