There are some birds at the Rogue estuary that are called terns. At first glance, I thought they were seagulls, but they’re not. My friend, Christine Mack, says that when they’re in flight they look like a cross between a seagull and a hummingbird. There are several species and, in this case, the species I’m seeing most of are what are called “Least Terns.”

I’m still learning about them, but I believe most species of terns are migratory and are only here for a few weeks in the spring when they’re on their way further north to nest in Canada and Alaska. Then they’re back for few weeks in the fall when they’re flying south to South America, or wherever. But there are thousands of them in the port, here in Gold Beach, now.

The ones I’ve been photographing, called Least Terns, are not very large birds. They maybe have an eight or ten inch wingspan.

They fly out over the Rogue estuary, darting back and forth and making turns that are so abrupt they look more like billiard balls bouncing off the rail of a pool table than a bird changing direction. They’re looking for small fish that are swimming near the surface. When they see one they think they can catch, they zoom to the water like a dart and splash in. And if they catch something, they emerge with a two- to four-inch-long fish that looks like a sardine.

I’ve been trying to get some good photos of them actually catching something but, so far, I haven’t gotten any decent photos of them catching anything.

I’ll be posting more photos, soon.

Here a tern is diving toward the water…

Splash!

It’s emerged from the drink.

It caught nothing, this time.

I took one hundred and fifty-five photos of two great egrets, over a five-minute period, in the Port of Gold Beach. It’s the first time I could clearly see them catching fish. Besides fish, great egrets eat amphibians, small mammals and reptiles, crustaceans, insects, etc.

I focused on one as it was stalking prey. It alternately walked very slowly or stood still in the shallow water. It now just waited for something below the surface to approach. When one of the fish finally got too close, the great egret plunged its head into the water and, when it pulled it out, it had one in its bill.

What I didn’t realize, until I saw this one in action, is that, once it’s caught a fish, it’ll very patiently dip it back into the water, several times, to clean it off. In this case, it was removing most of the seaweed before it ate it. This can take several minutes and several dips into the water. Then it’ll turn the fish in its bill so it can swallow it whole, head first. Unfortunately, I missed the shot where it swallowed the fish.

That silvery filament, in the next-to-last shot, that looks like fishing line, is thin strands of seaweed with water running down them.

In the fifth photo, you can see the great egret in the background trying to catch something. In the sixth photo, you can see just the seaweed hanging off a fish it had caught.

It’s hunting.

I almost missed this shot because it struck so quickly.

It caught something.

It’s about to clean off its catch.

It will dip its catch back into the water, several times, until it’s satisfied the catch is clean.

While it’s getting ready to swallow, its companion, in the background, is making its own catch.

While it’s turning it’s catch to swallow it head-first, its companion has a mass of seaweed hanging from its own catch and will have to deal with it.

This is the full-frame photo of the cropped image above. I just thought you should see what I was seeing.