White-winged Tern: Hunting technique

Posted by BESG on 27 August 08, Wednesday
Contributed by Dr Jonathan Cheah Weng Kwong

An earlier post gives the non-breeding, breeding (above) and transitional plumages of the White-winged Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus), also known as White-winged Black Tern documented by Dr Jonathan Cheah Weng Kwong at Kranji.

This is a migratory bird that moves down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore and beyond to as far as Australia to winter.

This tern is a generalist feeder, taking aquatic as well as terrestrial insects, small fish and tadpoles. It has a number of feeding techniques: aerial feeding, hawking flying insects, hover-dipping and contact-dipping. However, it does not plunge-dive.

The images provided (above, below) show the bird indulging in contact-dipping. Flying slowly and just above the water, it looks for a fish swimming just below the water surface. Once spotted, the bird turns it head downwards and sideways and plunges its bill into the water to snatch the fish. It simply continues with its flight with the fish securely clamped in its bill.

Reference:
Gochfeld, M. & Burger, J. (1996). Family Sternidae (Terns). Pp. 624-667 in: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. eds. Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 3. Hoatzin to Auks. Barcelona: Lynx Editions.

Related Posts:

Hunting technique of Black-shouldered Kite Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus caeruleus) usually hunts from a perch.... White-winged Tern: Breeding, non-breeding and transitional plumages Jonathan has been monitoring the White-winged Tern (Chlidonias leucopterus) at... Nesting ecology of Black-necked Tern The Black-naped Tern (Sterna sumatrana) is a medium-sized white bird... Whiskered and White-winged Terns On 2nd November 2008, KC Tsang photographed two species... Hunting techniques of Great-billed Heron The Great-billed Heron (Ardea sumatrana) is one of the tallest... What species of fish does the Little Tern take? Birdwatchers are happy to just report that such and such... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Email Post

Categories: Feeding strategy

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Anti-spam word: (Required)*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.