{"id":2029,"date":"2016-08-02T21:19:23","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T01:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2016-08-02T21:19:23","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T01:19:23","slug":"tawas-lake-black-terns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/?p=2029","title":{"rendered":"Tawas Lake Black Terns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black<\/a>

Black Tern<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the summer field trips that the AVA intended to host in July was a visit to Tawas Lake to try to view the Black Terns there. Unfortunately, the low lake level has prevented getting anywhere near them. Here is a brief description from AVA members Sue and Larry and a number of photos (click on any of them for a larger image) taken by them on their outing:<\/p>\n

\"terns2-web\"<\/a>\"terns3-web\"<\/a>Recently, \u00a0Sue and I asked a friend who owns a pontoon boat to take us to the area in Tawas Lake \u00a0where most of the Black Terns seem to \u2018hang out\u2019. \u00a0We were investigating the possibility of offering a field trip for our Audubon members so they might observe the terns and learn about their behavior.<\/p>\n

\"terns4-web\"<\/a>\"terns5-web\"<\/a>We\u2019ve had to postpone the field trip till next spring because the water depth has become so shallow that even with only 4 people on the pontoon boat (we had 12 people tell us they wanted to attend this field trip) , it scraped bottom in many places along the way from our dock to the tern nesting area.<\/p>\n

\"terns6-web\"<\/a>\"terns7-web\"<\/a>I took a lot of photos of the terns as we watched them. The photo quality isn\u2019t great, \u00a0but the photos document interesting behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"terns8-web\"<\/a>The terns spent a lot of time flying low over the water, then diving to the surface, but rarely going beneath the water. \u00a0We speculated they were foraging, but what was the prey???? Minnows, bugs,???? \u00a0The birds fly so fast. \u00a0They don\u2019t allow close human observation, and it\u2019s impossible to see what they\u2019ve picked up with only our eyes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"terns9-web\"<\/a>Some of my photos offer possible answers to the question. \u00a0What do you think? \u00a0I\u2019ve attached some photos of Black Terns w\/o prey\u2026.Photos 1-4, and 6 as a \u2018baseline\u2019 from which to compare to the remaining photos.\u00a0Photos 4, 7, 8 and 9 show terns with prey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the summer field trips that the AVA intended to host in July was a visit to Tawas Lake to try to view the Black Terns there. Unfortunately, the low lake level has prevented getting anywhere near them. Here … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2039,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ausablevalleyaudubon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}