All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Skimmers, noddies, terns and gulls › Roseate Tern
Roseate Tern | Sterna dougallii
Dougalls stern | Charrán rosado | Trinta-réis-róseo
The Roseate Tern is a very pale, medium-sized tern with long white tail streamers, breeding on tropical and temperate coasts over much of the world. The nearest breeding grounds are in the Caribbean. In the guide area it is a very rare vagrant, with only a few records.
Voice
A disyllabic chew-vik and a rasping aaach, different in tone from the call of Common Tern.
Recording: Paul Kelly — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
33–41 cm including the very long tail streamers, which project far beyond the wingtips when perched. The upperparts are very pale silvery grey, paler than in related terns, and the underparts are white, with a pink flush in breeding plumage. In breeding plumage the cap is black and the bill black, acquiring a red base during the breeding season; the legs are red. In flight shallow, fast wingbeats, and from above only the outer two or three primaries are dark. Outside the breeding season the forehead is white and the bill black. Juveniles have a dark crown, a black bill, dark-scaled upperparts and blackish legs. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Common Tern Sterna hirundo is greyer above, with shorter tail streamers, a dark wedge in the primaries and in breeding plumage a red bill with a black tip. Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea is greyer, with a short, all-red bill and grey underparts in breeding plumage. Sandwich Tern Thalasseus sandvicensis is larger, with a crest, a shorter tail and a black bill with a yellow tip.
Habitat
A strictly marine tern that forages over clear coastal water and often dives from a greater height than Common Tern, sometimes deep below the surface. It breeds in colonies on small islands with rocks and low vegetation; the nest is often sheltered among stones or plants. It does not breed in the guide area.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
A very rare vagrant to the guide area; the few records come from the north of the guide area. Not a regular species in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or the Galápagos. Breeds patchily in north-eastern North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia and Australia; Caribbean and North American birds winter mainly along the coasts of northern and eastern South America, especially Brazil.
How and when to look
A very pale tern with long white tail streamers among Common Terns on the coast is worth checking; document any record with photographs of the bill, wing and tail.
Conservation status
Least Concern, but declined locally. The North American population, which winters in Brazil, is small, and colonies are sensitive to disturbance, predation and trapping in the wintering range.
Scientific name
Sterna dougallii | Montagu, 1813
Montagu described the species in 1813 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Sterna was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. The genus name comes from Old English stearn, a word for a tern; the Frisians had a similar word. The species name honours Peter McDougall (1777–1814), Scottish physician and collector. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cumbrae Islands, Firth of Clyde, Scotland.