Amongst the gulls, oystercatchers and other waders feeding on the seaweed at the waterline on a rising tide on the beach below Dunrobin Castle we found these terns which, to our surprise, proved to be sandwich terns rather than the more usual Arctic or common terns.
Like other terns, they are great travellers, most spending their winter in West Africa, though some can travel as far as Cape Province in South Africa. This may seem a long journey but the Arctic tern, which breeds along our coasts and in the Arctic in summer, spends its 'winter' in the Antarctic, making annual migrations of between 44,000 and 59,000 miles each year.
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