Stunning Roseate tern on Isle of May
One of two...
Vocal and present for five weeks
Beautiful Roseate tern

Saturday 24th July comments: We brought you the great news about the Storm Petrels and we nearly added to it with the news about our roseate terns…but not quite.

A pair of Roseate Terns arrived on the island on 24th June and remained for the next five weeks and were observed displaying with fish and even scraping at the Beacon tern terraces. However, despite this promising start, the pair failed to breed but still continue to linger on the island to this day (down by the jetty). Both birds are ringed with details suggesting that they are from Rockerbill in Ireland. This comes off the back of our success in 2019 when an individual paired with a Common Tern and raised a single chick, the first breeding attempt in almost two decades.

Roseate Terns are rare breeders in the U.K. (red data list species) with Coquet island in Northumberland celebrating a record 150 breeding pairs this year but sadly there are none in Scotland. However, this 'so close but so far away' story is not all bad news. The positives to be taken from this series of sightings show that we have the right habitat to attract them especially the specialist tern terraces. So it's a bright future as we hope to have them back next season to do it for real. The future is bright, the future is rosy….