Sooty tern
| Sooty tern | |
|---|---|
| |
| Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus (or O. f. oahuensis) on Tern Island (French Frigate Shoals) | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Laridae |
| Genus: | Onychoprion |
| Species: | O. fuscatus
|
| Binomial name | |
| Onychoprion fuscatus (Linnaeus, 1766)
| |
| Subspecies | |
|
2-9, see text | |
| |
| Synonyms | |
|
Onychoprion fuscata (lapsus) | |
The sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus) is a seabird in the family Laridae. It is a bird of the tropical oceans, returning to land only to breed on islands throughout the equatorial zone.
Taxonomy
The sooty tern was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1766 as Sterna fuscata, bearing this name for many years until the genus Sterna was split up. It is now known as Onychoprion fuscatus.[3] The genus name is from ancient Greek onux, "claw" or "nail", and prion, "saw". The specific fuscatus is Latin for "dark".[4]
Colloquially, it is known as the wideawake tern or just wideawake. This refers to the incessant calls produced by a colony of these birds, as does the
The sooty tern has little
Onychoprion fuscatus fuscatus (Linnaeus, 1766) – Atlantic sooty tern
Underparts white. Breeds
Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus (Sparrman, 1788) – Indopacific sooty tern[8]
Underparts light grey in fresh plumage, dull white in worn plumage. Breeds from
- Onychoprion fuscatus infuscatus – Sunda sooty tern (Lichtenstein, 1823) – Sunda Islands and vicinity
- Onychoprion fuscatus oahuensis – Central Pacific sooty tern (Bloxam, 1826) – Bonin Islands through Micronesia to southern Polynesia
- Onychoprion fuscatus serrata – Melanesian sooty tern (Wagler, 1830) – Australia, New Guinea, New Caledonia
- Onychoprion fuscatus luctuosa – Juan Fernández sooty tern (Philippi & Landbeck, 1866) – Juan Fernández Islands
- Onychoprion fuscatus crissalis – East Pacific sooty tern Lawrence, 1872. [9] – Eastern Pacific from Guadalupe Island to Galápagos Islands
- Onychoprion fuscatus kermadeci – Kermadec sooty tern Mathews, 1916. [10] – Kermadec Islands
- Onychoprion fuscatus somaliensis – Somali sooty tern – Maydh Island (Gulf of Aden)
-
O. f. nubilosus,Rodrigues Islandin the Indian Ocean -
O. f. serrata,Michaelmas Cay, Queensland
_in_flight_Michaelmas_Cay.jpg)
Description
This is a large tern, similar in size to the Sandwich tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) at 33–36 cm (13–14 in) long with an 82–94 cm (32.5–37 in) wingspan. The wings and deeply forked tail are long, and it has dark black upperparts and white underparts. It has black legs and bill. The average life span is 32 years.[11] Juvenile sooty terns are scaly grey above and below. The sooty tern is unlikely to be confused with any tern apart from the similarly dark-backed but smaller bridled tern (O. anaethetus). It is darker-backed than that species, and has a broader white forehead and no pale neck collar.
The call is a loud piercing ker-wack-a-wack or kvaark.
Ecology
Sooty terns breed in colonies on rocky or coral islands.[12] It nests in a ground scrape or hole and lays a single egg, typically in the afternoon.[13] Although "two-egg clutches" have been reported, they probably occur when an egg from one nest rolls into another.[14] It feeds by picking fish from the surface in marine environments, often in large flocks, and rarely comes to land except to breed, and can stay out to sea for 3 to 10 years.[15] Due to the lack of oil in its feathers, it cannot float, and spends that entire time on the wing.[16]
This bird is
It is also not normally found on the
An exceptionally common bird, the sooty tern is not considered threatened by the
Role in Easter Island culture
On Easter Island, this species and the spectacled tern (O. lunatus) are collectively known as manutara. The manutara played an important role in the tangata manu ("birdman") ritual: whichever hopu (champion) could retrieve the first manutara egg from Motu Nui islet would become that year's tangata manu; his clan would receive prime access to resources, especially seabird eggs.
