• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
Where premium quality meets exceptional value. ZEISS Conquest HDX.

White-tailed Tropicbird - BirdForum Opus

Nominate subspecies
Photo © by cango
Aride, Seychelles, October 2017
Phaethon lepturus

Identification

Subspecies catesbyi
Photo © by Steve G
Little Tobago Island, Tobago

70-82 cm (27½-32¼ in) long (includes very long central tail feathers)

  • White back
  • Black band on inner wing upperside
  • Black on outer primaries
  • White primary coverts on upperside
  • Black line through eye tends to turn down
  • Yellow to red bill

Sexes are similar (males have a long tail)
Juvenile: lacks taill streamers

  • Greenish-yellow bill
  • Finely barred back

Similar species

Red-billed Tropicbird and Red-tailed Tropicbird. Red-billed Tropicbird has black primary coverts on upperside and black eye line tends to turn up, not down.

Distribution

Subspecies fulvus
Photo © by peterday
Christmas Island, Australia, February 2023

The tropical Atlantic, western Pacific and Indian Oceans. They also breed on some Caribbean islands.

Taxonomy

Subspecies

Immature
Photo © by Andy Wraithmell
off Florida, July 2011

There are six subspecies[1]:

  • P. l. lepturus:
  • P. l. fulvus: the tropicbirds of this subspecies have a golden-yellow wash of varying degrees, giving them the local name of Golden Bosun (photo to right)
  • P. l. europae:
  • P. l. catesbyi:
  • Breeds islands in tropical Atlantic Ocean
  • P. l. dorotheae:
  • P. l. ascensionis:

Habitat

Subspecies P. l. ascensionis
Photo © by Francisco Paludo
Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, 4 June 2024

Breeds on rocky island coasts, otherwise pelagic.

Behaviour

Breeding

The single egg is laid on a cliff edge or on the ground in a sheltered scrape. The breed in loose colonies.

Diet

Their diet consists of small fish (especially flying fish) and squid, caught by diving.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved Oct 2017)

Recommended Citation

External Links

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1

Back
Top