ID Challenge #4 - closes 14 October 2010

[Neil Fitzgerald]

070917_100220.jpg (41.47 KiB) Viewed 17165 times

As promised, a photo this time.
Answers for this challenge are due by replying to this topic by midnight (NZST) on Thursday 14 October 2010.

Click here for the rules.

Answers will not be visible to anyone else until after the closing date.

The winner of the 2010-2011 ID Quiz will get one free place on a scheduled Wrybill Birding Tours, NZ pelagic trip, AND each person who enters this challenge goes into the draw to win a pair of Nikon Travelite V 8x25CF binoculars just for having a go, thanks to Photo & Video International!

[tim]

White Fronted Tern non breeding

[David Riddell]

I think the red legs and black bill would have to make it a non-breeding Arctic Tern.

[ledzep]

Another hard one. Not a White Fronted Tern because of the red legs, and not a Common Tern because the tail is extending beyond the wings. Don't think its an Antarctic Tern either because the bill is all black, leading to the conclusion that its a non-breeding Arctic Tern. Forehead looks right, and little carpal white patch also typical, small and pale.

[Suzi]

Arctic Tern - non-breeding plumage

Suzi

[Jan]

Oh drat, a tern. Not good at these, eyesight can't pick up diffs.
Hazard an Arctic Tern. Help.

[Byrd]

I suck at terns. How about testing us with a photo of a fantail next time?

My first thought was that it couldn't be a white-fronted tern because that's too ubiquitous -- surely it must be a common or Arctic? -- but the more I looked at it the more I kept coming back to white-fronted.

Although the legs look very reddish and the forehead steep, I figure it can't be an Arctic tern because the bill looks too big and long, but more importantly (as I understand it) the cap in non-breeding Arctics is behind the eye not above it as here.

Conversely the forehead looks too steep for the common tern, and the bill looks straighter rather than with the curved upper edge as I have seen in photos of commons.

So, even with the reddish legs etc, I'm going to go with the white-fronted tern (Sterna striata) as my answer

[simon.fordham]

Common Tern

[TonyWilson]

White-fronted Tern.
Cheers, Tony.

[Will Parsons]

Immature Artic tern due to short legs reddish legs and long tail feathers.