This is Birdnode.

A flock of turns dive bombs a pair of great black-backed gulls on Ram Island, two-and-a-half

acres poking above Buzzards Bay off the Massachusetts coast.

The turns want the predatory gulls away from their nests, though turns out number

gulls on the island now.

It wasn't always this way.

In the 1960s and 70s, gull numbers in New England surged.

Nesting gulls overwhelm the rosy-it-and-common turns of Ram Island, driving them off.

The northeast population of rosy-it-turns is endangered.

Biologists realized the turns couldn't afford to lose Ram Island, and began chasing off

gulls trying to nest there, from 1989 to 1992, then they waited.

In 1992, a few common and least turns nested on the island.

The next summer, two pairs of rosy-it-turns appeared.

Now, roughly 2,500 rosy-it-turns are found on Ram Island each summer, about one in five

rosy-it-turns in North America.

Ram Island's value to birds is way bigger than its size.

Sites like this are designated important bird areas, or IBAs.

To learn about IBAs near you, visit our website, birdnote.org.

I'm Michael Stein.