Ohio Birds and Biodiversity

A giant Caspian Tern, Hydroprogne caspia, stands out among a raft of Ring-billed Gulls. As fate would have it, I ran across several of these animals, the world's largest tern, on a recent trip to Lake Erie. The tern is significantly larger than the gull, in every dimension.

I've written six cover articles for Bird Watcher's Digest to date, and the Caspian Tern was one of those subjects. It was a fun piece to write, and its appearance in the Fall 2009 issue coincided with that year's Midwest Birding Symposium. The tern was MBS's logo bird, so the article sync'ed well with the conference. Following is an excerpt from the '09 article, and if you aren't hip to Bird Watcher's Digest, check it out HERE.



Being a fish has its ups and downs. On the pro side, life is a perpetual swim in a spa, the noise and abrasiveness of the terrestrial world muted by a cool watery shield. The ability to glide effortlessly about in a state of semi-weightlessness is another allure. For the most part, all is a bubbly bowl of cherries, softly filtered golden light gently amplifying silvery schools of fish gracefully navigating the waterscape.

The con is death: sudden, horrifying, unexpected doom. And few greater terrors could exist for the scaly crowd than a Caspian tern. Imagine an emerald shiner, placidly drifting about, when POW! A sudden eruption shatters the tranquility of the depths as a bubble-distorted blur of white and red rockets through the water. Before the fish can react, that scarlet torpedo morphs into a ferocious bill attached to a brutish, winged sushi-eater. With a quick snap the minnow is plucked from the water. High in the air, the tern gives an adept flick of its bill, and down the hatch goes the fish headfirst, its world ended in one shocking instant, its fate now to return as guano.

The Caspian tern is the world's largest tern, easily outweighing the other 44 or so species, and also stretching the tape in terms of length and wingspan. In a family of comparative prissiness—with names such as fairy tern, least tern, and whiskered tern—our protagonist is the gargantuan beast, a Goliath among a cast of Davids. It takes nearly 16 least terns—the world's smallest tern—to equal the mass of one Caspian tern.

These black and white beauties even outsize many gulls. The gold standard for gull comparisons across much of North America is the familiar ring-billed gull, abundant from coast to coast. It's a big, can't-miss bird. But the Caspian tern is bigger. Its wingspan is two inches longer, and it outweighs the gull by nearly a half-pound.

Thus, when they take to the wing and commence hunting, Caspians can't be missed. As hefty as gulls, they patrol on big, broad wings with their prominent scarlet-red bill angled down as they scan for prey. You may hear them before you see them, though. As befits the king of the terns, Caspians vent a loud, jarring croaking—RRRRAAAA—that carries considerable distances. If disturbed, they may issue the wonderfully named "gakkering" call (there's a Scrabble winner for you). Researchers Francesca Cuthbert and Linda Wires describe it in their Birds of North America monograph as a "vehement, rasping, ra ra ra-ra-rarau." However you describe it, gakkering often works to scare off intruders in the nest colonies—especially when combined with strafing by an angry cadre of pterodactyl-like giants with four-foot wingspans and blood-red bills the size of small cigars.

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Today, Bernie Master and I made a marathon expedition to Conneaut, Ohio, to try and find the Little Stint that was found there yesterday by Craig Holt. For those of you that may not know the place, Conneaut is as far into the northeastern corner of the state as one can get, blocked in by Lake Erie on the north and Pennsylvania on the east.

We didn't see the stint - it apparently was a one-day wonder as so many of the birds at Conneaut are - but we did see lots of other interesting species. The sand flats in the harbor allow for great, up close study of shorebirds and I got a lot of nice photos and decent video of a variety of things.

The stint would be a state record, and one of very few records - maybe the first from the Great Lakes? - away from the coasts. Would have been great to see it, but misses come with the turf when chasing rarities.

A small mob scans the swales at Conneaut, hoping that the stint magically reappears. It didn't but we had fun watching Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings, Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, a Wilson's Phalarope, and other good stuff.

I've got Caspian Terns on the brain. One, this spectacular fish-spearers are the logo bird of the upcoming Midwest Birding Symposium. Register here!

Two, I'm putting the wraps on an article on Caspian Terns for Bird Watcher's Digest. It'll be the issue out this fall, to coincide with MBS. This will be my fourth cover story for the mag, and probably the most fun of the lot to write.

As part of my research, I had a great conversation with Dr. David Craig of Willamette University, the guy who may know more about Hydroprogne caspia than anyone, anywhere. Great guy, with loads of wonderful info.

Dave does research on Caspians at the world's largest colony, at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. A mind-numbing 9,000 pairs nest there! Hold your ears and take an umbrella! He's got a treasure trove of wonderful photos, and allowed me to use the first three in this post. Males use fish to charm the females.