Vigil needed to protect terns

LITTLE terns began nesting at Crimdon, near Hartlepool in Teeside, in the mid-1990s.

Sixty-five pairs did so this year. Volunteers protect the colony but there isn’t 24 hour surveillance. On the morning of June 19, according to a BBC report, a warden discovered that the eggs had been stolen from fifty nests. They were two thirds of the way towards hatching so the chicks inside them would have been well formed. Large footprints in the sand showed that the raid was carried out by a man acting alone.

Sometimes called ‘sea swallows’, terns resemble delicate little gulls with black skull-caps. The plumage is pale grey above and white underneath. Not much bigger than a starling, the little tern is the smallest of the world’s 44 species. Its bright yellow bill makes identification easy. The birds which visit our part of the world spend the winter off the west coast of Africa; ringed ones have been found as far south as Ghana. Adults return in April and May. They like to nest on coastal shingle beaches, or shell-strewn sandy places, with stretches of clear water, salty or fresh, close by. There has to be a plentiful supply of little fish, food for the chicks. No nest is built; the eggs, beautifully camouflaged, are laid on the ground.