[texbirds] Little Caesar - growth and plumages during his first year of life.

  • From: MBB22222@xxxxxxx
  • To: texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:49:12 -0400 (EDT)

Let me explain why I call Least Tern chick the ‘Little Caesar’. Well,   at 
one short moment during the growing stage chick looks like the Little 
Julius  (see the middle photo in the third row) - do you agree? Just like a 
little Roman  running on the sandy beach.  BTW shortly before becoming Caesar 
the 
chick  has funny look as well (first photo in the third row). 
 
These who are interested to see LETE chick growth  stages and  different 
plumages during the first year of life can check this composite photo:  
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/image/151594623/original.  There are many photos of 
fresh 
hatched chicks that can easy be found on the  Internet but after chicks are 
older than few days they are on the run and hard  to find. To me most 
photographers are making fundamental mistake with those.  They are trying to 
approach older chicks - this will most likely do not work  well and only make 
chicks running faster and away (one will only get the butt  shots); plus 
unnecessarily stress them. One have to have patience, often a lot  of it, and 
wait for chicks to come to you (a blind might be necessary).
 
LETE chicks fledge when about 3 weeks old and then, for very short time,  
can sport very colorful plumage (first photo in the forth row). Shortly 
before  fledgling chicks can fly limited distances but are not capable of 
sustained  flight (third row).
 
Last two photos show examples of plumages found in one year old birds (SY,  
2nd calendar year) - those can vary a lot as the number of combinations 
that  include different head and face patterns, bill pigmentation and 
‘carpal’ 
bar  patterns can be quite large. I could easy put together another 
composite with  the same numbers of photos just to illustrate some possible 
combinations.   BTW in the past LETEs in ‘pikei’ plumage were thought to be 
TY 
birds (two years  old), they are not. 
 
Mark B Bartosik
Houston, Texas
http://www.pbase.com/mbb/from_the_field
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  • » [texbirds] Little Caesar - growth and plumages during his first year of life. - MBB22222
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