Tern, Tern, Tern

摘要

On May 22 I joined a small group from the American Museum of Natural History in a motor launch at Niantic, Connecticut. We chugged across Long Island Sound to Great Gull Island, a bird sanctuary jointly operated by the Museum and the Linnaean Society of New York (an ornithological group dedicated to natural history and conservation). Great Gull is a low rock-pile of an islet and the most successful breeding ground for common and roseate terns in North America. About 17,000 pairs of commons and more than 1,800 pairs of roseates breed there every summer, arriving in early May and departing with their young in August. This colony is the only one with a growing population (especially of roseates), partly because breeding grounds on Long Island and farther south have been eliminated by relentless human development.