The Best “Bridal Gift” | A Day Out with the River Terns of Bhadra
1st June 2026 | #intothewildwithrufus
The Gulls and the Terns are my top-favourite birds among the birds from the aquatic kingdom! Interestingly they are close cousins too. 😊
I remember having posted a snapshot of a rare and beautiful seagull that we had spotted in Kodiakarai, Point Calimere, Tamil Nadu around eight months ago! You may want to look up the snapshots in our past post, dated 19 October 2025, HERE, during our Kodiakarai Bird Camping!
Although the Terns and the Gulls are close cousins, sharing the same family, they greatly differ in their glide. While the terns are known for their erratic flight patterns (video link attached), the gulls are graceful gliders.
Added, the terns are also called ‘sea-swallows’ – as they sport a forked tail like the swallows, while the gulls are called air pirates, because of their klepto-skill 😉 in stealing food that other animals have already caught or gathered.
What pretty beauties they are! Indeed a beautiful sight to behold!
Well, I am posting here below, a lot of snapshots that I had taken during our boat-ride to the sandbar.
But dear gentle reader… I request you to first read through this exciting note on the behaviour of the River Terns, which will make your viewing experience more engaging and rewarding!
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| From The Book of Indian Birds by Salim Ali |
Yes! The visuals we had this morning were so stunning, that it was like, we were reading a chapter straight out of Salim Ali’s Book of Indian Birds. Indeed, Salim Ali’s description of the River Tern is so picturesque and highly evocative.
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| The chick of the River Terns |
Quite early into the morning, by 6.15 am, a few of us, including the renowned Naturalist Mr. Karthikeyan, his wife Ms.Priya, (an ardent Naturalist and Director of The Naturalist School, Bengaluru) and four others, ventured on an exciting boating trip to a beautiful and unique river-island deep into the forests.
For me it was quite a thrilling moment to spot hundreds of River Terns hovering over the sandbars, keeping an eye on their little ones, in the process.
Back in Chennai, for years now, when a few of us - wannabe birders – used to descend at the Pulicat Lake or at the Muttukadu Back waters, we used to get a blessed darshan of these lovely birds, yes! but we have never observed their nesting or hatching behaviour anytime!
That’s why this boat ride assumes great significance for us.
After a long boat ride deep into the Bhadra river, within the Bhadra Tiger Reserve, we were taken near the River Tern Island – where the River Terns were busy into sandbar-nesting!
Well, on an aside, there is a huge difference between sandbars, sandspits and barrier islands.
Sandbars in a river are elevated regions formed naturally by sand, sediment or gravel, exposed only when the water levels are quite low, and are highly temporary.
Sandspits, on the other hand, are long, narrow ridges of sand that extend from the mainland out into open water, and are semi-permanent.
In contrast, barrier islands, are completely detached from the mainland by open water, and they are permanent, with fully developed ecosystems.
We were right on time to witness their systematic and ritualistic breeding process. (the nesting period is from the months of March up until end-May)
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| A Male River Tern Gracefully Offering the Bridal Gift to his Prospective Bride :-) |
It was quite interesting to know that, the fish that the River Terns catch, are used not only as food, but also as a “bridal gift” during their courtship period. Moreover, they do their nesting in vulnerable, shallow scrapes on exposed sandbanks and feed their chicks live, freshly caught fish right from the moment they hatch out.
The male River Tern does a beautiful plunge-dive into the river, to catch a fresh, silvery fish, and instead of eating it, he will carry it back to a prospective partner. 😊
The male then hovers and performs gallant aerial displays with the fish dangling from his bright yellow bill. He then lands next to the female, offering it to her as a “bridal gift.”
If the lady-tern is lucky enough to accept the offering, they then solidify the rituals into nuptials and they become man and wife. 😊
This ritual isn’t just a romantic gesture! It is live-proof that the male is capable of nourishing, caring and providing for their future chicks!
When we looked at the hundreds of chicks that had hatched out of the sandbars, one thing was curiously striking to our eyes. Unlike many birds that build secure, elevated and safe nests, the nest of the River Terns are nothing more than a shallow pit in the bare sand or rock! This makes their ground-nesting strategy a highly risky one, as they also have the added responsibility to actively defend these exposed nests from opportunistic predators like ibises and crows!
Yes, we could spot a couple of ibises subtly warming up towards the exposed nests.
Unlike many that feed semi-digested food for their young, River Terns start live-feeding their chicks with whole, living-fish.
Yet another interesting ritual or rather a quirky ritual that we observed among the River Terns was that, when a parent caught a live-fish, it immediately dipped the catch into the water to “wash” or re-wet it before presenting it to the chick, in order to make it easier for the young bird to swallow the fish.
The chicks remain entirely dependent on this constant aerial supply chain of fresh, live fish from their parents for about six to eight weeks until they perfect their own diving skills.
And even as our boat gently steered away from the island, the sea-swallows oops River Terns and their highly systematic rituals on the sun-baked sands of the Bhadra remain etched in our hearts so much that, to end on Wordsworthian note -
The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more!
Yes, to us literary beings, they are simply, poetry in flight! 😊
Now for the promised few snapshots -
PS 1: All photos (c) this blogger’s, but please
feel free to use them for any educative, non-commercial purposes 😊
PS 2: You may want to watch that Sweet &
Romantic Video of the Male River Tern feeding his Prospective Bride-to-be, and her
shy acceptance of the Bridal Gift – the pavapetta fish 😊in this memorable video HERE on our Vlog, taken on 1st June 2026.