Gallery
-
Sooty tern rookery on Tern Island (French Frigate Shoals) -
Chick on Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals -
Sooty tern chicks seeking shade under the shadow of a young black-footed albatross -
A chick is snatched by a predatory great frigatebird -
Egg
Footnotes
- ^ . Retrieved 19 November 2021.
- ^ "Onychoprion fuscatus". Avibase.
- ^ Bridge et al. (2005)
- ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
- ^ From ʻewa, "crooked, out of shape, imperfect" (Pukui et al. 1992: p.17)
- ^ The Polynesian word for terns (tara) is the same as the word for "pointed"; it is easy to see how these sharp-billed fork-tailed birds came to be called thus (Tregear, 1891)
- ISBN 978-1-74059-998-6.
- ^ Or "Indian Ocean sooty tern" if more subspecies are accepted.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez, Juan Carlos (June 2003). "Sooty Tern (Crissal) Onychoprion fuscatus crissalis (Lawrence, 1872)". Avibase - the world bird database.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez, Juan Carlos (June 2003). "Sooty Tern (kermadeci) Onychoprion fuscatus kermadeci Mathews, 1916". Avibase - the world bird database.
- ^ FWS
- ^ Streets (1877)
- JSTOR 1367549.
- JSTOR 416059.
- ^ Plunkett, Dennis (2013). "The Sooty Tern". The Dry Tortugas.
- ^ Loyer, Bertrand; Bedel, Jacques; de Riberolles, François; Irons (Narrator), Jeremy (January 2014). "Pioneers Of The Deep". Life On Fire.
- ^ Boulton & Rand (1952)
- ^ "Sooty Tern Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey, Wales". michaelmckee.co.uk.
- ^ "Mexico - Central America" (PDF). The University of New Mexico. 2002.
- ^ Herrera et al. (2006)
- ^ Estela et al. (2005)
References
- Fieldiana Zoology 34 (5): 35–64. Fulltext at the Internet Archive
- Bridge, E.S.; Jones, A.W.; Baker, A.J. (2005). "A phylogenetic framework for the terns (Sternini) inferred from mtDNA sequences: implications for taxonomy and plumage evolution" (PDF). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 35 (2): 459–469. PMID 15804415. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-07-20.
- Brown, William Yancey (1973). Breeding Biology of the Sooty Tern and Brown Noddy on Manana or Rabbit Island, Hawaii. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hawaii.[1]
- Collinson, M (2006). "Splitting headaches? Recent taxonomic changes affecting the British and Western Palaearctic lists". British Birds. 99 (6): 306–323.
- Estela, Felipe A.; Silva, John Douglas; Castillo, Luis Fernando (2005). "El pelícano blanco americano (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus) en Colombia, con comentarios sobre los effectos de los huracanes en el Caribe [The American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus) in Colombia, with comments on the effects of Caribbean hurricanes]" (PDF). Caldasia (in Spanish). 27 (2): 271–275.
- Herrera, Néstor; Rivera, Roberto; Ibarra Portillo, Ricardo; Rodríguez, Wilfredo (2006). "Nuevos registros para la avifauna de El Salvador. ["New records for the avifauna of El Salvador"]" (PDF). Boletín de la Sociedad Antioqueña de Ornitología (in Spanish). 16 (2): 1–19.
- Olsen, Klaus Malling & Larsson, Hans (1995): Terns of Europe and North America. ISBN 0-7136-4056-1
- Pukui, Mary Kawena; Elbert, Samuel Hoyt; Mookini, Esther T. & Nishizawa, Yu Mapuana (1992): New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary with a Concise Grammars and Given Names in Hawaiian. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-1392-8
- Streets, Thomas H. (1877): Some Account of the Natural History of the Fanning Group of Islands. Am. Nat. 11 (2): 65–72. First page image
- Tregear, Edward (1891): Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary. Lyon and Blair, Wellington.
External links
- Sooty tern article at BirdNote.org Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine
- Sooty terns on Ascension Island South Atlantic Archived 2012-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
| Authority control databases: National |
|---|
