Egg collection

As all of the talk is about eggs and young right now with Piping Plover and American Oystercatchers hatching young and Least Terns and Common Terns making nests I thought I would go into our archives at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History to give you a different view of them.

You'll see in the first case Piping Plover eggs on the far right of the top photo. They are relatively large in comparison to some other common species, more so than I thought they would be. In the second photo you can find Least Tern eggs in the middle and Common Tern eggs on the bottom left - they look massive and almost appear closer in size to the Mallard eggs than those of the Least.

When on the beach monitoring we are not looking for you to go up to nesting areas and count eggs. For the most part this would be disruptive to the birds and potentially fatal if they were kept off of the eggs for too long, especially in very cool or hot weather. Piping Plover nests are exclosed by CT DEEP with AAfCW assistance once they reach four eggs, so if you see one of the exclosures over a nest you will know how many are there. Terns can be counted by watching them sitting on the beach in colonies as they incubate their nest. If you would like to view eggs up close come visit us at RTPI - 311 Curtis St., Jamestown, NY.