Black Terns at Abberton Reservoir

5th September 2025

Up to four Black Terns had been at Abberton for the last few days, fishing and hawking insects between the causeways. From the few photos that had been posted and talking to a couple of the locals I knew that for the vast majority of the time they were keeping to the middle of the water and therefore several hundred yards away. Despite that I thought I would chance my arm and go just on the off-chance one or two would stray a bit closer.

When I arrived I scanned the water from the Layer Breton causeway without success and then the Layer de la Haye causeway with similar results, and was told by the guys doing the WEBS count they hadn' t seen any either. However, what was unusual was the number of Common Terns settled on the west bank of the causeway. I have been coming to Abberton for over 50 years and often see terns settled on the banks, but normally just ones and twos. However, today there were 30+, mostly juveniles, with just one or two adults having a break from fishing.

The juveniles were spread along the banking waiting for their adult to bring them a fish.

But when an adult returned with fish ALL the juveniles started calling for it, and some of the adults were so confused they had to fly up and down the bank tryng to locate their juvenile!!

Some of the juveniles did have a fly round, practising diving down to the water, but I didn't see any catch a fish.

The adults, however, were more intent on catching fish..................

........................although I wouldn't want to be the juvenile that was given this monster.

I had been scanning the horizon for Black Terns and just then I caught out of the corner of my eye a tern leaving the bank and then re-appearing in my binoculars field of view flying away quite distantly. I immediately thought how the flight was similar to that of a Black Tern. So at that point I changed tactics and instead of scanning the horizon, I wpould periodically scan the juvenile terns that were spread quite thinly along the bank. About half an hour later this paid of and I was rewarded with a close-up view of a juvenile Black Tern. What an immaculate bird!!

Later on in the day there were two birds.........................

............................and then three.

The advantage of having more birds is that it increases the chances of some action shots.

This one caught a fish in the shallows.

And also some close-up flight shots, a little bit better than the middle of the reservoir.

Well, don't you just love it when a plan comes together.

Also good to have a catch-up with Steve Dobbs and to meet Kate Churchouse.