Hey, did you hear? I won Top 100 in one of the annual National Audubon Photography Awards. Audubon chose from a pool of 7,000 images that came in from photographers in every state in the USA and 6 provinces of Canada.
With the first of two Least Tern chicks newly hatched, the male quickly gathers the shell fragments and disperses them far away from the nest. What's interesting is that the scattering of shells isn't for the protection of the parents or chick, but for the intact egg remaining on the nest. Niko Tinbergen, who studied the
shell-disposal behavior of Black-headed Gulls, proved that the farther from an intact egg an eggshell was placed, the safer the intact egg.