Swap effect with the class name. Port St. Lucie News Ft. Some young boys, thinking they were protecting a flock of least terns, inadvertently broke a federal law when they removed dozens of birds from a rooftop. Recently, his building s roof had become a nesting site for nearly 100 least terns. Not knowing who would ve told them that, I asked them to stop what they were doing.
Least terns are small, coastal birds that resemble a streamlined version of a seagull.
They eat only live fish. But oceanfront development and the presence of people on the beaches have forced them to nest inland, most often on flat rooftops. Naturally, as a species they would prefer to nest on open sandy beaches, but they ve almost entirely abandoned that practice here. The migratory birds, which spend most of the year in South and Central America, have adopted white pea gravel roofs, like the one above the hardware store, as their preferred nesting domain. Godburn said the terns first began appearing on the store s roof two or three years ago, usually staying only a few weeks or, at most, perhaps a month.