Elegant tern

Voice

A grating, rolling kerr-eeek, longer, more nasal and more clearly rising than Sandwich Tern's call. In a mixed colony the voice often gives a bird away before the orange bill does. Learn it from recordings before travelling, because in a noisy roost the difference is one syllable's worth of length.

Identification

Between Sandwich and Royal Tern in size but noticeably slimmer and longer-looking. The bill is long, thin and evenly tapered, drooping slightly towards the tip, orange at the base and yellower distally. The black crest is long and spikes well down the nape. Upperparts pale grey, underparts white with a pink flush when breeding; out of the breeding season the forehead whitens but the eye stays inside the black.

Confusion species

Three comparisons. Against Royal Tern: bigger and heavier, with a thick, straight orange-red bill, a blockier head, a broad white forehead in non-breeding plumage that leaves the eye standing clear in white, and obviously dark outer primaries on the underwing. Elegant Tern is smaller and finer, keeps the eye inside the black even in winter, shows that long thin drooping bill, and has an almost wholly white underwing with only a narrow dark trailing edge. Against Sandwich Tern: the black bill with a yellow tip, shorter and straighter, and the shorter crest. The real difficulty is Sandwich × Elegant hybrids, which genuinely occur in the Ebro Delta and southern France: they sit exactly in between, with a dull orange bill smudged darker, or a dirty yellow one, a crest of intermediate length and a mantle of intermediate tone. Such birds cannot be settled from one photograph. They need to be followed across seasons, and in several cases only genetic work has separated a pure Elegant Tern from a hybrid.

Habitat

Saltpans, shallow coastal lagoons, sandbars and shell beaches in deltas, and the shallow sea in front of them. In the Americas it nests on bare, hot islets in the Gulf of California and in commercial salt works; in Europe it means birds inside or beside Sandwich Tern colonies, and resting birds on spits and sandflats.

Range and movements

Almost the entire world population nests on Isla Rasa in the Gulf of California, with smaller colonies in Baja California and southern California, and winters down the Pacific coast to Chile. European records cluster in Iberia and France; north of there they are scattered, with birds in Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium among others.

Where and when to look

In Britain and Ireland the realistic approach is to scan Sandwich Tern roosts and passage flocks at coastal reserves through June and July, and to photograph anything with a bill that looks too long and too thin in profile. The colour alone is a trap: wet or backlit Sandwich Tern bills can flash warm. Structure first, colour second, and get the underwing if the bird lifts.

Conservation status

Near Threatened, and the reason is concentration rather than headcount: the great majority of the world population breeds on a single island. A failure of sardine and anchovy stocks in a warm sea year can cost an entire season, and disturbance or an introduced predator on Isla Rasa would hit the species at one stroke. The island is now protected and the removal of rats and mice there has helped.