Important Bird Area
Nine small cays, with a combined area of 9 ha, comprise the Swain Reefs Important Bird Area (IBA), identified as such by BirdLife International because together they support over 1% of the world population of breeding Roseate Terns, and even larger numbers of non-breeding Roseate Terns, with up to 25,000 individuals recorded there. Other birds recorded on the cays include Masked and Brown Boobies, Silver Gulls, Black-naped, Sooty, Bridled, Greater Crested, Lesser Crested and Little Terns, Black and Common Noddies, and Lesser Frigatebirds. Cays supporting seabirds include Gannet Cay (1.7 ha), Bylund Cay (0.6 ha), Thomas Cay (1 ha), Bacchi Cay (0.5 ha), Frigate Cay (2 ha), Price Cay (1.6 ha), Distant Cay (0.25 ha), Riptide Cay (0.25 ha) and Bell Cay (1.5 ha).
Read more about this topic: Swain Reefs National Park
Famous quotes containing the words important, bird and/or area:
“Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O, ‘tis the ravished nightingale!
“Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,” she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! who is’t now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;”
—John Lyly (1553–1606)
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)