Welcome to the Club: Crested Terns

I love watching Crested Terns, especially when they hang out at the ‘club’, a pre nesting site, where all the action happens, if by action you mean lots of squawking and chatting and shuffling and courtship dances and mating. I saw my first club a few years ago when I had my first camera and was stupidly excited and just overall in awe of seeing these noisy birds doing their thang. I’ve kept my eye out, kinda, since then, but usually am honed into some other creature or some other behaviour and so I’ve missed any clubs that might be out there.

Yesterday I headed out to see a Fur Seal that had hauled out locally. I wish I hadn’t. When it was laying down it was a beautiful snoozy fluffy bundle of adorableness. But when it got up? It was skinny. Its sides striped by ribs jutting out where a thick layer of fat should have sat. Awful.

And yet around me, life was continuing as it does, the world still turning or ‘terning’ (I’ll see myself out). I watched as a group of maybe 50-60 Crested Terns, which, by the way, are one of the most stunning sea birds out there, and no you can’t change my mind, sat grooming themselves and squawking. Every now and again one of their club members would return from being out on the water, calling loudly as it flew in which in turn set off many of the others to throw their heads back and call loudly in return. (No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get bird calls to translate into words, you’ll have to watch the video below. And to see some courtship behaviour too. And anything else I found interesting 😉)

There was absolutely zero chance of me not heading back out today. The sun was shining, lockdown is still enforced and I have absolutely nowhere else to be and so I packed my camera, pulled on the gumboots and found me a lovely rock with less jagged edges than the others to sit on. And sit I did. For a couple of hours all up.

Around late winter to early spring they start hanging out in these ‘clubs’. The actual nesting site is elsewhere, sometimes on a small island off shore. But the courtship dances happen here where the head crests go up, the wings are dropped out and forward and the two birds circle each other slowly. They sometimes both take to the air, flying close to one another and often the male will bring the female a fish. I saw a few boys offering the fish to numerous birds but having no-one take them up. Eventually one of them just ended up swallowing the damn thing himself. I mean, you don’t get dessert unless you eat your dinner.

I also got to see one lot of mating, me sat there like, as my dad used to say, “a shag on a rock”. A shag watching a shag so to speak. Took me MANY years, ALL the years to discover that that saying referred to a cormorant sitting on a rock. Hmmm. But bird sex is interesting in that birds basically have a cloaca that does everything – it’s used for urine, feces and reproduction; one ring to rule them all, if you will 😂 Males keep the sperm stored in their cloaca and when the time is right it’s exchanged in what’s called a ‘cloacal kiss’ where he rubs his cloaca against that of the female and it’s over in seconds. Pucker up ladies!

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But today felt almost normal somehow. Sitting out there, observing behaviour, taking the occasional photo, some video and requesting any bird that flew over me to “please bring back a fish”. So today was a win, for me and at least one Crested Tern couple and I hope it was for you too.

Crested Tern – Northern Illawarra