Welcome to another report from Audubon's Forrest Penny, our seasonal Bird Conservation and Outreach Coordinator at Huguenot Memorial Park, located in Jacksonville. Thanks to USFWS funding, we were able to hire Forrest to assist park staff, where he spent the summer on the beautiful shores of Huguenot monitoring bird nests and helping park visitors learn more about this special place. Here is Forrest's report from July 2012. Enjoy!

By mid-July, a weekly census conducted by park staff and volunteers accounted for more than 2000 Royal Tern and Laughing Gull chicks present on the beach, forming large crèches that moved from the edge of the dunes to the surf line during the heat of each day to lay down in the cooler wet sand exposed by the ebbing tide.

At this time of peak numbers, it was easy to observe the behavior of chicks and adults of both species of seabird, and inevitable to make some comparisons between the strategies used.  With the Royal Terns, a constant airlift of small prey items could be seen flown in to the colony from the offshore waters, primarily 1-3” long killifish, mullet, menhaden, and glass eels, with menhaden seeming to predominate (it's easy to identify them when they are flown in 15’ above your head).

These small fish are fed whole to the chicks, which reportedly are identified by call by the appropriate parents.  I couldn't help to observe that, without exception, the feeding of a chick resulted immediately in the arrival of other adult Royal Terns, that would encircle the now gorged chick, with heads thrown back, crest erected, and a chorus of tern “awwks” vocalized.  While I initially interpreted this as some type of “celebration” of the successful feeding of a chick, I eventually set aside such anthropogenic tendencies and decided it was a simple protective measure to prevent marauding gulls from pirating the fish from the chick.

While the Royal Terns appeared to be diligent and protective parents, the Laughing Gull parents seemed to implement “tough love” as a rearing strategy and the chicks seemed to be more independent, long before fledging.  The gull chicks were usually observed wandering across the beach alone, were subject o some pretty rough treatment by adult Laughing Gulls, and are fed by regurgitation by a single adult, with none of the fanfare seem with the terns.

Obviously the different strategies work for each species, undoubtedly designed to prepare the young for survival upon maturity.