Tern ID

Sorry message posted. This is a first sighting for me of this Tern in Arabia. Not shown in my refernce book on Birds of Middle East. Can anyone please ID.
C&C welcome

May be a wing shot will help to ID

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Just red crosses again John - taking the actual link from the x's gives a page not found.

Had a look at your website and you have two undidentified terns in there. The latest are White-cheeked and the earliest Lesser Crested. Hope that helps.

Hi Dave Thanks for your help with the ID. I will try to post again

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John, nice shots. In my books, this looks like an Arctic Tern. It says they make one of the worlds most spectacular migration from their summer grounds in arctic Canada, across the atlantic and down Africa to the Antarctic, then come back North along the coast of South and North America.

But it also looks exactly like the Common Tern and a lot like the Roseatte Tern, so I'm just guessing.

Nice logic Mitch and you are very close, all three could be considered confusion species but they are definitely White-cheeked Terns.

Not being able to contribute to the "what are they?" question, I can say though that I like the shot, pretty birds as well.

Mark

Dave, the truth is, my books are almost worthless for ID purposes. I can't believe how off they can be and the pictures are terrible. They really need to scout POTN for ID images instead of using the crappy ones they use now.

Tell me about it - the standard run of the mill id book is terrible and causes more harm than good. For example White-cheeked Tern. Some books will show it with almost no dusky underparts and some with way too much and Arctic Tern suffers from similar artistic licence. I'm also very interested in Dragonflies, Damselflies, Mammals, Reptiles, Butterflies and Amphibians - to be honest I'd be lost without a camera, even here in the UK with our limited number of species identification of anything is still not straight forward!!!

I subscribed to the Wisconsin birding list awhile back, and the misidentification isn't confined to just books. Even the experts can't agree when they have a perfectly clear picture of a bird in question.