4 years after almost drowning as a chick in a mass stranding throughout the 2021 Lengthy Seaside Harbor Seabird Incident, a banded Elegant Tern has been noticed thriving – this time in San Mateo County.
On August 1, citizen scientist Cedrik von Briel, winner of the July 2025 eBirder of the Month Problem, noticed the previous affected person at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Nationwide Wildlife Refuge in Menlo Park amongst American White Pelicans, shorebirds, and different terns.
In the summertime of 2021, this tern was considered one of over 3,000 chicks handled at Worldwide Hen Rescue after their colony of round 10,000 terns deserted their outdated nesting website at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and relocated to a barge in Lengthy Seaside Harbor. This proved to be a hazardous location for susceptible hatchlings. Flightless chicks have been falling off the perimeters of the barge en masse and drowning. A whole era was susceptible to dying with out Hen Rescue’s intervention.
Surviving a life-threatening occasion like this and persevering with to flourish after launch is a testomony to each the resilience of this chook and the effectiveness of rehabilitation efforts. Having traveled greater than 380 miles from San Pedro to Menlo Park, this survivor additionally contributes important perception into the motion of Elegant Terns, a threatened species susceptible to habitat loss and local weather change.
Defending the Way forward for Hen Analysis
Re-sightings like this underscore why chook banding is so important. This sort of long-term knowledge deepens our understanding of how species adapt in a altering world.
Sadly, the U.S. Geological Survey Hen Banding Laboratory (BBL) is susceptible to getting eradicated in subsequent 12 months’s 2026 proposed federal funds. If this occurs, no new banding permits can be issued, and each new knowledge assortment and entry to current data can be halted. 100 years price of knowledge may even be completely misplaced.
“After 20 years of caring for sick and injured birds, I’ve seen how each banded chook tells a narrative — a narrative of resilience, of connection, and of what’s at stake,” stated Julie Skoglund, Senior Director of Operations and Packages. “Banding offers birds a voice and helps us learn to shield them. Dropping the Hen Banding Lab would silence that voice at a time when so many waterbird populations are in steep decline, dealing with ever-increasing challenges to outlive and thrive.”
Hen Rescue has been inserting federal bands on almost all launched birds since 1979. The Blue-banded Brown Pelican Program, which was established in 2009 when Brown Pelicans have been taken off the Endangered Species Checklist, makes use of massive, extremely seen blue bands, encouraging birders to report their sightings. Among the most transferring re-sightings embrace a pelican noticed 14 years after its launch, in addition to others seen with chicks of their very own.
These observations have additionally helped Hen Rescue measure the success of chook rehabilitation. Dr. Rebecca Duerr, Hen Rescue’s Director of Analysis and Veterinary Science, printed a analysis paper in 2023 demonstrating the effectiveness of rehabilitation in pelicans launched again into the wild.
With the way forward for the BBL in danger, it’s essential to remain knowledgeable and engaged, supporting its preservation by contacting congressional representatives or backing conservation organizations. This important work helps give birds just like the Elegant Tern a voice, displaying us how they survive and adapt. Each banded chook sighting reported on our web site contributes on to monitoring survival, migration, and rehabilitation success.
