- Sterna sandvicensis
Identification
37-43cm
- Thin black bill with pale yellow tip
- Black legs
- Feet have yellow soles[1]
- Light grey above with blackish wing tips. The rump and rather short forked tail is white. Underparts white (sometimes tinged creamy-pink).
Summer Adult: forehead, crown and nape black. Loose long feathers at the nape seem to form a crest in the wind or when excited.
Winter Adult black areas on head turn white and speckledy-grey on the crest. This happens as early as June.
Juvenile: speckled blackish-brown on mantle and wings, brown on forehead, crown and nape; white elsewhere. Bill is sometimes all black.
Distribution
Europe, Atlantic coasts of North and South America. A summer visitor to Britain.
European birds winter on the west coast of Africa.
Taxonomy
- T. s. sandvicensis breeds on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe.
- T. s. acuflavida breeds on Atlantic coasts of North America.
- T. s. eurygnatha (sometimes treated as a separate species, Cayenne Tern T. eurygnatha) breeds on the Atlantic coast of South America.
Habitat
Almost entirely maritime. Breeds on shingly and sandy coasts and islands.
Behaviour
Flight
Strong flight, often quite high.
Breeding
Colonial nesters (often with Common and Arctic Terns), the nest is a ground scrape and they lay 1-3 eggs.
Diet
Its diet includes fish which it catches by plunging into the sea.
Vocalisation
<flashmp3>Sterna sandvicensis (song).mp3</flashmp3>
Listen in an external program
References
- Cornell and Collins Pocket Guide to British Birds 1966
- Wikipedia
- Birdwatchers Pocket Guide ISBN 1-85732-804-3
- Collins Field Guide 5th Edition
- Collins Bird Guide ISBN 0 00 219728 6
- Arthur Grosset
External Links
