Caspian tern’s bright red bill always a great find
No matter how many times you see a Caspian tern, it is an impressive sight.
The largest of all terns, 20 inches long with a 55-inch wingspan, it is easily recognized by its blood-red bill and is often confused with gulls because it is often gull-like in its actions, circling to great heights with bill pointed straight forward unless fishing. It is also the same size and shape of many North American gulls.
Caspian terns passed through Central Missouri in mid-May and should return in fair numbers by mid-September. They can be found around most fair-sized bodies of water, where they love to sit pointed in the same direction, red bills shining.
Caspian terns have a black cap that suggests a crest. The cap reaches from the lower back of the head to the base of the red bill, totally engulfing its black eyes, which often sparkle like black diamonds.
The black cap seems to be held in place by an extension of the white throat and neck that forms a clasp over the base of the red bill. The throat, breast and belly are snow white, accenting the black legs and feet. It is gray above. Both sexes are alike.
The bird’s forked tail is the basis for its genus name — Hydroprogne — which combines “hydro” for water with “progne” for the daughter of Pandion, who was turned into a swallow. The species name is “Caspia,” because the species was first reported from in the late 18th century in the Caspian Sea area.
Caspian terns primarily are birds found east of the Rocky Mountains, nesting in the summer from the Yukon to Newfoundland and as far south as Florida. A second smaller population of Caspian terns can be found along the Pacific Coast, nesting north only to Oregon and Washington.
They winter along the southern coasts — Florida, the Gulf, Baja California and south into the islands of the Caribbean.
Caspian terns also can be found across Europe and into Siberia — thus their name — wintering in Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Though you’re unlikely to find one in your backyard, the red-billed guy is worth a drive to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area near McBaine. They prefer to follow major rivers in migration, and Eagle Bluffs is not out of their way.
Come mid-September, you have an excellent chance to expand your backyard bird list by taking Route K — the extension of Providence Road — through McBaine then turning left on Star School Road into the 5,000-acre menagerie that is Eagle Bluffs.
At that time of the year, you’ll have an excellent chance to see spectacular white pelicans, great egrets, the occasional osprey, many ring-billed gulls plus other migrating gulls hard to identify in the fall. Plus the smaller common and Forster’s terns, winter plumage black terns — all of them a bone white and none of them to be seen ever at your backyard feeders.
Go back a month later and you can add snow geese and a rare migrant — the American avocet, which stops by occasionally.
Unlike other terns, Caspians can be bullies. They will rob other birds of food and will raid nests, taking both eggs and young. Their main food, though, is fish, and they are adept at diving, as all terns are. They are good swimmers underwater. They also skim the surface and land, gull-like, to fish from the surface.
At Eagle Bluffs, you will need to sort through large, loafing flocks of ring-billed gulls and look for that black head with a blood-red bill. They will probably be on the fringes of the gull flock, pointed in the same direction, normally into the wind — aloof.
Caspian terns are also called the redbill and the imperial tern. It only takes one look to see that both names apply.