Who wants to be in my club?

I love watching Crested Terns, especially when they hang out at the ‘club’, a pre nesting site, where all the action happens – if by action you mean lots of squawking and chatting and shuffling and courtship dances and mating.

I saw my first club a few years ago when I had my first camera and was stupidly excited and just overall in awe of seeing these noisy birds doing their thing. I’ve kept my eye out, kinda, since then, but usually am honed into some other creature or some other behaviour and so I’ve missed any clubs that might be out there. But I’ve just realised that we’re nearly at the end of July (HOW!?!) and so the clubs will be starting to form again soon and I’m a little excited and thought I’d give you all a heads up too, so you can enjoy the spectacle.

Around late winter to early spring they start hanging out in these ‘clubs’. The actual nesting site is elsewhere, sometimes on a small island off shore. But the courtship dances happen here where the head crests go up, the wings are dropped out and forward and the two birds circle each other slowly. They sometimes both take to the air, flying close to one another and often the male will bring the female a fish. I love a partner who brings you food!

I saw a few boys offering the fish to numerous other birds but having no-one take them up on their offer. Eventually one of them just ended up swallowing the fish himself. I mean, why waste all that effort?

I’ve spent enough time around these clubs to get lucky enough to witness some actual mating behaviour. If you don’t know much about bird sex, it’s interesting but over super quickly, so you’ve got to be focused. Birds basically have a cloaca that does everything – it’s used for urine, feces and reproduction; one ring to rule them all, if you will. Males keep the sperm stored in their cloaca and when the time is right it’s exchanged in what’s called a ‘cloacal kiss’ where he rubs his cloaca against that of the female and it’s over in seconds. Pucker up, ladies!

Both the male and female take turns incubating the eggs and after around 24 days, the eggs hatch and that’s where the real struggle begins. It turns out silver gulls are not just partial to a hot chip but they also love some baby Crested Tern too. As always, life can be hard, but the pre-show, all that dancing and crooning (see video here) that goes on in the club? Well, that’s a great way to while away a few hours.