Farne Islands: Bridled tern

While I was booking my trip to the Farne Islands news came through on Bird Forum that a bridled tern had been found on Inner Farne on 1st July. I've seen thousands of them in the middle east but it's a major rarity in the UK with only 23 previous records.

Whilst I'm not really a twitcher it was nice to think I might see such a rare bird on my trip. Luckily it was still around the jetty on Inner Farne when I arrived.

Here's a very poor record shot of the bird which showed well, if at a distance, for some half an hour on my first day on the islands.

By the second day the tern was more was elusive and only appeared for a few minutes around lunchtime and even then was only seen by one of the National Trust wardens. By this time a lot of twitchers had made the trip to Northumberland in the hope of seeing the bird and special boats had been laid on.

By the time most birders arrived the tern had moved on and was next found briefly some 20 miles down the coast.

Here's some of the birders looking in vain from the jetty.