WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Terns making a comeback

Terns flutter and squawk as our boat approaches Rock Island on Lake Champlain, but that hasn't always been the case. Their numbers rapidly declined in the 1980s primarily because of gull, cormorant and human interference, and they were placed on the Vermont Endangered Species list. Mark LaBarr from Audubon has been working to bring those numbers back for the past 20 years.

"I don't think there are any chicks here... There might be, they are acting funny."

Mark and the folks with the Common Tern Recovery Project have been monitoring the terns since the late 90s.

"This chick is maybe 15 days old. Just beginning to get his adult feathers."

"We band them as early as 2-4 days, and that way we'll find them 2-3 more times over the course of the summer and we can document whether those birds are making it off of the island."

"This year, we found one dead adult, that was killed up at Popasquash Island by a mink of all things, and it was a bird that I had banded as a chick in 2004. So it was a 6-year-old bird that was breeding up at Popasquash Island, and so we were able to get that band number and know that that bird had hatched from there and had returned to its natal colony in order to start breeding as an adult."

There is a grid of rope that stretches across the rocks to help keep competitors off the island.

"The grid is something that we modified after somebody who was working to exclude the gulls on Lake Champlain, and we use it primarily to keep double crested cormorants off the island."

"We've been successful in using decoys to bring birds back, and just protecting the islands, putting buoys around the island to keep people from landing on the island or getting too close. That's been a big help. The chick shelters help with predation, especially early in the season when this vegetation isn't here. It gives them a place to tuck under."

Mark also uses social attraction methods to keep the terns on Lake Champlain, similar to those used in Maine to reintroduce Puffins to coastal islands.

"This is our decoy, black head, breeding season, bright red beak, and you put these things out on the island, and the terns see them. Often we've used a sound system with sounds like an active tern colony and the birds will come in... There's one above me right now! ...And will come in and start using the island. They think there are birds using the island so it's called social attraction. What they use on the coast of Maine with the puffins and with terns as well. So we borrowed their idea from the Audubon Seabird Restoration project and we're using it here on Lake Champlain."

How successful has this project been on Lake Champlain? This has been their best year ever, with 220 pairs of terns, which is the highest count in three decades. The tern population is now above the threshold for endangered, they and are now considered "threatened."