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Common Tern | Sterna hirundo
Visdief | Charrán común
The tern against which every other small tern is measured. In the region it breeds patchily on salt lakes, lagoons and marshes from North Africa to Mesopotamia, and passes in large numbers along Morocco's Atlantic coast, through the Nile valley and across the Gulf. On Arabian coasts the birds are mainly Asian migrants and winter visitors.
Voice
A piercing, downslurred kree-err, and when excited a rapid kik-kik-kik; loud and persistent above the colony.
Recording: Lionel FREDERIC — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Slim, with long narrow wings and a deeply forked tail whose streamers reach about to the wingtip at rest. Breeding plumage: black cap, orange-red bill with a black tip, red legs of medium length, pale grey underparts. From above a dark wedge develops in the outer primaries during the summer; from below only the inner primaries are translucent and the hand has a broad, diffuse dark trailing edge. In winter plumage a white forehead, dark bill and dark carpal bar. The eastern migrants in Arabia (longipennis) have an almost wholly black bill and darker legs.
Confusion species
Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) has a blood-red bill without a black tip, very short legs and a uniformly translucent hand with a narrow, sharp trailing edge. White-cheeked Tern (Sterna repressa) is dark grey below and has a grey rump and tail. Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii) is whiter with longer tail streamers. Whiskered Tern (Chlidonias hybrida) is smaller and more compact with a short, barely forked tail and feeds mainly over fresh water.
Habitat
Coastal lagoons, salt pans, salt lakes, rivers, large marshes and reservoirs, and on migration also along the open coast. Breeds in colonies on bare islets and bunds in salt pans and lagoons, or on sandbanks in rivers; feeds by hovering and plunge-diving for small fish.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Breeds in small numbers and patchily in North Africa: on the salt lakes and sebkhas of northeastern Algeria, in the salt pans and lagoons of Tunisia (including Sfax and Thyna) and locally on the west coast of Libya; only sporadic in Morocco. In the east it breeds in Israel (salt pans of Atlit and Ma'agan Michael, and in the Hula area), in Syria along the Euphrates and in the marshes of southern Iraq. Common on passage along the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Western Sahara, along the Mediterranean, in the Nile valley and at Eilat. In Arabia a passage migrant and winter visitor along the coasts of the Gulf, Oman and Yemen, in Kuwait mainly in spring; hundreds winter on the coast of Oman. Beyond the region it breeds in Europe, temperate Asia and North America and winters along the coasts of Africa, South Asia and South America.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Israel they breed in full view on the rafts and islets in the fishponds and salt pans at Ma'agan Michael. In May and September hundreds pass Eilat and Morocco's Atlantic coast. In the Gulf and Oman it pays to check tern flocks on sandbanks for winter-plumaged black-billed Common Terns among the White-Cheeked Terns.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the region the breeding population is small and fragmented and depends on a limited number of salt pans and lagoons, where disturbance, water management, predation and coastal development determine breeding success.
Scientific name
Sterna hirundo | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Sterna in that same work. Sterna goes back to Old English stearn, which appears in the poem The Seafarer; the Frisians used a related word for terns. hirundo is Latin for 'swallow', after the forked tail and light build the tern shares with that bird. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.