Arctic Tern

What the Arctic Tern sounds like

Recorded by Killian Sullivan · Grand Manan, United States · CC0 · via xeno-canto

Recorded by Jochem verweij · Call, duet, flight call · OTTENBY, Mörbylånga Municipality, Kalmar län, Sweden · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via xeno-canto

Recorded by Doug Hynes · Alarm call, call, flight call · "the Fen", near Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Manitoba, Canada · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via xeno-canto

When to see the Arctic Tern

One bar for each month. Filled bars are the 4 months with records; pale bars are months with none. The wide bar is June, the month with the most records.

Where to see the Arctic Tern

The map shades 69 countries with regular records, and 15 more in a lighter tone where the bird turns up only as a stray. Everything unshaded has no records. Countries are listed below the map.

Recorded as a rare visitor in Morocco, Türkiye, Greece, Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Honduras, Japan, South Korea, Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, Cuba, Oman, Ukraine.

About the Arctic Tern

The Arctic tern is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. The species is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Easily confused with

River TernSterna aurantiaIt is a medium-large tern, 38–46 cm long with an 80–85 cm wingspan, distinctly larger than any other species in Sterna and more comparable in size to a Sandwich tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) or a lesser crested tern (T. bengalensis). Roseate TernSterna dougalliiThis is a small-medium tern, 33–36 cm (13–14 in) long with a 67–76 cm (26–30 in) wingspan, which can be confused with the common tern, Arctic tern, and the larger, but similarly plumaged, Sandwich tern. White-fronted TernSterna striataThe white-fronted tern is an average-sized tern; its dimensions are 35–43 cm (14–17 in) in length, with a wingspan between 79 and 82 cm (31 and 32 in); the male weighs on average 130 g (4.6 oz).