Elegant tern Sterna elegans

Identification Tips:

• Length: 17 inches Wingspan: 43 inches
• Sexes similar
• Dives into water for prey
• Large tern with long, thin, orange bill
• Strongly curved culmen makes bill appear to droop at tip
• Fairly long, deeply forked tail
• Spiky crest at the rear of the head
• Pale underwing with dark tips to outer primaries
• Achieves full adult plumage by its second summer

Adult alternate:

• Black legs
• Black cap
• White face, neck, breast, and belly
• Pale gray back and upperwings
• White rump and tail, often with dark edgings

Adult basic:

• White forehead
• Black mask extends rearward from eye to spiky crest at rear of head
• Eye is surrounded by dark mask

Juvenile:

• Legs black with variable amounts of yellow
• White forehead
• Dark brown mask extending rearward from eye to spiky crest at rear of head
• White neck, breast, and belly
• Pale gray back
• Dark brown carpal bar
• Dark brown uppersurface to secondaries and outer primaries
• Tail dark gray with darker tips and paler edges

Immature:

• First-year: Similar to juvenile plumage but grayer upperparts
• Second-year: Similar to adult basic but may retain a few juvenile flight and tail feathers

Similar species:

When identifying terns it is safest to rely on a combination of field marks rather than a single one. Elegant Terns are most similar to Royal Terns but are smaller and slenderer, with much more slender, drooping bills and lack a pale eyering in the dark mask in basic and immature plumages. The Caspian Tern can be separated from the Elegant by its thicker, reddish bill, dark wedge on the outer portion of the underwing, its more shallowly-forked tail and its tendency to have an almost complete cap in basic and immature plumages. The Cayenne Tern, a yellow-billed race of the Sandwich Tern has been recorded in the southeast United States, is very similar and differs mostly in extreme subtleties of bill structure. The smaller Sterna terns have slimmer, black or black-tipped bills, slimmer bodies and wings and a much more deeply-forked tail.

Length and wingspan from: Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B., Zim, H.S., (1966). Birds of North America. New York: Western Publishing Company, Inc.