The bridled tern ( Onychoprion anaethetus)[Sometimes the name is (wrongly?) spelled as S. anaestheta, for instance in: ] is a seabird of the family Laridae. It is a bird of the tropical oceans. The scientific name is from Ancient Greek. The genus comes from onux meaning "claw" or "nail", and prion, meaning "saw". The specific anaethetus means "senseless, stupid".
Description
This is a medium-sized tern, at 30–32 cm in length and with a 77–81 cm wingspan similar to the
common tern in size, but more heavily built. The wings and deeply forked tail are long, and it has dark grey upperparts and white underparts. The forehead and eyebrows are white, as is a striking collar on the hindneck. It has black legs and bill. Juvenile bridled terns are scaly grey above and pale below.
This species is unlikely to be confused with any tern apart from the similarly dark-backed sooty tern and the spectacled tern from the Tropical Pacific. It is paler-backed than that sooty, (but not as pale as the grey-backed) and has a narrower white forehead and a pale neck collar.
Distribution and movements
This bird is
bird migration and dispersive, wintering more widely through the tropical oceans. It has markedly marine habits compared to most terns. The Atlantic
subspecies melanopterus breeds in
Mexico, the
Caribbean and west
Africa; other races occur around the Arabian Peninsula and in
Southeast Asia and
Australasia, but the exact number of valid subspecies is disputed. It is a rare vagrant to western
Europe.
These are the four subspecies listed by the IOC:
Breeding
This species breeds in colonies on rocky islands. It nests in a ground scrape or hole and lays one egg. It feeds by plunge-diving for fish in marine environments, but will also pick from the surface like the
black tern and the
gull-billed tern. It usually dives directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by the
Arctic tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display.
==Various views and plumages==
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expedition off coast of
Malpe]]
External links
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