Gone North for Winter

Black Fronted Tern

Black Fronted Tern Portrait

For me winter is one of my favourite times of the year, great new birds in, great light, don’t have to get up as early to photograph around the break of dawn.

I will be doing a few blogs soon but first I wanted to do one on my favourite birds the black fronted tern, they are one of these birds that you can never stop photographing and they are always so interesting to watch plus from June onwards they start developing beautiful colours as they come into their breeding plumage.

Only a few birds come up to the north from the south island during winter but always a great sight, many of the birds come up the west coast and visit river mouths but a few come to the east coast as well and fly all the way to the bay of plenty.

The black fronted tern is a very endangered bird with only around 3.5% of the population juveniles showing they are on the decrease even more.

They breed on the riverbeds in the south island where weeds, predators and floods cause nest loss and chick loss.

For the few that head north it’s always a treasure to find them.



Feather Shake




Takeoff Checks




Coming into breeding plumage




Black Fronted Tern Close-up



Flight

Tern Gape



At Sunset





Preening