- Thalasseus elegans
Sterna elegans
Identification
This is a medium-large tern, with a long, slender orange bill, pale grey upperparts and white underparts. Its legs are black. In winter, the forehead becomes white. Juvenile Elegant Terns have a scalier pale grey back. The call is a characteristic loud grating noise like a Sandwich Tern.
This bird could be confused with the Royal Tern, but the latter species is larger and thicker-billed and shows more white on the forehead in winter. Out of range, it can also be easily confused with the Lesser Crested Tern. See also Orange-billed Tern, and the external link below.
Some useful points to separate it from other terns in this group:
It is marginally paler above than the Lesser Crested Tern with a white (not grey) rump. It a slightly longer, more slender bill and the curve of the bill is different to Lesser Crested tern. The black of the crest the comes down from the crown extends through the eye, creating a small black "smudge" in front of the eye. On Royal Tern, the black crest stops at the eye. The crest is more shaggy than in Lesser Crested Tern.
Distribution
Breeds on the Pacific coasts of southern California, Baja California and Mexico, most wintering off Pacific coast of Northern South America. Vagrants recorded east to Texas and very rarely as far as Florida.
In the Western Palearctic recorded in Ireland and Spain, there are several records from France and recent records from Denmark and Britain. From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s an Elegant Tern was present each summer in a Sandwich Tern colony on the Banc d'Arguin on the western coast of France and paired with a Sandwich Tern. Another, or the same, individual was present from 1987 to at least 1996. In 1984 there were two mixed pairs and hybrid young have been produced. Recorded for the first time in Denmark in the summer of 2000 and in May 2002 the first for Britain was a bird at Dawlish Warren in Devon. The latter bird reappeared at the same site in July and later in Gwynned, Wales.
Taxonomy
This is a monotypic species.
It is also placed in the genus Sterna.
Habitat
Sandy shores and estuaries.
Behaviour
The Elegant Tern feeds by plunge-diving for fish, almost invariably from the sea, like most Thalasseus terns. It usually dives directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by the Arctic Tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display.
