I returned to the Black Skimmer colony two weeks ago to check on the babies.  It had been two weeks since I was there to photograph the day-old chicks, and I knew the babies had grown a lot.  I was hoping to catch them in that big-kid-but-not-yet-teenager stage, and I succeeded!  I’ll have more pictures soon, but in the meantime, I thought it’d be fun to share a little sequence of a baby stretching his wings and learning to fly.

This little guy was my favorite of the day.  He was a little younger than his siblings, and he still had quite a bit of white fuzz to him.  He spent the afternoon sitting in his little hole, begging his mom to shield him from the sun.  It was a very hot afternoon!  Then as the sun started to set, he got up and did the cutest little hop-skip-jump.  I know his wings aren’t fully formed yet, but he’s already practicing for the big day!

I’d been observing other chicks doing their hop-skip-jump routines all afternoon, but they always seemed to do it with their backs to the camera.  You can imagine the grin on my face as my favorite little guy came running right at me!