little stinky babies

My cousin-in-law Tyler is raising a whole bunch of these cute little things (Elegant Terns) for his masters degree project. We got to join him (and them) for a feeding today, and to also hold them and give them lots of love. They were so cute and it was so cool to see their different personalities. The picture above is off number 10, 11, and 12...they were just born last night.

Feeding was super interesting, Tyler had to weigh each anchovy to make sure it was enough food for the babies, since they have to be fed a certain percentage of their weight. These pictures are a bit out of order because blogger is just stupid like that (or maybe it's just me) but below you can see Tyler weighing one of the fish and measuring it. The fish are almost the length of the babies so it's super amazing to watch them eat. The fish just stays in their mouth and belly (and sometimes sticks out) and then they conveniently prop themselves up against the corner and go to sleep...I wish I could do that after I eat too!

I think he looks a lot like Thomas!
Here are number 7 and 8 sleeping against the wall.
This is another newborn, born this morning. We could hear some of the other babies chirping inside their eggs.
In the process of hatching...
They love to be held and cuddled! I guess in the wild their mamas pay a lot of attention to them and are always cuddling them. So we took turns holding babies 1-14. They like to go to sleep in your hands or against your chest...it was so cute.