Recent sightings: White-winged black tern special!

We don't usually do this but as it's still here, it looks INCREDIBLE and we've had some great pictures submitted to us then it's worth a post on it's own, so may we now present to you Frampton's 3rd record of white-winged black tern. 

 
White-winged black tern - Neil Smith

 
White-winged black tern - Neil Smith

Our previous two records were of an adult on the 25th of July 2012 for 20 minutes and a juvenile last year on the 3rd of September for 25 minutes. With both of these birds not staying around for long at all we were worried that a pattern would be followed and this bird would follow suit and do a bunk. Fortunately it didn't and is now here for it's third day. We would like to think that we have increased our offer to birds like this with more food available but really we have them for as long as we have them and so just enjoy them when you can.

 
White-winged black tern - Neil Smith

 
White-winged black tern - Neil Smith

If you would like to learn more about this stunning marsh tern then check out the BTO's BirdFacts page with even more information and a distribution map on the BirdLife page.

Here are some video clips to give a feel for the bird if you can't make it to see it in person. This gives a feel of the flight action as it dips low to glean food from the water surface while this shows it nicely on the deck.

 
And this is a transition video from flight to deck. Unfortunately I don't know how to get the other videos in the links to appear on the page so not quite as smooth a montage as I was hoping for. 

For those that were wondering we do also get a regular 'black tern' which is a slightly more regular visitor to the reserve. The video below shows several white-winged black terns and a couple of black terns. The black tern has the the grey tail, grey wings and grey underarm whereas the white-winged black has the white tail, white upperwing and black underwing.   

 
Marsh terns - ECOTOURS Wildlife Holidays

Hope that's been of interest and an enjoyable read and fingers crossed it's done enough to entice you down and enjoy this cracker of a bird. 

UPDATE: The tern hasn't been seen so far this morning (8th July) so may well have gone but it can still be enjoyed thanks to Graham's excellent gallery of images.