Elegant Tern

The Elegant Tern, Sterna elegans, is a seabird of the tern family Sternidae. It breeds on the Pacific coasts of the southern USA and Mexico and winters south to Peru, Ecuador and Chile.

Surprisingly, this Pacific species has wandered to western Europe as a rare vagrant on a number of occasions, and has interbred with Sandwich Tern in France.

This species breeds in colonies on coasts and islands. It nests in a ground scrape and lays one or two eggs. Like all white terns, it is fiercely defensive of its nest and young.

Elegant Tern feeds by plunge-diving for fish, usually from saline environments, like most Sterna terns. It usually dives directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by Arctic Tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display.

This is a largish tern, with a long 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.

Elegant could be confused with Royal Tern, but the latter species is larger and thicker-billed and shows less white on the forehead in winter. Out of range, it could also be confused with Lesser Crested Tern. It is paler above than Lesser Crested Tern and has a longer more curved bill.