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Mystery Terns



I just made a trip down to the Outer Banks and Pea island Wildlife Refuge.
While speeding back home across the bridge over Alligator River on
Saturday morning I glimpsed quite a few small terns hovering over the
middle of the river. There was no way to stop on the bridge and so I hoped
that if I pulled over after the bridge I might still be able to see them
and identify them. However, the river at that point is very wide and the
terns seemed to limit themselves to the middle of the river only. Thus I
could not identify them. All I know is that they were too small to be
caspian terns and that the markings were not right for Black terns in
winter plumage. But this still leaves the field farily open. Can anyone
suggest what these terns are most likely to have been and why there were
none to be found at either Pea Island or at Cape Hatteras, while the river
was simply hopping with them, but only in midstream.

Oh, I had two nice finds on this trip. I flushed an American Bittern from
a ditch at Cape Hatteras (my first ever in North carolina) and lake
Mattamuskeet had three Bald Eagles, one immature and two matures (this was
also a North Carolina first for me). The Tundra Swans were prolific and
pristine in their dazzling white and Pea Island had flocks of very
energetic Red Breasted and Hooded Mergansers "herding" schools of
invisible fish. All in all it was quite wonderful to find so  much
birdlife this late in the season--I'm used to bleak Illinois autumns
where, by now, there are maybe five species to be seen commonly.

*****************************************************
SHANTANU PHUKAN
Lecturer in Urdu-Hindi & Indian Literature
University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Curriculum in Asian Studies
Alumni Hall 413C
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599

phukan@email.unc.edu
919-962-6825
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