Common Tern Images

Common Tern Images, Facts and Information:

Sterna hirundo

• Common Terns are medium-sized shorebirds with slender, pointed wings, long forked tails, black caps, gray backs, white underparts, red-orange bills tipped in black, and red-orange legs. Males and females look alike.
• Common Terns are long distance migrants. They breed across much of Canada, the northern United States, and parts of Europe and Asia. In winter they migrate to the southern U.S., Central America, South America, Africa, and southern Asia.
• Common Terns thrive in habitats including coastal beaches, islands, bays, lakes, rivers, marshes, barrier islands, and sand or gravel flats near water.
• Common Terns eat small fish, insects, shrimp, squid, and crustaceans, which they catch by plunge-diving into the water.
  Common Terns lay 2 to 4 eggs which hatch in about 21 to 27 days. Both parents incubate and feed the young, and they are monogamous.
• Common Terns are often called “sea swallows”.
• A group of terns can be called a “ternery” or a “soaring” of terns.
• The oldest known Common Tern was 25 years old.

I hope you enjoy viewing my Common Tern photos.