It was the bird’s distinctive movement that made me take a second look. Small and pale, with narrow, swept-back wings and a buoyant flight – reminding me, in the words of the writer Simon Barnes, of a gull that’s died and gone to heaven.
A glance through my binoculars, and its black crown, white forehead, and custard-yellow bill confirmed that it was a little tern – the smallest of its family, and only the third individual I had ever seen in Somerset.
