All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Skimmers, noddies, terns and gulls › Brown Noddy
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Birds of the elements Elementaves › Cranes and waders Gruimorphae
Brown Noddy | Anous stolidus
Noddy | Tiñosa común
The Brown Noddy is a dark brown tern with a pale crown and a wedge-shaped tail that breeds on islands and rocky islets off both coasts of the guide area. It feeds just above the water, picking small fish and squid from the surface, often where tuna and other predatory fish drive shoals upwards. Outside the breeding season it wanders over the open sea.
Voice
At the colony a low, raw, crow-like karrk plus growling and rattling sounds; mostly silent at sea.
Recording: Alexander Schlatmann — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
38–45 cm, uniform dark chocolate-brown, with a whitish-grey crown that blends gradually into the brown nape, a narrow white crescent below the eye and a black line between eye and bill. The bill is black and fairly stout, the legs dark. The long tail is wedge-shaped with a small notch at the tip, not forked. In flight the underwing coverts are paler brown than the flight feathers. The sexes are alike. Juveniles have a browner, barely pale crown and pale fringes to the wing coverts.
Confusion species
Black Noddy Anous minutus is smaller and blacker, with a longer, thinner bill, a more sharply defined bright white cap reaching the nape and a shorter tail. Juvenile Sooty Terns Onychoprion fuscatus are also dark brown, but have white spots on the back and wings, a pale belly and undertail and a forked tail.
Habitat
Open sea and coastal waters, especially over reefs and where shoals of predatory fish are hunting. It breeds in colonies on rocky islets, coral cays and cliffs, on ledges and in crevices, on bushes or on the ground; the nest is a flat platform of twigs and seaweed. It rests on buoys, posts, driftwood and boats.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds on islands and rocky islets on both sides of the guide area: on the Pacific side among others on the Revillagigedo Islands, on Isla del Coco and locally on islets off the coast of Mexico and Central America; on the Caribbean side on reefs and cays off the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Arrecife Alacranes. Elsewhere along both coasts mainly seen at sea, sometimes from headlands and ferries. Outside the guide area in all tropical oceans, and in the Caribbean at almost all larger seabird colonies.
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Boat trips to colony islets in the breeding season, or headlands where birds feed low over the water, give the best chances. At the colony birds are often fairly tame, and the nodding and bowing of courtship can be watched closely.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The world population is large. Introduced rats and cats, egg collecting and disturbance by visitors locally affect breeding success on small islands.
Scientific name
Anous stolidus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Sterna stolida; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Anous was introduced in 1826 by Stephens. Anous is Greek for 'stupid, silly' — for the tameness with which noddies allowed sailors to approach and catch them. stolidus is Latin for 'stupid, dull' — for the birds' tameness, which made them easy to catch at sea. The specimen the first description was based on came from West Indies.