Hi Chris,
You can obviously rule out a good proportion of the terns - Caspian, Crested,
and so on. Looking at the colouration and the shape of the tail, the terns are
"comic terns" - the family group comprising Common, Arctic, White-fronted and
others.
For my money, your terns are non-breeding Common terns. My reasoning is that
the legs are dark red/orange, the primaries are dark to black, and perhaps most
tellingly, the tail does not extend past the wingtips (which is not the case
for many of the other comic terns).
Incidentally, I think the white tip to the bill is probably an artefact of the
light, and the picture.
Paul Dodd
Docklands, Victoria
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of
Sent: Sunday, 7 November 2010 4:57 PM
To:
Subject: Tern, Tern Tern - ID Help
I photographed some very white terns at Wollongong and I can't work out what
they are. I would appreciate any help in identifying them.
Photographs of them are on my blog:
http://topbirdsandeveryfing.typepad.com/top-birds-everyfing/
Regards
Chris
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