Royal Tern

About the Royal Tern

The Royal Tern is a big, flashy, orange-billed tern of the open coast - pale gray above and white below with a ragged black crest that makes the back of the head look windblown. Outside the brief breeding season the black cap shrinks to a band around the back of the head, leaving a white forehead.

Royal Terns patrol just off the beach with deep, easy wingbeats, plunge-diving for fish and shrimp, and rest in packed flocks on sandbars and jetties, all facing the wind. They nest in dense island colonies where thousands of chicks gather into creches, each parent somehow finding its own chick by voice.

In Texas the Royal Tern is a year-round bird of the immediate coast - one of the default large terns on any Gulf beach - nesting on spoil islands along the length of the coast and almost never seen inland.