One good tern deserves another

On a different road to Anchorage today, lots of wildlife showed themselves.  Out in the lowlands at the mouths of the Knik and Matanuska rivers two moose browsed through the low brush.  Both looked blond compared with the dark hair they usually sport.  Maybe it was the light, but the color at first looked more like a grizzly they might call silvertip rather than a moose no one has ever called silvertip.   A little farther along a third moose lay by the side of the road, the victim of traffic, at 65 mph looking more like it was scavenged than butchered, which makes for waste in a couple of ways.

Landing on the wires along the roadside an arctic tern hovered and then  perched for a while, first one of the year, the veteran of a yearly 20,000- mile round trip commute. 

They've always been a special bird.  There was a night soaked with beer on the bow of a boat in harbor when a group of us began scoring their dives like they were Olympians.

There was the female standing on the top of a piling as suitors approached her and hovered before her with fish in their beaks in hopes of winning her favor as she haughtily lifted her own beak like a society matron might sniff at some lesser human being who had the audacity to approach her, and turn her head to the side, rejecting one offer after another.

They have another side too.  For years working with oil spill response, I had to wear a hard hat during the drills and training sessions I observed.  The only time I ever really needed one was when I ventured too close to a tern's nest.  Talk about being dive bombed, they hit the hat, hard and I had to beat it out of there, watching very carefully where I stepped as I made my escape because they lay their well-camouflaged eggs exposed among rocks.

Still, it is always a treat to see the first one of spring every year.

For anyone who might like terns (and puns) The Book of Terns is highly entertaining.  Puns from the book were always fun on the tour boat when we saw the birds. At times in late summer they would gather before their migration.  When they took off as a flock, they would make sharp turns as a group like those tiny fish in so many films.  I loved the groans from the tourists when we saw that and I could say over the loudspeaker, "looks like one good tern deserves another," or talk about the big ternout we had that day.