Hello folks
Was there yesterday and only briefly. Not too much cooking, but on the walk out of there my birdwife and I espied a BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO, quite nearby in a tree. What kind of tree? I don't know! My lady was able to get a couple of ragged pictures, just for ID purposes, and both of us were quite delighted as we'd never ere seen a cuckoo! I think we could have spent a little more time with the notoriously skittish bird, but some lunatic in red came cycling down the walkers' path, ringing his bell and singing HELLO, HELLO. Lucky for all of us, my sweet birdwife turned my thoughts away from murder. Moving on, of some concern is the tern situation. The conservation people there seem to have moved the tern rafts more into the middle of the water, i.e., father from the shore, and two trumpeters are sitting in one raft, and no terns are nesting. This time last year the place was just lousy with noisy breeding terns, but this year there are only a handful so far. Of deeper concern is that approx. 3 weeks ago there were at least 100, maybe 200 terns buzzing around, and now there are a dozen or so...I wonder if any of you LSS experts have some information about the absentee terns...my heart is breaking...
All the best to you all
David
