Another early morning for us as we headed back to our tern site for more ringing!
Today we focused on catching the adult Bridled Terns for our Tern tracking project sponsored by the Swire Trust. We hope that with this information we can discover more about where our terns migrate to in the winter, which in turn can help us identify threats to their populations, and what we can do to protect them (more on this in our last post: 2022/07/29- Tern Ringing: The Quest to find the Unknown).
After a beautiful sunrise, we waited with bated breath. During the first few hours, nothing. We waited more, as the sun grew stronger and beat down upon us. Just as I (who is not used to the Hong Kong heat) felt my blood being turned into Pocari Sweat as I tried in vain to replace the salts being constantly lost, we finally got lucky!
We ended up catching 3 adult Bridled Terns and 1 second year Bridled Tern! The first and second individual seemed to show a fully adult plumage, however both showed freshly moulted secondaries, and some moulted primaries. As with a lot of species we catch, there is not a whole host of information on Bridled Tern moult, with just a few old studies from The Seychelles being our primary source of information.
Interestingly, our third individual appeared to be a 2nd calendar year bird. This can be seen by the black crown appearing “scaley” with white streaks in the crown. The wing doesn’t show any obvious moult limits, like the two individuals above. The same is true for the tails of these three individuals. The top two show moult limits in the tail, compared to the tail below which all look to be the same generation- of nice quality and rounded tips.
All birds were ringed, colour-ringed and had a little satellite tag placed on to them like a little backpack. This tag causes no harm to the birds (you can learn more about tagging birds here), and will help us to better understand their movements, and how we can help to protect their breeding AND wintering areas.
Daily Totals
| Species | Original | Recapture |
| Bridled Tern | 21 | 0 |
*Please note that all wild birds are protected under Hong Kong Law. All ringing activities are conducted with the necessary permits issued by the AFCD. Handling and processing of birds is only carried out by experienced individuals.*
