Sandwich Tern

About the Sandwich Tern

The Sandwich Tern is a slim, elegant, pale tern with one unmistakable field mark: a long slender black bill dipped in yellow at the tip, as if dunked in mustard. Add the shaggy black crest, pale gray upperparts, and buoyant flight, and it stands out quickly among the beach tern flocks.

Sandwich Terns feed offshore and in the passes, climbing and then plunge-diving hard for small fish, often in association with the bigger Royal Terns. They breed in dense mixed colonies with Royals on bare shell and sand islands, where their eggs and chicks blend into the packed crowds. The name comes from the town of Sandwich in England, where the species was first described.

In Texas, Sandwich Terns are present along the coast essentially year-round, commonest from spring through fall, and a resting flock on any Gulf beach is worth scanning - the mustard-tipped bills give them away among the orange- and red-billed crowd.