Black-bellied Tern

The black-bellied tern is 32–35 cm long, with a black belly in summer and a deep forked tail. It can resemble the whiskered tern, but the deeper tail fork and black on the lower belly, rather than closer to the breast, tell them apart. In breeding plumage the crown and nape are black and the upperparts pale grey; outside the breeding season the belly is whitish, the tail shorter and the bill dark-tipped (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is found near large rivers in the Indian subcontinent, mostly in Pakistan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh, with a separate range in Myanmar, on lowland rivers and marshes and sometimes ditches and pools up to about 700 m. It feeds on insects and small fish, skimming over water and ground for insects and plunging obliquely into the water for crustaceans, tadpoles and fish. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority, a resident and local migrant of wetland with a Moderate range of about 94,000 km² (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).