Arctic Tern Identification
Its scientific name is 'Sterna paradisaea', from the family Laridae (order Charadriiformes)
What I look like
The Arctic Tern is about 35 cm in size.
Its wingspan is about double its size.
It has a black cap, with white cheeks and throat.
The upper wings and the rest of the body are gray, but the rump is white.
From below, the wings are gray with a distinct black edge surrounded by a translucent white area.
The wings are long, narrow, and pointed.
Its tail is long and forked.
Its long tail streamers extend past the wing tips when the bird is perched.
Its bill is long and pointed, colored blood red.
Its legs are very short and orange.
It is easily confused with the Common Tern. The Common Tern is slightly larger, with a longer bill, longer head, and larger legs.
The Common Tern has a reddish-orange bill with a black tip in breeding plumage.
The Common Tern's tail streamers are shorter than the wing tips when the bird is perched.
The juveniles of the Arctic Tern have a bit of yellowish-brown in their plumage and an incomplete black cap with a white forehead.
Their bill quickly turns dark and the yellowish-brown color disappears. The tail streamers are still short.
My songs, my calls
The calls of the Arctic Tern are varied and resemble those of the Common Tern.
Generally, it emits very high-pitched and repeated, powerful and sometimes rolling sounds. "prriiiu"
It can produce "krri-errr" sounds when aggressive.
How I behave
The Arctic Tern often hovers in a stair-step pattern before diving.
Its flight is light and graceful with smooth wing beats.
How I reproduce
The Arctic Tern nests in colonies, far in the north or in isolated pairs (on coasts, islands, and sometimes inland, near water).
Even though the pairs spend a large part of the year apart, they are mated for life and reunite at the same place each spring for breeding.
The pair builds a nest on the ground by scraping out a shallow depression, which they line with vegetation to incubate 2 eggs.
During the courtship display, the pair chases each other in flight ...
And the display continues on the ground with the male offering food to the female.
The chicks are covered in down. They migrate in their first year, but do not breed until 3 to 4 years later.
Colony protection is effective. At the signal of danger, all the terns take flight and attack the predator.
What I eat
The Arctic Tern feeds on fish, plankton, and small crustaceans.
It catches its prey at the water's surface like the black terns.
It spots the white flashes of diving birds' plumage to locate fish schools.
Its long migration route follows the water, where it can feed during the journey.
By flying from pole to pole, it benefits from more daylight hours than any other bird, allowing it to feed longer and find abundant resources.
Where to find me
The Arctic Tern is a long-distance migrant.
It spends the summer in the northern hemisphere, in the Arctic and subarctic regions like northern Europe.
It is found in Europe in summer from late April to early August.
It then crosses ocean expanses to reach Antarctica to winter.
In doing so, it makes a journey of 35,000 km in about 4 months. It holds the record for the longest migration.
The Arctic Tern can live for about 34 years.