Beach Bums

I've always known that many birds breed during the summer in bird colonies, but I had thought that to find one, you had to trek up to Canada and take a raft to some sea cliff where you could watch them through binoculars at 1000x magnification. Turns out that all that's required is about an hour drive, and you can get so close to them that you can see their pimples.

To get the best shots, you have to get there before sunrise. It's a pain but this is the type of shot you then get:


The first thing you notice is the noise. Hundreds of birds are packed into a single acre of prime beach real estate. The most densely packed ones look to be the Black Skimmers - the ones with the funny beaks:






However, the most numerous are actually the Common Terns:







The terns can actually get pretty aggressive when they think you get too close to their nest home:


Although they never quite strike you, their beaks look like they can do some real damage:


Another nesting bird on that beach is Piping Plover. It's an endangered species, so it was cool to see a few of them around:




There is also a huge number of Greater Black-Backed Gulls, although I never saw where they actually nested. Here's a young one doing the morning stretch:


The other bird raising a family on the beach is the American Oystercatcher. I didn't see the nesting sites for them either, but there is plenty of them running around the beach:


This is an Oyestercatcher chick, about 4 weeks of age:


The mama Oystercatcher is trying to get some food for it:


Common Terns catch some food too: