Variation

I stopped to look at a flock of Elegant Terns near Spud Point this afternoon.  I was struck by the amount of variation in the juveniles — different bill colors and bill lengths, different leg colors, different amounts of black on the head, and different amounts (and patterns) of gray scaling and spotting on the back and wing feathers.

Here are a few examples so that you can compare, too:

 

 

 

Quite a few of the juveniles were still begging for food from the adults.  Most of the adults seemed to ignore the begging, walked away from the juveniles, or continued to preen: