Great capture of a Royal Tern by Rob Bielawski! 

Thanks for allowing us to share it, and for the detailed info below.  You can see them fishing this time of year every day!

Let’s get started ...

From Audubon.org the Royal Tern favors:

Habitat

Coasts, sandy beaches, salt bays. Favors warm coastal waters, especially those that are shallow and somewhat protected, as in bays, lagoons, estuaries. Also found well offshore at times, and travels freely between islands in the Caribbean. Usually nests on low-lying sandy islands.

You can learn much, much more by following Rob’s page entitled Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus).

Zoom into this map at eBird.com to find Sightings, including photos.

By drilling down into each sighting, and select a Checklist.

Here’s Rob’s Checklist when he spotted the Royal Tern in the photo above.

Have you watched Royal Terns fish in the Lynnhaven & Pleasure House Creek?

Photo by Ocean Park’s Kevin O’Hara of a “Needham's Skimmer male or Golden-winged Skimmer male, it's one of the two, not positive though” as described by Rob Bielawski.

View more of Kevin’s photos.

Learn more about Rob’s work including his  Photographic Guides to The Wildlife of Coastal Virginia.

Learn more about dragonflies & damselflies at OdonataCentral.org.