ML29879541

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

We had 3 people in our birding group. We were looking for White-rumped Sandpipers on the western side of Salt Lake when we saw a Forster's Tern standing on a sand bar. What we thought at the time was another Forster's was flying along the shoreline foraging from north to south. It would fly a short distance, hover, go down to get something then repeat this over and over again. When it got to the sand bar it would fly north and repeat the whole process. We decided to try and get flight shots of what we thought was a Forster's while we were in a vehicle parked on the side of the road. After about 15 minutes we left and I believe the tern was still there if I remember right. We had had a long day after traveling from Wisconsin. When we got back to our motel rooms, 2 of us were looking at our photos when we realized the Tern had a black bill and black legs so it wasn't a Forster's Tern. After looking at a bird book we thought it might be a Gull-billed Tern way out of it's range so I posted a photo in the Minnesota Birding Facebook group as we did not realize the western side of Salt Lake was in South Dakota at that time.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D7200

ISO

100

Focal length

300 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/7.1

Shutter speed

1/640 sec

Dimensions

1540 pixels x 1096 pixels

Original file size

676.17 KB