Common Tern

Sterna hirundo · Seabirds

Common Tern, diving

Staten Island, 5 July 2026

A Common Tern caught mid-fold on the way into a dive off Staten Island. Terns hunt by plunging bill-first from height onto fish near the surface, a hunting style closer to an osprey's than to a gull's opportunistic scavenging, and the harbour's shallows are full of the small fish they want.

The black cap, blood-orange bill with a dark tip, and deeply forked tail are textbook Common Tern. It sees the fish from thirty feet up, checks, and drops.

Common Tern over the bay

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.

Common Tern

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, 3 August 2025

A Common Tern banking against open sky over Jamaica Bay in August, near the colony where it nested. Terns nest on the bay's islands, set aside because ground-nesting birds need to be free of mammal predators, and Jamaica Bay holds one of the larger colonies in the New York City area.

A full black cap and a deeply forked tail. The same bird breeds on the Kent coast; the ones here will winter off Brazil, and the oldest ringed one lived to twenty-five.