Small tern with fairly broad wings; flies with light, buoyant wingbeats. Breeding adults have very distinctive pattern of black head and body with dark gray wings.
Small tern with slender bill and dark gray wings. Breeding adults have black head, breast, and belly.
Black head and underparts make this graceful tern easy to identify in breeding plumage. Note also the dark gray back and wings—darker than almost all other terns and distinctive in all plumages.
Small tern with dark gray wings. Nonbreeding adults have a dark ear spot on a mostly white head.
When molting, can show a messy, mottled pattern of black and white.
Juveniles have dark gray-brown back and wings with faint paler bars. Head and underparts are white with black skullcap and ear mark.
Small tern with dark gray wings. Molting birds can be a mixture of black and white on the head and underparts.
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A small and delicately built seabird with a thin, pointed bill; long, pointed wings; a shallowly forked tail; and short legs.
Larger than a Least Tern, smaller than a Common Tern.
between robin and crowAmerican Black Terns belong to the subspecies surinamensis, and Old World Black Terns belong to the slightly larger subspecies niger. Compared to surinamensis, Old World niger is paler below in breeding plumage, and in other plumages has a much smaller mark at the side of the breast. American Black Terns have been documented in Europe and the British Isles, but there are no records of Old World Black Terns in North America as of 2019.
Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers(Order: Charadriiformes, Family: Laridae)
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