Bridled Tern

Overview

The bridled tern (Onychoprion anaethetus) is a medium-sized seabird of the family Laridae that inhabits the tropical oceans. It is a migratory and dispersive species with markedly marine habits, breeding on rocky islands and wintering widely across tropical waters.

Identification

• Medium-sized tern (30–32 cm length, 77–81 cm wingspan) similar in size to the common tern but more heavily built, with long wings and a deeply forked tail.
• Dark grey upperparts and white underparts, featuring a white forehead and eyebrows, and a striking pale collar on the hindneck.
• Black legs and bill; juveniles appear scaly grey above and pale below.
• Distinguished from the sooty tern by its paler back and narrower white forehead, and from the spectacled tern by the presence of a pale neck collar.

Habitat

This species inhabits the tropical oceans and breeds in colonies on rocky islands. The Atlantic subspecies breeds in Mexico, the Caribbean, and west Africa, while other races occur around the Arabian Peninsula, Southeast Asia, and Australasia. It is a rare vagrant to western Europe.

Diet

It feeds by plunge-diving for fish in marine environments, usually diving directly rather than from a stepped hover. It will also pick food from the surface, similar to the black tern and gull-billed tern, and males offer fish to females as part of the courtship display.

Did you know?

The specific name anaethetus is derived from Ancient Greek for 'senseless' or 'stupid', a reference to the bird's notable tameness around humans.