Common Tern, Ashley River mouth

[Michael Szabo]

Peter Langlands reports via Facebook seeing a Common Tern at the Ashley River mouth today.

[Michael Szabo]

Here are more of his photos.

[phil hammond]

Strange leg colour for a non breeding common!!

[phil hammond]

Surely has to be something else with those legs, but legs look a bit long for Arctic

[benackerley]

Searched for the bird this morning at low tide with no luck but thats probably because the WFT flock was absent. Saw 1 Arctic skua chasing terns offshore and lots of banded dotterels.

[bradley_birdsnz]

Definitely a interesting bird as you mentioned Phil. Surely this can't be an arctic though? Although leg colour would suggest this surely they are too long? Plus White cap not extensive enough, Bill slightly too large and overall structure not right?

Be interested to hear if anyone else has seen common terns with legs as red as Peter's bird?

Cheers, Bradley

[phil hammond]

I've seen a longipennis Common Tern with brick red legs but it was in breeding plumage and the legs weren't that bright. I agree Bradley that the legs and bill both look long for Arctic

[tim]

Looking at the photos again it really looks like arctic, the arctic tern that I spent a lot of time with back in Napier had long legs and it all came down to its pose, bill length looks good for arctic too as bill can be variable sometimes as we saw with the Hawkes Bay bird.

[sjacques]

Great photos that really facilitate i. d. discussion.

All plumage features look spot on for first winter common to me and the dark bar in the secondaries is a rock solid separator from Arctic. Agree that legs are also too long for that species.

Leg colours seems reasonably variable within species in terns, I see the odd white fronted with reddish legs for example.

Th

[sjacques]

Thanks all,
Sean