This evening I went for a beautiful Kayak Ride in Flanders Bay and headed to a salt pond that I had seen on aerials and wanted to check out. Since it was high-tide I knew I'd be able to kayak into and out of the pond (it's heavily shoaled up so the entrance isn't accessible via kayak during low tide). When I got near the inlet I noticed a Least Tern Colony being established on the spit of dry land. It appears that courting was still going on as there was a lot of "passing of the fish" (see below) going on and I didn't notice any birds sitting on nests, though it was a little tough to tell since I stayed in my kayak.
I hope you enjoy these shots of the Least Terns - I was certainly happy to stumble upon them.
There also were a few shorebirds that were feeding on horseshoe crab eggs and other bits of food along the edge as two horseshoe crabs finished copulation and gently slipped back into the water.
Here is a shot of a semi-palmated sanderling with a very small egg in its bill (the size of a grain of sand - pardon the massive crop!). It's not a horseshoe crab egg, which are green but the egg of some other invertebrate which will remain unknown to me.
If you're looking for more information about Horseshoe crabs and how they effect the lives of shorebirds, check out this book: Horseshoe Crabs and Shorebirds: The Story of a Food Web
Or, if you are looking for some more info on Diamond-backed Terrapins, look no further than this cool title: Marvels in the Muck: Life in the Salt Marshes
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