Common Tern – 2026 Preliminary Report

2026 was a challenging year for our Common Terns, but they persevered! High water levels and a mammal predator on High Bluff Island pushed more Ring-billed Gulls into the tern breeding area. Thus, terns were limited to nesting only in our exclusion grids.  Despite this they managed to lay around the same number of nests as last year (>300). Unfortunately, some of these nests were lost when some grids closer to the shoreline flooded in June because ​high water levels. There was some predation of fledged tern chicks by Black Crowned Night Herons and gulls outside of the grid. Additionally, some chicks were lost within the grids due to very persistent gulls and night herons that made their way in on the few occasions when the grid malfunctioned. 

We had a number of chicks that experienced a previously reported feather loss condition. We need to dive more deeply into the data to see how many of those fledged, despite all of this, it looks as though at least 200 chicks fledged! Every year can’t be amazing, but we are really pleased with the tern success this year despite all of the challenges! We will provide more detail on the work done and adult recaptures in a future report”