Common Tern over the bay
Sterna hirundo
Common Tern · Staten Island · 5 July 2026
A Common Tern over the open water of the bay off Staten Island in July, a channel marker and the low line of a distant shore the only real scale in an otherwise flat, hazy frame. Common Terns nest colonially on sand and gravel islands in the harbour and forage out over water like this for most of the day.
They return to the colony mainly to feed a mate incubating or a chick waiting on the ground, and a tern carrying a fish is a tern going home. The same bird nests on the Kent coast and winters off West Africa.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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