Shorebirds and Seabirds on Gandy beach

A little sandwich tern flying in to hang with the bigger royal terns.

Three smaller black terns with royal terns. All of these black terns were at various stages of molting.

Juvenile skimmer. This is the first time I've seen a young skimmer outside of the skimmer colony at Redington Shores beach. There were a few of them on Gandy beach.

Bye, bye.

Black tern preening.

I stopped by Gandy beach on the way home from work. It's pretty close by. The sun was going down so there wasn't much activity going on. All of the birds were getting ready for bed. Most were already sleeping and the rest were bathing or preening. There were only a few black terns on the beach even though I've heard there had been hundreds of them there recently. I'm not sure how long they'll stay. They don't live here year round.  Another quiet night so I headed home.

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A rare black tern sighting

Royal and sandwich terns hanging out together.

Sandwich terns taking a bath.

Black tern

Black tern turning from breeding (all black color) to non-breeding color.

Another black tern that was in full non-breeding color.

Short video of terns taking a bath.

I had read on Pinellasbirds.com that there were a few black terns on the Gandy bridge beach. It's fairly rare to see them in the Tampa bay area. They only come through here for a short time in the summer. Since I work close to the bridge, I stopped over there on my way home from work on one of the nights were it wasn't pouring down rain. There were large amounts of terns on the beach (when a dog wasn't chase them off the beach). I could only find a few black terns mixed in with other terns but I didn't see any that were in full black breeding color. Most of them were just changing feathers. I'm going to keep looking for that all black tern though.

I attached a short video of some terns bathing. I always like watching them swimming around in the water.

Quiet Sunday afternoon at Fort Desoto

Dowitchers trying to sleep.

Great blue heron goes flying by.

Looks like a black tern in non-breeding colors. This was the only one I saw in flock of laughing gulls.

Herring gull.

Flock of skimmers and sandwich terns. I think the black tern was in this crowd.  Someone came walking by and scared them.

Skimmer flying by.

A recent Sunday afternoon at Fort Desoto was pretty quiet. Even though the peak tourist season is over there were still a lot of people hanging around the north beach. I didn't see anything different or unusual there on this trip. I did see a bald eagle fly by from very far away. It was too far to even try and crop but it was the first time I had seen one fly over the beach. Now that the weather is absolutely perfect I'll be headed there a lot more.

Black terns in the Tampa bay area.

Last week I saw my first black tern. I had read on Pinellasbirds.com that there were hundreds on the Gandy beach as well as some on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. I wasn't able to get there until a few days later. There were about 20 hanging around with other gulls and terns. I missed the big migration of hundreds but it was neat to see a few of them. Only a few were still all black in breeding colors (1st picture). The rest were now in non-breeding colors with a lot of white on the head and chest. Apparently they migrate through area. I've never seen them on the gulf beaches before. It's weird that they would pick an intown area to stop and rest.