Last year I posted the photo on the left, showing how our Banter See terns are perhaps not so scared of the neighbour's scarecrow. This year I can add the photo on the right, showing how the scarecrows have lots of company. Bird shit all around showing how well everyone is fed. It's a good season. ❤️

We branched out a little and contributed mercury measurements to this study on Arctic barnacle geese by Matteo Schiavinato et al, published in Environmental Pollution: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

The Banter See season is slowly drawing to a close. The first day of August ended with 717 birds being registered. Last year this time that number was 477.

L38 is actually a male, and sadly it did not breed successfully this year. His eggs were predated:

It looks like the first logger bird of the project we share with @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social has left the continent. L38, after short stopovers in the Netherlands and France, was last recorded in Andalusia on the 25th of July. No more data points until next spring, I suppose.

Although the GPS loggers are teaching us lots of really cool things about the members of Central Europe's last gull-billed tern colony, sometimes the news is just the saddest:

The good news just keeps coming and coming today. Look at these sensational data provided by the tracking project we have with @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social!

Two photos that make us very happy this morning – story below. :-)

See that cute gull-billed tern chick thinking of leaving the safety of the frog- and electric fence that allowed it to grow up behind? Well, it did, and with a logger, so that you can also see its first trip away from the colony on the right. ❤️

Out now & open access in Avian Pathology - a collaborative paper showing how highly pathogenic avian influenza (clade 2.3.4.4b euBB) was introduced, and led to high mortality, in breeding colonies of black-headed gulls and common terns in Germany in 2023: doi.org/10.1080/0307...

Some happiness for your feeds: Kamala with the two fledglings she reared with Bismarck this season. ❤️

I thought this must be a unique situation, so went back to the database. Turns out it is just unique since I arrived here in 2013 and started working on the terns. In the early days of the long-term study there were more strong cohorts, making up large proportions of the population 2 years later.

This graph is getting funkier and funkier every day: 39% of the ringed population is now made up by 2-yr-olds! And the current cohort is also still doing really well.

After last year’s successful pilot study, GPS-tracking @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social's birds, we’re back at it this year. The lovely bird @harrykuipers.bsky.social photographed is L39, a 5-yr old female, breeding with 4-yr old R75 on nest 8. She laid two eggs that both hatched successfully.

Talking about the chicks... they are doing amazing! There is plenty of food around, so they are growing up fast, with the first ones having fledged this week and many more getting ready to follow that example.

Chick sampling was closely supervised by Ariella, this weekend. Ariella hatched in 2022, prospected in 2024, then started breeding with Vedran in 2025. Last year they fledged 1 chick, and this year things are looking good for fledging 2. 🥰

Hosted 25 kids at the museum this morning. 10 interviews are in the pocket, and the next event is planned too. One of the kids drew me this card as a thank-you. Mission accomplished. :-)

The 2-year-olds have started to arrive en masse and, with 83, now make up 18% of the registered birds at the colony. At 470 of those, we are exactly 70 above the number we had this time last year. Food is looking good too, and the chicks are growing nicely. ❤️

Hatching has started at @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social's colony site too. ❤️

The Banter See breeding season in numbers so far: 226 males and 210 females (aged 2 - 25) have been registered, 319 clutches have been produced, 257 chicks have hatched, 93 blood samples have been collected and 48 birds have been caught for our geolocator-project.

Fresh as can be. Hatching has started at the Banter See common tern colony. ❤️

In other lovely news: the breeding season of @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social is well underway too and parents of the first three nests have been identified. Here are L28 and L13, last-year sweethearts, this year breeding at nest 3. More news on the blog: gelochelidon.de/home. :-)

Bugging is underway, and we are missing @matteobeccardi.bsky.social who spent two seasons supplementing the team to collect data on sex- and age-specific mitochondrial functioning in the terns. His paper on this just came out in @jexpbiol.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Poorly aimed? Out of focus? Nope... ring reading time! After fluffy chick ringing probably the loveliest job of all. :-)

Happy #SeabirdSaturday from the Banter See common tern colony, where 378 birds have now been registered by the antenna system, and 225 nests have been found. It's a synchronous season this year!

Last year, @genmig.bsky.social turned her office @ifv-whv.bsky.social into a recording studio, and 6 kids from a local highschool interviewed scientists to learn about bird migration, that of the Banter See terns included. The result can now be enjoyed online: ifv-vogelwarte.de/en/news-and-...

Happy 3rd birthday to the tern exhibition at the Banter See! We celebrate with 362 registered birds and 153 clutches today. :-)

“Counting cases, conserving species: addressing highly pathogenic avian influenza in wildlife”. Out now, and open access, in Biological Reviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Happy #WorldMigratoryBirdDay! 🌍🐦 We're grateful to be able to study these amazing athletes as they connect continents, to learn when they are where, with the end goal of helping generations to come successfully complete the same journeys.

Today, Junior Rangers visited to try out our Suitcase Science project. We drew & talked about terns; played tern-bingo to complete a pedigree & learn about variation in reproductive success; puzzled until we understood how terns get polluted by mercury; and turned postcards into migration routes.