We had a wonderful workday at the prairie painting decoys (black skimmers and royal terns) and were able to move a great deal of our shed items to our new storage building. Thank you to the volunteers who helped make this happen!
As you can see our "flerns" are well on their way to transitioning from flamingos to terns, but we are not done yet! We will be advertising more workdays to finish our painting project before nesting season starts mid-February!
These decoys will be used to help promote nesting in a prefered location! We have seen this many times with the black skimmer. Often they select nesting sites that are designed for human use such as parking lots because the conditions of the space often resemble suitable nesting material for ground nesters (gravel rock, open areas, very little or no vegetation). By placing these decoys in a strategic area, we can promote nesting in safer locations better for chic rearing and designate an area away from human activities!
We will keep everyone posted on the upcoming workdays to finish our decoy projects! For more information about these projects or about the upcoming workdays, email TERN@audubon.org
