Gull-billed Tern

About the Gull-billed Tern

The Gull-billed Tern is the tern that decided fishing was optional. With a stout black bill more like a gull's than a tern's slender spike, it hawks insects over marshes and prairies, plucks fiddler crabs from the flats, and almost never plunge-dives the way its relatives do.

Dressed in pale silver and white with a neat black cap, it is a smooth, buoyant flier of the coast, nesting on shell banks and salt flats. Texas hosts one of the species' strongholds in North America, yet it is declining and watched closely by conservationists.

This bird was photographed at Falcon State Park in Starr County, cruising on long wings far up the Rio Grande.