White-winged tern breeds in south-eastern Europe, central Asia and far-east Russia, so birds that arrive here are those that have overshot their breeding grounds, usually during south-easterly winds, while returning from wintering areas. These overshoots carry on flying and can be found virtually anywhere there is a suitable large area of water for the birds to feed on insects.
When I first started serious birding in the 1980s, white-winged tern was a rare bird in Britain, and I can still remember the excitement of seeing my first one in the autumn. Being similar to black tern, I struggled with the subtle identification features of a juvenile bird compared to the more regular black tern.
Nowadays, it is a more regular visitor to the UK and has lost its former rarity status, but a spring bird is still a delight to see and when one was found locally, and considering the journey the tern had made to get there, I had no hesitation in making my own short journey to try to photograph it. White-winged tern is a lovely bird – the black head and body contrast beautifully with the white wings, while the underwing also has jet-black coverts.
As with most terns, they can be relatively easy to see, but photographing them can be extremely difficult. Even with the massive improvements in AF and VR over the years, there is still something about a twisting and turning, diving and banking white-winged tern that makes the system almost give up. To be honest, the fault is more to do with the person holding the camera and lens in his hands.
In my defence, white-winged tern is one of the hardest species of tern to photograph in flight (in my opinion, at least). It’s one of those birds you can track as it flies across, but it will then suddenly dip down to the water’s surface without any warning to fly-catch, then bank and suddenly dip again. This can leave you with a lovely shot of a wing tip or the almost complete bird minus half a wing that is on the next frame. There’s no discernible pattern I can see in all the ones I’ve tried to photograph over the years, so it really is a matter of following through the lens and hoping the dip, twist and turn happen at the moment you’ve pressed the shutter.
Don’t believe anyone who, when posting photos, claims they ‘waited for the precise moment and then click, got the shot’. That’s nonsense! That precise moment probably lasts 1/2000sec and nobody’s reactions are that fast. All the images shown here – and the black tern pictures opposite – are part of a number of sequences taken during the day, most of which ended in the recycle bin due to wing position and bits of missing bird.
I did eventually manage some acceptable images of the tern, the eighth one I’ve seen on my patch over the years, all of which have been photographed. Many are just record shots of a rare bird, but it’s still great to photograph a local star, even if it’s not an official rarity any more.