Filey Brigg, 4th Sep '25 - Roseate Terns

Adult (above) and juvenile (below) Roseate Terns

So with a little spare time and an opportunity to see the folks, I headed for the coast on Wednesday (3rd), calling at Filey for a check of the bay and Brigg on the way to overnighting at Flamborough....

... which turned out to be a good call, as the photos above and below demonstrate (to a degree anyway - the photos show only a small percentage of the birds involved). All inshore waters to the south, north and east of the Brigg were a blur of many thousands of feeding seabirds, while the Brigg itself was covered with resting flocks.

Thousands of Gannets, auks, Kittiwakes and other gulls, terns and more in pretty much all directions and at all distances, with many close inshore, and a great any more off in the distance. Hard to know where to look, and unfortunately, hard to pick anything out, with a blustery wind, dying light and squally showers. 

All pics - Roseate Terns

Frustrating, but with a few hours spare the following morning, I resolved to come back and give it some serious coverage. More settled conditions and sunshine greeted me when I did, with the latter meaning the glare dictated getting on the seaward side of the birds.

Thankfully, it was one of those days when there were so many birds, which were so committed to making the most of the bounty, that getting to the very end of the Brigg and looking back wasn't a problem; any minor inconvenience to the resting masses was soon forgotten and positions were immediately resumed.

And there was a lot to enjoy and sift through. The aforementioned thousands of Gannets - many diving just a few metres from the shore - were joined by ten Arctic Skuas, many hundreds of Kittiwakes and other commoner gulls, a good scattering of waders on the Brigg (see next post), ten Arctic Skuas (with two Poms the evening previously), a smattering of Red-throated Divers, three Caspian Gulls, a Yellow-legged Gull, and 500 or so Common Terns dominating the rocks (and the inshore feeding grounds), along with four other tern species...

... the final tallies of which consisted of 55 Sandwich Terns, three Arctic Terns, two Black Terns and these highly entertaining Roseate Terns, totalling four (two adults and two juveniles).

I was fortunate to enjoy them, and the rest of the avian spectacle, undisturbed, for a couple of very immersive and much appreciated hours - see the next post for a variety of other species - but there was one aspect to their behaviour which I didn't expect. All the following photos show an adult Roseate Tern engaged in kleptoparasitism:

This occurred at least three times while I was there (and that could easily have been plenty more), always involving adult Common Terns with (large) fish as targets, and always involving a specific style of attack:

The Roseate would gain height, approach from above at a sharp diagonal, half closing its wings until almost within touching range of the target, and then drop its feet and attack with its bill. On at least one of the occasions, it succeeded, and after collecting its booty, it returned to the rocks and fed it to its youngster.

Its not a behaviour I was aware of for this species (adding further to the general spectacle), but a bit of research shows its actually not hugely unusual, at least at breeding colonies.

More to follow....