New Black Skimmer Recruits Take Flight

Black skimmers, those marvelous tern relatives with even more marvelous orange, knifelike beaks, nest annually now on Martha's Vineyard. But the location of their colony is not consistent. This year, the birds set up on Norton Point, Edgartown. About 20 pairs nested and had good hatching success. At the end of June, a group of those chicks were ready to be banded. We typically wait until chicks are about 2.5 weeks old and we have a larger group to capture, so that we don't have to go into the colony multiple times. Banding the 2025 cohort of chicks added to our growing list of banded skimmers (57 since 2017) that are providing data on migration, wintering locations, survivorship, and nest site fidelity for this northernmost colony.

Partnering with the Town of Edgartown Conservation team, we made the trek out to the colony late in the day on July 2. The skimmer colony was at the far end of Norton Point barrier beach and part of a larger colony that included common, roseate, and least terns. Luckily, the skimmers conveniently nested on the outskirts of the tern colony. Staff from BiodiversityWorks, the Town of Edgartown, The Trustees of Reservations, and Sheriff's Meadow Foundation slowly walked into the colony to capture chicks by hand. This can sometimes be tricky, because although the skimmer chicks can't yet fly, they are mighty good runners. This, however, was our easiest and smoothest capture and banding operation yet! As we moved into the colony, the chicks moved into the dunes, and we could easily pick them up by hand as they hid in the grass. We successfully captured 12 chicks and banded nine. Three were still too small to band. As if to celebrate this successful banding mission, a double rainbow appeared as we finished! It was a perfect day all around, though the skimmers might not agree.

While the banded chicks seemed to fare well in the coming weeks, we could tell the entire tern colony was agitated and nervous. They were experiencing constant predation from northern harriers and possibly, black-crowned night herons. The terns may also have faced limited food supplies this year as discarded butterfish (too large for tern chicks to eat) were scattered on the ground throughout the colony. While the skimmers appeared to be doing well, the other tern species were steering toward poor productivity. So we decided not enter the colony again to band more skimmer chicks.

As the chicks got older and fledged, they moved west from the nesting terns. On July 27, BiodiversityWorks wildlife technician Silas Beers counted 64 adult skimmers (some of which had likely dispersed from breeding sites farther south), 19 fledglings, and two almost-fledged chicks. He also recorded 15 resights of previously banded skimmers, including four of our recently banded chicks. On July 31, the Norton Point conservation team and I saw the nearly fledged chicks again and decided on one last impromptu banding attempt. We captured and banded OR(S1), which is the band code for Orange band with letter S and number 1. This added one more chick to this year's banded cohort and brought our season total to 10 chicks banded!

Four of this year's banded chicks have been seen as recently as 8/17, including S1, and all were fledged. We're grateful to the Town of Edgartown's Conservation Rangers for protecting the birds nesting at Norton Point. All banding and color-banding was under state and federal bird banding permits by our trained bird banding staff.

The skimmers are staging for migration out at Norton Point now, and skimmers from other colonies south and west of us are joining them.  Soon they will be heading south for the winter. We eagerly await resight reports of these chicks and all our banded skimmers from partners and birdwatchers further south along the Atlantic coast. If you see a bird wearing a color band with letters and/or numbers, please report it to the bird banding lab. You'll learn where and when the bird was banded and will be contributing a valuable time and location data point in that bird's record.