My daughter Kelly and I were looking for bluefish at the mouth of the Potomac on a slick calm morning. The fish were spread out, but there were plenty of them around. The largest concentrations were chasing dense schools of menhaden, and several charter boats were working around them. We, however, found a school of three- to four-inch anchovies dimpling the water like raindrops. Every couple of minutes several bluefish boiled through the anchovy school, which was less obviously visible than the menhaden, so we had it all to ourselves, at least with respect to other humans, which suited us just fine.
Kelly caught a couple of six-pounders trolling around the anchovies, and three more by casting when they were breaking on the surface. I maneuvered the boat and handled the net. Five of these blues were a gracious plenty, so we quit fishing and watched what was going on around us.
It was then we realized that we and the blues weren't the only fishermen working the anchovies. There were half a dozen common terns diving on them as well. While the bluefish were certainly impressive as they herded the little silver minnows to the surface and attacked them, the turns showed great skill in hovering over the water, choosing their tiny targets, and diving unerringly onto them. They'd set their wings and plummet like stones, hitting the water with resounding splashes.
Almost immediately, they'd recover, reach high with their wings, and pull up away from the river, stopping after a couple of wing beats to shake in midair. I thought of the nickname "minner hawk" which the author John Hay attributes to tern-watchers along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The terns' skill made even an osprey look slow and ponderous in his fishing and certainly showed up the laughing gulls that were feeding on the menhaden schools. Hay wrote that, on looking at a tern skeleton, he was most impressed with the size of the eye sockets and the large space given over to back muscles.
