5 June 2025
Spring migration in Pittsburgh has been unusual this year. In Allegheny County at least four rare birds have stopped by on their way north.
- Barnacle goose on the Allegheny River at East Deer Twp and eventually Duck Hollow, 29 March through 19 April 2025
- Pacific loon at Duck Hollow, 19-20 April 2025
- Connecticut warbler at Bellevue Memorial Park, 18-25 May 2025
- And last weekend –> Black tern at Imperial Grasslands Main Pond, 29 May through 1 June, 2025. First reported by Mark Vass.
Black terns (Chlidonias niger) are gorgeous in breeding plumage with a black head and underparts and gray-white back and wings. In flight the bird is mesmerizing while it hunts over water for insects and fish or circles up to view the landscape. At any moment it changes its flight style to resemble a butterfly, a swallow, a nighthawk, a flycatcher or a tern.
These videos are not from Imperial but they show why black terns are so beautiful in flight.
During its brief stay in Allegheny County over 50 eBirders stopped by to see the black tern and many took photos.
Those embedded below from Macauley Library (Ezra White, Rob Hooten, John Drake, Phillip Rogers) show a sequence of black tern behavior as the bird catches a fish: hovering, diving, coming up with a fish, flying away, resting on the grass.
Black Tern Hunting Sequence, Catching a Fish at Imperial Main Pond
This black tern was the best I’ve ever seen, closer than all the others plus he stood on the ground for a while (a first for me).
He also had something to say…
Black Tern Vocalizing at Dusk
Because Allegheny County only sees black terns in migration it will probably be many years before another comes again.
We were lucky it visited in spring when it was beautiful. Black terns are not black in autumn as shown in non-breeding plumage in Ohio, September 2014.
Indeed the bird was beautiful last weekend in Pittsburgh.