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 Greekonux, "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 Hawaiian name ʻewa ʻewa which roughly means "cacophony".[5] In most of Polynesia its name is manutara or similar – literally "tern-bird",[6] though it might be better rendered in English as "the tern" or "common tern". This refers to the fact that wherever Polynesian seafarers went on their long voyages, they usually would find these birds in astounding numbers. It is also known as kaveka in the Marquesas Islands, where dishes using its eggs are a delicacy.[7]
The sooty tern has little interspecific variation, but it can be divided into at least two allopatric subspecies. Some recent authors further subdivide the Indopacific population into up to eight subspecies altogether, but much of the variation is really clinal. The affinities of eastern Pacific birds (including the famous manutara of Easter Island) are most strongly contested.
Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus(Sparrman, 1788)– Indopacific sooty tern, or Indian Ocean sooty tern if more subspecies are accepted. Underparts light grey in fresh plumage, dull white in worn plumage. Breeds from Red Sea across Indian Ocean to at least central Pacific. Some authors restrict this taxon to the Indian Ocean population and use the following subspecies for the birds from Indonesia to the Americas:
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
This is a large tern, similar in size to the Sandwich tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) at 33–36cm (13–14in) long with an 82–94cm (32.5–37in) 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.[10] 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
Adult O. f. nubilosus with egg in "nest", SeychellesO. f. nubilosus at Bird Island, Seychelles, home to more than a million sooty terns at its peak
Sooty terns breed in colonies on rocky or coral islands.[11] It nests in a ground scrape or hole and lays a single egg, typically in the afternoon.[12] Although "two-egg clutches" have been reported, they probably occur when an egg from one nest rolls into another.[13] 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.[14] Due to the lack of oil in its feathers, it cannot float, and spends that entire time on the wing.[15]
This bird is migratory and dispersive, wintering more widely through the tropical oceans. It has very marine habits compared to most terns; sooty terns are generally found inland only after severe storms. The Field Museum, for example, has a male specimen which was found exhausted on August 2, 1933 on the slopes of Mount Cameroon above Buea, about 1,000m (3,300ft)ASL, after foul weather had hit the Gulf of Guinea.[16] This species is a rare vagrant to western Europe, although a bird was present at Cemlyn Bay, Wales for 11 days in July 2005.[17]
It is also not normally found on the Pacific coasts of the Americas due to its pelagic habits. At Baja California, where several nesting locations are offshore, it can be seen more frequently, whereas for example only two individuals have ever been recorded on the coast of El Salvador - one ring recovered in 1972, and a bird photographed on October 10, 2001 at Lake Olomega[18] which was probably blown there by a storm.[19]Hurricanes can also devastate small breeding colonies, as has been surmised for example for the sooty tern nesting sites on cays off the San Andrés Islands of Colombia.[20]
An exceptionally common bird, the sooty tern is not considered threatened by the IUCN.[1]
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.
Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae, subfamily Sterninae, that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated in eleven genera in a subgroup of the family Laridae, which also includes several genera of gulls and the skimmers (Rynchops). They are slender, lightly built birds with long, forked tails, narrow wings, long bills, and relatively short legs. Most species are pale grey above and white below with a contrasting black cap to the head, but the marsh terns, the black-bellied tern, the Inca tern, and some noddies have dark body plumage for at least part of the year. The sexes are identical in appearance, but young birds are readily distinguishable from adults. Terns have a non-breeding plumage, which usually involves a white forehead and much-reduced black cap.
The bridled tern 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".
The white tern or common white tern is a small seabird found across the tropical oceans of the world. It is sometimes known as the fairy tern, although this name is potentially confusing as it is also the common name of Sternula nereis. Other names for the species include angel tern and white noddy in English, and manu-o-Kū in Hawaiian. The little white tern, previously considered a subspecies of the white tern, is now recognised as a separate species.
The spectacled tern, also known as the grey-backed tern, is a seabird in the family Laridae.
The brown noddy or common noddy is a seabird in the family Laridae. The largest of the noddies, it can be told from the closely related black noddy by its larger size and plumage, which is dark brown rather than black. The brown noddy is a tropical seabird with a worldwide distribution, ranging from Hawaii to the Tuamotu Archipelago and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, from the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Australia in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean to Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean. The brown noddy is colonial, usually nesting on elevated situations on cliffs or in short trees or shrubs. It only occasionally nests on the ground. A single egg is laid by the female of a pair each breeding season. In India, the brown noddy is protected in the PM Sayeed Marine Birds Conservation Reserve.
Onychoprion, the "brown-backed terns", is a genus of seabirds in the family Laridae. The genus name is from Ancient Greek onux, "claw" or "nail", and prion, "saw".
Roca Partida ranks as the smallest of the four Revillagigedo Islands, part of the Free and Sovereign State of Colima in Mexico. The uninhabited island encompasses an extremely small area. Many divers rank it among the most beautiful dive sites in Mexico. Divers must obtain permits from the Mexican Armed Forces to enter the military zone surrounding the island.
The grey noddy or grey ternlet is a seabird belonging to the family Laridae. It was once regarded as a pale morph of the blue noddy but is now usually considered to be a separate species.
↑ 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)
↑ Brown, William Y. (1977). "Temporal Patterns in Laying, Hatching and Incubation of Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies". The Condor. 79 (1). Oxford University Press: 133–136. doi:10.2307/1367549. JSTOR1367549.
↑ Brown, William Y. (1975). "Artifactual Clutch Size in Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies". The Wilson Bulletin. 87 (1): 115–116. JSTOR416059.
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. ISBN0-8248-1392-8
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
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.
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