Little tern

Voice

High, sharp and excited: a fast rattling kirri-kirri-kik and a shrill, clipped krriek that carries over the noise of the surf. At a colony any disturbance swells it into a busy, high-pitched chatter as birds skim low over your head. It sounds from May to July over beaches and sand flats, and single calls often betray the species before you see it.

Identification

Tiny and sharp-winged, with a fast flickering beat and almost constant hovering over shallow water. In summer a white triangular blaze runs from the bill base to above the eye while the black cap continues back through the eye: no other European tern shows that white forehead in the breeding season. The bill is bright yellow with a crisply defined black tip and the legs are orange-yellow, both easy to check on a bird sitting on the sand. Above, the wing is pale grey with conspicuously dark outer two or three primaries forming a narrow black leading edge to the tip; below, the wing is white with only a thin dark rim at the tip. The tail is short and shallowly forked. Juveniles and winter birds have a white crown with a dark rear cap, a dark bill and a clear dark carpal bar.

Confusion species

Common and Arctic Terns are twice the size and in the breeding season have an all-black cap without a blaze and a red bill, so at close range there is no doubt; at long distance size is exactly what fails, and the flickering beat with constant hovering carries the identification. Black Tern is as small but dark-headed and dark-bodied and feeds over fresh water without diving. In the Mediterranean the scarce Saunders's Tern is the only real problem: a shorter white blaze that does not reach past the eye, darker legs and more black in the primaries. Young Little Terns are most often confused with young Common Terns, but are noticeably smaller, shorter-winged and far more restless in flight.

Habitat

Bare shell beaches, freshly formed sand flats, dredged spoil sites, salt pans and broad gravelly river beds. It feeds by hovering and plunge-diving into very shallow water, often in the surf line or a tidal gully, taking small fish and shrimp. It breeds in small loose colonies on unvegetated sand and shell grit, the nest no more than a scrape; the species readily shifts to a new sandbank once the old one grows over.

Range and movements

From north-west Europe to North Africa and Asia. The Netherlands holds a few hundred to well over a thousand pairs, almost all in the Delta and on the Wadden islands, with key colonies on fenced spoil sites such as the Slufter and the Maasvlakte. In Spain it breeds in the Ebro delta, the Andalusian salinas, along the Levante coast and even on wide inland river beds; the Spanish population is one of the largest in Europe.

• Breeding (summer)
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

In June or July find a fenced colony, on the Maasvlakte, in the Delta or on a Wadden island, and stay well outside the tape: from the edge you can watch birds hovering and diving along the tideline. Time it for a rising tide, when small fish are pushed into the shallows and the birds hunt close inshore. In Spain the salinas of Cádiz and the Ebro delta in May and June are the surest bet, with birds working the channels at short range.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened, but vulnerable in north-west Europe through the combination of beach recreation, high tides in June and July, and predation by foxes and gulls. Dutch numbers swing widely from year to year and the population leans heavily on man-made, fenced nesting sites; the species is Red-listed there. Where colonies are roped off and a stretch of beach is closed for the season, numbers usually recover quickly.