Common Tern

Habitat: Mostly along coasts, but also inland waters. The Common Tern is highly adaptable. Its ideal habitat consists of rivers with wide, shallow beds, clear, fish-rich water and unvegetated gravel or sand banks. However, they also occur at lakes with grassy banks, in marshy, water-rich depressions and along the coast.

Appearance: In Europe, it is a summer visitor along most temperate coasts and also in inland areas in dense colonies. In Belgium and the Netherlands, it is a fairly numerous breeding bird and a migrant in fairly large numbers.

Breeding season: May to July, breeding colonies are partly located in gravel and sand areas, usually on islands and between dunes. In gravel and sand, the nest is just a scratched-out hollow, but on marshy ground it can also consist of a large pile of plant parts. Both parents incubate, 2 to 3 eggs.

Characteristics: Length 34-37 cm, wingspan 72-98 cm, weight 120 grams, age 30 years.

Food: Common terns are dive bombers, locating their prey by hovering and then diving vertically into the water. In this way, they catch small fish, tadpoles, water insects, leeches, etc. On land, they pick worms, grasshoppers and other insects from the ground.