My first views of the birds came at 1140 in the morning, after birding and sightseeing around Narragansett since well before dawn. I saw a darker backed Tern flying in the channel in front of George's restaurant. The wind was blowing steadily out of the south/southeast about 50 mph or more, and the rain and sand were blowing at an injurious rate. The bird I saw was struggling against the wind, and I only saw it for about 10-15 seconds. I managed to snap some horrible photos of the bird with my wide angle lens, covered in salt spray and out of focus before the bird settled down behind the rock jetty on the other side of the pier. Two field marks that I saw were that the light collar on the bird continued all the away around the nape of the neck, separating the dark cap and the mantle, and that the cap was very dark, contrasting heavily with the lighter mantle color. The lighting was pretty bad, but comparing the two relative to each other I thought was good enough for me to text Jan St. Jean and others with a report of probable Bridled Tern.
Here is the best of my first photos of the bird. It clearly shows all of the above field marks....NOT!!
Having not seen any other birders all day, or gotten any reports, or even read any reports from other states, I was kind of frantic about the fact that this would be a rare encounter, and I wouldn't have proof, and that no one else would see the birds. Luckily for me, there have since been numerous accounts of tropical terns in the past couple of days from the state, and many birders have had the chance to see them.
I hung out for a bit in Galilee, waiting to see if the bird would fly, or if anything else would show up, but it didn't so I drove around seeing things like 6 Royal Terns in the Sand Hill Cove Parking lot with 3 Marbled Godwits, and a Pomeranian Jaeger flyover. I figured my best chance of documenting the bird was to get to the other side of the jetty, where I figured the bird would be roosting. I waited for the bulk of the storm to pass and the wind to switch to Southwest and decided that now was as good a time as any to press my luck with the police who were blocking the way down there. Luckily my shop is behind the road block and I had an excuse, and after a little talking, the cop let me through.
I checked my shop really quick and found very little damage, except to my beautiful zinias and scooted down the road toward where I had last seen the bird. I made my way to the beach, but all I found were 7 Common Terns where I had hoped to find the Bridled. No luck. I then went to check on my buddy's fish market, "Skip's Dock". It looked fine, except for the screen door which was being blown around, and as I was trying to secure it, zoom, a brown-backed tern flew by. I ran and got my camera and got great looks at the bird. Here are some photos and discussion. Please keep in mind that it was VERY windy, and not ideal photo conditions. The pictures are pretty bad, but in my view and lack of experience with the species, (or Sooty for that matter) show the birds I saw to be Bridled Terns. The photos have not been altered in any way as far as color saturation or other adjustments are concerned, but have been cropped and zoomed to focus on the birds a little closer.
So here is a tern. First, notice the distinct molt that is happening. The bird is missing one or two of its inner primaries which exposes the lighter colored inner web of the next primary. This appeared as white spot and allowed me to recognize this bird as the same bird that I viewed for over an hour. It has similar molt in the greater primary coverts that appeared as a white spot as well. In this photo, you can see that the back is grayish brown, not slate, or sooty black, but that alone tells you nothing, as in bad light colors can appear very different, but coupled with the much darker cap it can be relied on a little more. Other field characters helpful in distinguishing Sooty versus Bridled, namely the extent of the white superciliary and amount of white in the tail or not visible in this bad photo.
The field guides all present different interpretations of these birds, and I used a combination of Harrison's "Seabirds", the National Geographic guide and the new Stokes guide to help me work on this, as I have never seen a Bridled Tern before, and had no guidance from any more experienced birders.
This image is a little better, but not the best either. The underwing shows well, and we can see the darker outer web of the primaries and secondary tips, which contrast with the white wing linings and secondaries and primary bases. To me this helps show it as a Bridled, as I think the extent and contrast would be greater in a Sooty, but not really sure about that, hoping some people will weigh in on this. Also, most of the books show the blackish alula showing though on the underwing of the Sooty Tern, which appears as a black carpal patch. This was not apparent on any of the birds that I saw. The main thing about this photo though is the superciliary which continues past the eye and the forehead which is narrow.
A close up of the superciliary.
After about a half an hour of watching this one bird alternately forage and roost, a second bird joined it for a second. This bird appeared cleaner, though it was also molting in the primaries symmetrically, and I got a few photos of both birds together. On Monday, Tom Auer, Jan St. Jean and I had great looks at a bird at Napatree point which appeared very similar to these birds, but with much more white throughout the crown, and we assumed that bird to be a first summer Bridled Tern. Having seen that, and given the symmetric remig molt of these birds I would assume that they are after hatch year birds. The two disappeared somewhere out of site near the wall, and I assumed that they were roosting and tried to find them, but without trespassing, I failed to relocate the birds.
A little later, I joined a group that was watching the birds from near Champlin's Seafood in Galilee. When I arrived, two birds were roosting on the wall. The group was calling them Sootys, and that made me uncomfortable. Since I had only seen two birds in over an hour of watching, I assumed these to be the same birds, which I thought I had pretty confidently ID'd as Bridleds. They were perched on a wall, completely backlit and appeared very dark. The group was sure that they were Sootys, but I thought that was a pretty bad look, and then they flew. Here is a photo of the two birds that were roosting on the wall.
Looking at the molt of the front bird, I'm pretty sure that these were the same two birds that I had been observing earlier that afternoon. This photo shows the clear contrast between the caps and mantle, and the superciliary which extends in front of the eyes, as well as the narrow forehead patch. Scott Tsagarkis and I got a good look at one of the birds as it wheeled around and spread its tail, and you could see that the tail had extensive white in it, and the central coloration was brown, and not blackish.
I'll be the first to admit my lack of knowledge and experience about abundance and distribution of birds in RI, and I think that sometimes works to my benefit, as birds don't read books either. There was a lot of group pressure to call those birds Sooty Terns based on a very bad look in horrible light, and I even got texts that night saying that all of the Mass reports were Sootys, intimating that because of that data somehow my call was wrong. Maybe it was my report of 300 Northern Rough-winged Swallows last week that got people thinking I don't know my birds, and maybe there were fewer, but I can ID a Rough-winged Swallow by call, and this was certainly the largest group I have ever seen, in any state or country. Either way, I felt that my ID was dismissed, and that people didn't want to do the real work, but were content just calling it what they wanted. It's very interesting how group dynamics, preconceived notions and desires all interact when we're watching birds, and we got a great example of that, when 8 birders identified a Gull-billed Tern, which photographs proved to be a Sandwich Tern. These were some of the best birders in the state all agreeing on the ID.
I wouldn't be surprised in the least to have an expert Tern person ID these as Sootys, and if that's the case it'll certainly be interesting, and I really hope some people with more of a knowledge base can weigh in on these photos. Being wrong is ok. I'm wrong all the time, but when we recognize that we are wrong is when we really learn and take things to heart.
