Spring Forward

It’s springtime on Norfolk Island.  The surest signs are when you first notice the rose-coloured petals emerging from the buds of the bush peach trees.  This happens about the same time each year that the white terns return.  I saw my first one alight on a pine in my backyard yesterday.  Soon the skies will be filled with them.  Oh, and the flying ants, another certain (and blessedly brief) sign of spring.  More on that later.

Photo by Dave Wiley

The white tern (Gygis alba) is a photographer’s delight.  The feathers are a snowy white, broken only by the jet-black of its eyes, bill and feet.  They have the ability to hover and if you catch them with the sun in the background, just so, you can see some beautiful gossamer silhouettes through the plumage.  Lazy people like them, too.  I’ve spent countless hours watching them from my verandah fly in incredibly tight aerial formations and have always considered it time well-spent.  These aerial exercises are especially intricate when the parents are teaching their chick how to fish.  But right now, they’re busy pairing-up and courting. 

That I’m aware, no one has tagged the white terns, so we don’t fully know where they winter.  But the birds are such an indelible part of our summer sky, it’s almost reassuring when you first notice their coming back.  Many of us believe the terns return to the same limb each year to raise their young.  This could be coincidental, but there are some limbs which will invariably have a chick on it and usually at the same place on the limb as the year before.  There is also the occasional case in which one of the parents has been killed nurturing the chick.  There will be feathers below, sometimes a carcass; usually the result of a feral cat.  It’s been my experience that that limb will no longer be used to nest, suggesting they may pair for life, as well.

Photo by Barb Mayer

The white tern has a couple of unusual characteristics.  Notably, it doesn’t actually build a nest, but will lay an egg in a shallow depression of the limb, with one or the other parent taking turns with incubation.  When the egg hatches, the chick for the first several weeks of its life needs to instinctively know not to move.  Occasionally, one will and fall prematurely from the tree.  Another characteristic is the parents don’t regurgitate food, but will feed the chick entire, small fish fry.  It’s not uncommon to find small fish that have fallen from a parent’s beak in the most unlikely places.  I had the opportunity of being on the top of Mt. Pitt with a visitor who had the look of almost Biblical wonder when he picked up a fish atop our second highest peak.  I hated to disappoint him.  Actually, I wish I hadn’t.  Who knows what new religion could have ensued?

Photo by "Island Life"

It’s difficult talking about white terns without mentioning an ominous phenomenon.  For some reason, to my eye beginning six years ago, their numbers have plummeted.  My guess is at least by half.  There may have been a trend we didn’t notice, but it seemed to occur between one year and the next.  They just didn’t come back in anywhere near the numbers expected.  Some people have speculated that it may be due to habitat-loss where they winter.  There was also a severe windstorm from Australia that year about the time the terns would have been in the vicinity.  Another concern is climate change, and a disconnect somewhere with a food source.  In any event, the population doesn’t seem to have yet rebounded.  The skies will still be filled, but there’s a noticeable absence, as well.

We’ll have the white tern until sometime in late May.  It happens every year, of course.  It’s also a sign that winter is approaching and the firewood had better be split.

- Rick