Bridled Tern

About the Bridled Tern

A graceful tern of warm offshore waters, the Bridled Tern is dark gray-brown above and clean white below, with a black cap set off by a white forehead and a narrow white collar across the nape - the bridle that gives it its name. Long-winged and buoyant, it is very much a bird of the open Gulf.

Bridled Terns feed by dipping to the surface for small fish and other prey, often around floating weed lines and debris far from shore, and they rest on flotsam between forays.

In Texas the Bridled Tern is a warm-season bird of the deep Gulf, seen mainly on offshore pelagic trips well out from the coast, occasionally pushed inshore by tropical weather.

A note from behind the lens: this is a pelagic-trip bird, found over blue water and weed lines miles out. Watch the sargassum patches where they feed, pan with the light, buoyant flight, and aim for a clean frame of that two-toned bird against the open sea.