Update: I received a few replies telling me that this individual is a bird-of-the-year COTE while the others are 2CY+ COTEs; this young bird has a full set of juvenile primaries (which are amazingly unworn for mid-November - ?) while the adults have the typical mix of primaries of two or more generations - the older ones looking darker.
This "Commic" Tern was among unexpectedly high numbers of Common Terns (and many Forster's Terns) on East Beach, Galveston, Texas on November 16, 2005; it stood out among the Commons due to its uniformly pale primaries, more-diffuse head pattern, sightly smaller size, and perhaps slightly shorter legs- is it just a different-looking Common, or something else?:
