Fairy tern Fairy tern The fairy tern ("Sternula nereis") is a small tern which is native to the southwestern Pacific. It is listed as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN and the New Zealand subspecies is "Critically Endangered". There are three subspecies: The fairy tern is a small tern with a white body and light bluish-grey wings. The crown and nape is black. It can be distinguished from the little tern in that a black band extends no further than the eye and not as far as the bill. In the breeding plumage both the beak and the legs are yellowish-orange. During the rest
Common tern cheeks more obvious, whereas the rump of the common tern can be greyish in non-breeding plumage, compared to the white of its relative. The common tern develops a dark wedge on the wings as the breeding season progresses, but the wings of Arctic stay white throughout the northern summer. All the flight feathers of the Arctic tern are translucent against a bright sky, only the four innermost wing feathers of the common tern share this property. The trailing edge of the outer flight feathers is a thin black line in the Arctic tern, but thicker and less defined in the