The Least of Them

So, last night Linda and I gathered up a few critical items and took them to the basement in light of the tornado armageddon that was supposedly heading our way. Things you don’t want to be looking for in your neighbor’s lots should the winds rip your roof off. We then went about our normal business as that is life in the Midwest. As per usual, predictions here were completely off (well wishes to those much further north that took a twister to the gut). The real oddity was I ran Friday – 72F, ran on Sunday – 61F, rucked on Monday – 68F, ran yesterday – 80F, the front comes through last night and today I headed out – it’s 33F and snowing. My body does not take too kindly to shorts one day and then a heavy coat the next.

In order to accelerate the hand warming, decided to do some tapping on the keyboard and bring you another featured feathered friend.

One that also dislikes the cold winters and heads down to the Caribbean Islands and the northern shores of South America to keep its talons warm.

Hit the jump to read more about this diminutive Laridae family member.

You may not recognize the family name, but I am sure you have encountered a number of its members over your lifetime – even if you are not a hardcore birder. This group is comprised of Gulls, Terns and a few outliers like Skimmers, Kittiwakes and Noddies. Gulls dominate the family with 22 species (note, in what feels like annually, that number changes with the splits and mergers), but the Terns hold their own with 14 of their species in the group. Six of those I have never seen. Of the remaining, I’ve featured (best I can tell) another five of them and the remaining 3, well I have seen, but buried in the backlog queue.

Going to chip away at that backlog and bring you a new +1 to the blog, the Least Tern. Yes, I was going to go with a “Last but actually Least joke but you need to be a professional to use that level of humor ha. As mentioned, I have had the Least checked off for a while now and seen them on a couple of trips in the field – today, going with a series from our March trip to Texas, specifically our visit to the Port Aransas South Jetty. For those that do not recognize “Port A”, I have featured one of their primary hotspots numerous times as it happens to be one of our favorites – Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center. Maybe five minutes away is the south beach which includes my favorite jetty. Easy to get to as you can drive right up to it, a good portion of it paved, clean (vs Bolivar’s) and easy to navigate beyond the paved section (vs South Padre Island’s). Best of all, if you are there in the breeding months, they tend to have a variety of Terns. These Least’s were hanging out with a large flock of Royal Terns, Forster’s Terns and their beach Gull kin.

One of the best things about these Terns is they are easy to identify…er..clarify.. easy to identify in their breeding plumage. For those in the adult breeding stage, they can be identified by their yellow legs, black cap with a yellow forehead and the best identifier, bright yellow bill tipped in black. I have to say, you can also just look for the cutest damn bird on the beach. Oh, they are also named appropriately as they are, indeed, the smallest of all the Terns. Included this shot as it gives an excellent size reference next to a Sanderling. – granted, that may not help you if you have not seen a Sanderling, in which case you will have to trust me, it is small (8.7″ long on average – Sanderlings are only an inch smaller).

Just to close out the ID discussion, nonbreeding adults and juvis have dark bill, and “smudgy grayish crown” (per Cornell) which overlaps with several other Tern descriptions. Keep in mind the small stature and, at least for the adults, the yellow legs are a good indicator. Here’s some fun: Cornell says juvis have orange legs in their description, but then say it has yellow legs in their reference shot description, Peterson’s guide says the immatures have duller legs, Sibley depicts them as yellow and Stokes says the legs of adults are reddish orange and juvis are variably orangish – so you want to be a birder eh? Screw the feet, just look for the cutest bird out there with the white forehead and yellow bill with a black tip (yes, I know there are rare occurrences without the tip ugh).

Besides, it is hard to see the feet when they are in flight anyway.

On wing, they have a very sharp look about them from the head, to the tips of their wings all the way down to their forked tails. Note the very black fine line on ends of their flight feathers and a basic pale gray to white wash over the rest of their body.

Forgot to point out that during their frisky seasons, they can be found along the coastlines of the Atlantic and the lower portion of the Pacific – from the maps, it looks like they will also just forgo the migration and just hang in the Caribbean Islands during the breeding season. For those of you along the Midwest flyways, they can be found in the drainage rivers of the Mighty Mississippi. I’ve seen signage that implies they are down in the Alton, IL area, but we have not had the opportunity to visit when they are supposedly there.

And now we have come to the end ha.

Again, we leave the high level humor to the professionals, we just happen to like butt jokes hehehe. This way you also get the added benefit of seeing their little Joe Dirt mullets. When you’re sexy and you know it…

Take care everyone, for those in the region, I hope you were all spared the worst of the storms last night.