A Common Tern in the Bay of Tafts

There’s a Tern hunting for fish at the Bay of Tafts. It’s a beautiful day and visibility is good. Amazingly there’s someone else on the same beach with me. Luckily there’s half a mile of beautiful white shell sand between us.

I assume it’s an Arctic Tern. They’re the ones which nest here still and leave nasty dents in your head if you decide to stray too near their chicks.

Attacked by Arctic Terns

I take a sequence of photographs and get the one I’m after:

Just the tip of the beak in the water. Lovely. Here it is as a superimposed sequence of shots:

I know, you’re thinking it’s a fluke that I got the shot with the beak just touching the water, aren’t you?

It was. The best I could manage after that had the whole head in the water.

I look at the photographs and begin to have my doubts about it being an Arctic Tern. Aren’t Arctic Terns meant to have long tail-streamers and almost white see-through wings? I check our local WhatsApp group and Sandra confirms it for me. Brilliant. Then Steve comes through with the definitive guide:

A not-so common-around-here Common Tern it was. What an experience.