Elegant Tern - Identification

Identification

This is a medium-large tern, with a long, slender 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.

This bird could be confused with the Royal Tern or Forster's Tern, but the elegans is larger and thicker-billed and shows more white on the forehead in winter. Out of range, it can also be easily confused with the Lesser Crested Tern. See also Orange-billed tern, and the external link below.

Some useful points to separate it from other terns in this group:

• It is marginally paler above than the Lesser Crested Tern with a white (not grey) rump.
• It a slightly longer, more slender bill and the curve of the bill is different from Lesser Crested tern.
• The black of the crest that comes down from the crown extends through the eye, creating a small black "smudge" in front of the eye. On Royal Tern, the black crest stops at the eye.
• The crest is more shaggy than in Lesser Crested Tern.