Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.
When my family visits the Eastern Shore of Virginia, I stand on my dad’s dock and watch Forster’s terns fly low overhead during the afternoons. The birds’ elegant, pointed wings work methodically and their tail streamers dance this way and that in the gentle breeze, as their keen eyes scan the estuary for prey beneath the surface. Often, the birds will call as they fly over me. Like most terns, the Forster’s tern wears a refined outfit but its voice is anything but; the standard call sounds to me like a cross between a perturbed ground squirrel and the first tone of a particularly irritating car alarm. And yet this is a sound that awakens powerful sense memories of the mid-Atlantic marsh, my childhood home ground. On several occasions, while I watch, one of the terns will suddenly fold and fall fast into the water, plunging on some small, unsuspecting fish.
The Forster’s tern is more attached to marshes than many other tern species. Whether saltwater, freshwater, or brackish, any marsh will do, but it hunts over marsh, tributary, and estuary waters more readily than it does the ocean. It nests in marshes, too, directly on the ground – a scrape in mud or sand – or on vegetation – a muskrat lodge, a floating tangle of reeds, or a grass substrate it constructs. The terns form season-long monogamous pair bonds, and share the incubation and chick-rearing duties. Curiously, it’s been noted that males tend to incubate eggs during the day and females sit on the nest at night.
This color column depicts a Forster’s tern in breeding plumage, when it wears a bold, black cap and much of its bill turns saffron and persimmon in color. When adult terns are not breeding, their head plumage lightens and the cap becomes more of a goth eye shadow streak; the bill turns entirely dark.
Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).
Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.
Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.
When my family visits the Eastern Shore of Virginia, I stand on my dad’s dock and watch Forster’s terns fly low overhead during the afternoons. The birds’ elegant, pointed wings work methodically and their tail streamers dance this way and that in the gentle breeze, as their keen eyes scan the estuary for prey beneath the surface. Often, the birds will call as they fly over me. Like most terns, the Forster’s tern wears a refined outfit but its voice is anything but; the standard call sounds to me like a cross between a perturbed ground squirrel and the first tone of a particularly irritating car alarm. And yet this is a sound that awakens powerful sense memories of the mid-Atlantic marsh, my childhood home ground. On several occasions, while I watch, one of the terns will suddenly fold and fall fast into the water, plunging on some small, unsuspecting fish.
The Forster’s tern is more attached to marshes than many other tern species. Whether saltwater, freshwater, or brackish, any marsh will do, but it hunts over marsh, tributary, and estuary waters more readily than it does the ocean. It nests in marshes, too, directly on the ground – a scrape in mud or sand – or on vegetation – a muskrat lodge, a floating tangle of reeds, or a grass substrate it constructs. The terns form season-long monogamous pair bonds, and share the incubation and chick-rearing duties. Curiously, it’s been noted that males tend to incubate eggs during the day and females sit on the nest at night.
This color column depicts a Forster’s tern in breeding plumage, when it wears a bold, black cap and much of its bill turns saffron and persimmon in color. When adult terns are not breeding, their head plumage lightens and the cap becomes more of a goth eye shadow streak; the bill turns entirely dark.
Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).
Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.
