The black tern was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Sterna nigra.

The wing-beats are full and dynamic, and flight is often erratic as it dives to the surface for food; similar to other tern species.

[10][11] Their breeding habitat is freshwater marshes across most of Canada, the northern United States and much of Europe and western Asia.

In England the black tern was abundant in the eastern Fens, especially in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, until the early nineteenth century.

The Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant, describing a visit made to Lincolnshire in 1769, referred to 'vast flocks' of black terns that 'almost deafen one with their clamors'.

Intermittent attempts by the black tern to recolonise England have proved unsuccessful, with only a handful of English breeding records, and one in Ireland, in the second half of the twentieth century.

North American black terns migrate to the coasts of northern South America, some to the open ocean.

Unlike the "white" Sterna terns, these birds do not dive for fish, but forage on the wing picking up items at or near the water's surface or catching insects in flight.