overworkedirish said:One note / question; can we tell what is the left wing and what is the tail from this picture? They seem to line up (annoyingly) perfectly, so it's difficult to estimate tail length.
HouseCrow said:I don't think wing and tail are in the same line.
If you look at the base of the right wing, at a 90' angle, you see what appears to be the tip of the left wing of the bird.
greenerisbetter said:my guess is that the top side of left wing tip is visible as the little white triangle at the end of the hand drawn line.
clues in the picture seem to make it certain that the bird's backbone is very close to being parallel with the photographic plane. the near vertical imaginary line between the putative white left wing tip and the right wing tip is consistent with this.
the long black trailing streak is very straight, and perhaps too straight and thin to be an edge view of the distal half of the left wing.
Dave B said:Only one species of tern that I know of shows a head and bill structure like that, combined with the dark underside of the primaries.
By the way, I think the long 'tail' is in fact the left hand wing, as has already been suggested. The whitish triangle at the base of the right right is just a stray feather I'm pretty certain.