Topsail Island tern colony

["Golden Cockerel" <goldencc@boone.net>]

I and my family just returned from a week's vacation on Topsail Island, NC
(near Wilmington).  We observed the active Least Tern colony on the very
south end of the island.  Quite a few adults were flying back and forth over
the dunes w/ minnows in their mouths, taking lunch to their young, I
presume.  We were fortunate enough to see one small tern chick scurrying
over a dune--very cute!
    We also saw an adult male Wilson's Plover there.
    Other terns (black skimmers, Forsters, royal or Caspian) were seen in
the area, but not noticed actively nesting there.

The beach side of the island offered very little other than pelicans,
laughing & ring billed gulls, and willets.  While fishing for flounder in
the sound I saw oyster catchers, a flock of ibis in flight, a ruddy
turnstone, a greater black-backed gull, osprey, and various other
unidentified sandpipers (sorry, but it's not easy to bird from a small
bouncy boat through binoculars and discern slight differences as great
distances).

A couple of the Purple Martin houses I noticed did indeed have martins in
them.  And Betty, my wife, reported a male painted bunting--her target
bird--singing on a light wire (and I missed it!).

The songs of scarlet tanager and veery greeted us yesterday evening as we
returned to our Watauga Cnty home sweet home.

Walton Conway
The Golden Cockerel, Boone, NC
www.goldencockerel.com
(828) 297-4653