“…Thus, it would stand to reason that their selection would be similar with perhaps the exception of proximity of foraging (i.e., wet sand), but even that has some similarities since least tern adults tended to return to the wetted, moist sand with fish for young (D. Catlin, personal observation). Although there have been relatively few studies of nest selection for least terns, they tend to select open, sandy areas, often near inlets on the coast or on mid-channel sandbars on prairie rivers (Burger & Gochfeld, 1990;Kirsch, 1996), which aligns with the more extensive work done to assess habitat suitability for piping plovers Cohen et al, 2009;Prindiville-Gaines & Ryan, 1988). Least terns are colonial (Thompson et al, 1997), although less so in the Great Plains than on the Atlantic Coast (D. Catlin, personal observation), which could have contributed to the relatively stronger signal for selection in terns than plovers (i.e., larger selection coefficients, Table 2).…”