Report from 10 to 12 July 2024

As I said in my previous report, bird sightings of note are few and far between in July, but can be quite interesting. This week, our local Common Terns were joined by two Gull-billed Terns, which seemed to have been welcomed with open arms. It is the third year in a row that two Gull-billed Terns appear between late June and early July, in spite of the fact that over the previous twenty years this species was just about unheard of here. I suspect these are always the same two individuals, who have worked in a brief stay at La Cassinazza into their annual schedule. In fact, I was so confident they would be back this year that I was waiting for them.
Meanwhile, the second clutch of Common Tern eggs have hatched after the standard 21-23 days of incubation. As far as I can tell from the lakeshore, there are nine nests with newly-hatched chicks, and two with adults still incubating. A few eggs failed to hatch and two clutches were abandoned, but this is standard operating procedure.
The only other sighting of note was the appearance of the summer’s first Green Sandpipers, quite a bit later than their usual early June arrival date.
For once, the documentation value of the photo of the week trumps its quality. Here are the Gull-billed Terns, whose bills are not only thicker than those of the Common Terns, they are also black instead of red.