It was the gifts he brought that Carol Otis noticed first, small fishes plucked from the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean and given in courtship to a female least tern.
Otis, an avian enthusiast and recent transplant from Portland, Ore., recognized the endearing mating behavior and began looking for a nesting colony of the state-threatened bird on her daily walks along Delray Beach’s shoreline.
“I asked lots of people, but no one knew,” Otis said.
Then, in late April, she saw them. Tiny least terns — the smallest of their species in North America — sitting on fragile nests that are no more than scrapes in the sand on the wide-open beach. There were 17.