Wild Bird Wednesday 696 - Whiskered Tern

The Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybrida) is a small, tubby tern with a slightly forked tail. In breeding plumage it has a black crown and white cheeks and sides of neck. The upperparts, upperwings and tail are medium grey, the underparts darker grey the undertail is white. Whiskered Terns have brown eyes, although to be honest I only ever see them as black, and the bill and legs are red. 

It's a classic tern in shape, colour and behaviour.

The Whiskered Tern is a summer breeding migrant to South Eastern Australia, although a few birds may hang around all year.  At this time it can be seen in often surprisingly large numbers over wetland and damp grasslands.

One of their more remarkable behaviour is when a flock of the birds make their way up-wind feeding on insects that have settled on the surface of water, or more surprisingly, on tall vegetation.  When this behaviour it carried out by a large number of birds over an open paddock of grass it is a remarkable site.  When this happens it's like watching a whirlwind of birds.

The birds in these pictures are part of small group of terns that were working their way up-wind along a strip of vegetation.  They were feeding on rather large looking midges of some sort.  In fact in some of the pictures the insects can be seen on the wing.  The birds will also pick insects directly off the plants.

This was the first (but certainly not the last) time I have tried to photograph this behaviour.

I'll let you take a wild guess where the photographs were taken.

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