TERNS AND SKIMMERS, ETC

Last week a group of photographers made the trip to Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve located in Huntington Beach, CA. We carpooled for the 100 mile drive and timed our visit to the afternoon around the high tide. This gives you a great feeding time for birds near the flood gate for the estuary.

We had clear sunny weather and the birds were cooperative. We saw four kinds of terns: Elegant, Royal, Forester, Caspian, and Least; as well as great egrets, great blue herons, osprey, a long-billed curlew,  marbled godwit, willet, and skimmers. There were probably a couple of other birds which I did not try to identify as I was busy taking pictures of terns and skimmers mostly.

There is a reason the tern has it's name. It can turn "on a dime", dive, etc. Here are the results of an afternoon of photography. I took over 1400 pictures and have narrowed the number to about 330. I also had to discern the differences in the Elegant, Royal, Forester,and Caspian terns. They can be quite subtle.

Please enjoy  --

Elegant Tern with Fish

Elegant Tern with Lunch

Elegant Tern on Approach

Elegant Tern with Dinner

Diving Elegant Tern

Black Skimmer

Elegant Tern Looking

Starting to Skim

Skimming Black Skimmer

Oops

Black Skimmer Skimming

Elegant Tern after a Dive

Black Skimmer on Approach

Black Skimmer