Roseate Tern

The roseate tern is a small-medium tern, 33–36 cm long with a wingspan of 67–76 cm, that can be confused with the common, Arctic and Sandwich terns. The adults have very long, flexible tail streamers and orange-red legs, and the name refers to the pink breast in breeding plumage. The thin sharp bill is black with a red base that develops through the breeding season and is more extensive, fully red, in tropical and southern hemisphere subspecies (Wikipedia, general species account).

It feeds by plunge-diving for fish, almost always from the sea, and is much more marine than related terns, only rarely visiting freshwater lagoons on the coast to bathe and never fishing in fresh water. It nests in a ground scrape, often in a hollow or under dense vegetation, and lays one or two, rarely three, eggs. The cached account gives no detail specific to India. SoIB 2023 lists it as a resident and summer migrant of wetland that eats vertebrates, and does not assign a priority category (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).