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
Black-fronted tern Black-fronted tern The black-fronted tern ("Chlidonias albostriatus") also known as sea martin, ploughboy, inland tern, riverbed tern or tarapiroe, is a small tern generally found in or near bodies of fresh water in New Zealand and forages for freshwater fish, arthropods and worms. It has a predominantly grey plumage. Restricted to breeding in the eastern regions of South Island, it is declining and threatened by introduced mammals and birds. German Johann Reinhold Forster described the black-fronted tern from a specimen collected at Queen Charlotte Sound, Marlborough in 1832, giving it the binomial name "Sterna antarctica", however the name had already