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Project Noah Nature School
Sterna Hirundo
A view of part of the Common Tern breeding colony at our local marshes. In the first picture a Little Ringed Plover is sitting on its own nest in the middle. In the 2nd picture another pair of Common Terns have turned up for they courting ritual, right next to the Plover's nest, as per pictures 3-5! The Plover stands up, revealing 4 eggs, and appears somewhat concerned about this activity. In picture 6 the female appears to have left, perhaps preferring not to use the same nest? The male is left wondering what to do with a fish which is perhaps too big to swallow!
Coastal marshes.
I will post larger pictures of the Plover and nest/eggs later.
Spotted on May 22, 2012
Submitted on Aug 24, 2012
3 Comments
Cool story!! No it is clear why the fish looks so lost ;-)...
There are no "abouts", my camera records the time to the second. I took 7 pictures in all but there is negligible difference between the first two, the second I cropped and posted as a Little Ringed Plover only. Here are the camera timings for the others: 12:04:12, 12:04:23, 12:04:25, 12:04:29, 12:04:33 & 12:04:39. So overall 27 seconds, but all the action was between the 2nd & 5th pictures, so just 10 seconds!
I could have taken a video with the camera and still captured still pictures, but it would have switched the quality from Highest to almost lowest and size from 14MP to less than 1MP. At the time my intention was to just photograph the Plover!
Very interesting! About how much time elapsed between photos 1 & 6? Thanks for sharing this with everyone!