The Common Terns - greyish plumage - smart black cap and long dagger shaped red bill with a black tip. It has a long, strongly forked tail and supremely angular wings with the sharp tips that distinguish tem from other gulls. The Common Tern is so similar to the closely related Arctic Tern, that many bird watchers admit defeat and simply call them 'Comic Terns'

The Arctic Tern is a very similar looking bird - however it has longer tail streamers than its wing tip - The Common terns has shorter tail streamers. In non-breeding plumage it has a black bill and blackish legs as well as a white forehead all of which makes it look quite different from its breeding plumage.


When an adult is resting, look for an obvious black tip to a long crimson-red bill and notice too that the black on the crown extends in a black trail down towards the back. Also there is a more obvious white line between the bill and the dark crown. None of these features alone can be 100% reliable but together they give the Common Tern a rather elongated-looking head

Courtship feeding is a common tern breeding behaviour.The males provide the best supplies of fish during courtship and they rear, on average, larger numbers of young and so the female is apparently testing his potential as a father before agreeing to partner him.