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White-winged Black Terns are medium-sized terns. Their plumage changes drastically between breeding season and eclipse. During the breeding season they have a black head, mantle, throat, chest and belly. Only the vent is white. The wings are dark-grey with white to light-grey shoulders. The eyes are black, the bill, legs and feet are dark-red. In eclipse the front (neck, chest, belly,vent) and frons become white, with a mottled dark-grey cap. The wings are light-grey, with conspicuous dark-grey primaries. The bill, legs and feet turn black when not breeding. Juvenile birds have darker-grey wings, but otherwise resemble non-breeding adults, but with a brown-and-grey scalloped back.

Twitcher's tip

Compared to other, similar terns White-winged Black Terns in incomplete moult can be told by the remaining dark, worn feathers frequently seen on their wings and underparts.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the White-winged Tern is available HERE .

White-winged Terns are a migratory species. Their breeding grounds are marshes extending from South-east Europe to central Asia. They spend the northern winters in eastern and southern Africa, southern Asia and Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand. In both South Asia and Australia they are found only in coastal habitats. During their migration they are also found in Asia Minor, coastal Arabia, Iran, Iraq and, in the far East of Asia, predominantly in Vietnam.

White-winged Black Terns are non-breeding migrants to Australia from the North. They arrive anywhere along the tropical coast of Australia and disperse around basically the entire Australian seaboard, including the East coast of Tasmania and many small offshore islands. They can be found farther inland, in parts of the Great Dividing Range and in particular in the central part of the Murray-Darling Basin near the NSW/VIC border. There are also White-winged Black Terns in an area around Perth, WA. Elsewhere on the continent White-winged Black Terns are found only rarely, and never in the great deserts of WA/SA/NT or the Nullarbor.

White-winged Black Terns live around lakes including ephemeral lakes, in estuaries and in coastal waters.

B. Hensen reports spotting White-winged Black Terns at the Leanyer Sewage Treatment Plant, Darwin, NT, in March 2013 and again in July 2013. In November 2018 White-winged Black Terns were found both at the Leanyer Sewage Treatment plant and at Lee Point, Darwin, NT.

We found a White-winged Black Tern at Goran Lake, an ephemeral lake 30 km South of Gunnedah, NSW, in January 2022.

Other photos shown below were taken by M. Eaton in Sri Lanka in October 2025.