Bird Sightings: Starlings

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Bird Sightings : Hebrides : Arctic Tern

Arctic Tern

Sterna paradisaea
Gaelic: Steàrnag

Photograph © Debbie Bozkurt
Grenitote - North Uist - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
May 26th, 2007

AKA Arctic Tern, Sea swallow

Sterna paradisaea

553,000 pairs - summer UK BTO

AMBER LIST

Mostly grey & white, red beak & feet, white forehead, black nape & crown, white cheeks. Deeply forked whitish tail giving long "streamers"

Breeds: UK - Europe, Arctic, North America

Winters: Antarctic oceans

Habitat: Tundra, Seacoast, lochs, rivers. Winter - sea

Diet: Fish, insects

A chick ringed in Northumberland one June was in Australia, that October (12, 000 mile round trip)

Usually return to breed in area & colony, where they hatched to breed. Lives to 20yrs.

Listen to an Arctic Tern RSPB site

The birds winter far South in the Antarctic oceans. In Late April, early May they begin to arrive back in the UK, the northernmost birds arriving back in June. Migration back South starts at the end of the breeding season in late July and August.

Our tern phototographs :

Arctic tern
juvenile
Arctic tern
Common tern

Debbie's online photo album

Other local bird photographs

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