Bird Identification: CLOSED: Tern project, 1 by rntx22

rntx22 wrote:
Here is my story. For the last 2-3 months when I go for a walk near the lake I sometimes see 1 or 2 terns flying around. At first I thought they were immature laughing gulls (since there are tons of them around here), but their call and flight was very different than the gulls - and they were smaller. When I looked in my bird books I realized they were terns. I have been trying for months to get a good picture of them so I could see which type of tern I have. They move so fast and are often too far away for me to get a decent shot.

When tropical storm Eduard came through a few weeks ago there was an abundance of them flying around and I took about 200 photos. After a lot of enhancing and blowing up on my computer, I have a few semi-decent photos that may be good enough for an ID. I posted them on my webshots account - since there are so many it would be impossible to put them all here. The majority of the pictures were taken in early August, though there are 1 or 2 from July (the really really blurry ones where the feet and beaks look orange). The last 5 or so were taken last week. I noticed that in July their beaks appeared orange, and in the later pictures they look black. So that has made it even harder to know what I have!! It could all be the same kind of tern in various stages of development and different plumage's..... I don't know, HELP!

Here is the link:

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/565583871RjDQsa

Common, Least, and Forster's are the only ones listed to occur in this area over summer or year round. I thought trying to ID their call would help, however they sound so similar that I can't really say for sure which it is; if I had to pick, I would say mine sounded most like the clip of Forster's on Cornell's site.

And I will leave you with a teaser picture.