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Roseate Tern | Sterna dougallii
Dougalls stern | Charrán rosado
A pale, long-tailed tern of tropical and temperate seas, which appears in the region in two forms. In the southeast a tropical form breeds in small, scattered colonies on islands off Oman and in the southern Red Sea; in the west the Atlantic form occasionally passes along the coast of Morocco. In between it is a great rarity.
Voice
A soft, disyllabic chu-vick, and a rasping, grating aaach, shorter and harder than that of Sandwich Tern.
Recording: Ricardo Hevia — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
The size of Common Tern, but whiter and paler, with very long, pure white tail streamers that project far beyond the wingtips on a perched bird. The upperwing is uniformly pale grey, with only the outer primaries forming a narrow dark leading edge; there is no dark wedge as in Common Tern. The underparts are white, with a soft pink flush in fresh plumage. Tropical birds in Arabia have a largely red bill with a dark tip in the breeding season; Atlantic birds have a mainly black bill with at most a red base. Legs orange-red, longer than in Arctic Tern. Juveniles have a dark crown and a strikingly dark-scaled mantle.
Confusion species
Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) is greyer, with an orange-red bill with a black tip, shorter streamers and a dark wedge in the primaries. Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) has grey underparts, short legs and a sharp black trailing edge below the hand. White-cheeked Tern (Sterna repressa), which often feeds in the same waters, is much darker in summer, with a grey rump and tail. Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) is larger, with a black bill with a yellow tip and a shorter tail.
Habitat
Clear, warm sea around coral reefs and rocky islands, where it fishes with fast plunge-dives from some height. Breeds on small islets with rocks or some vegetation, under which it hides its nests, often beside colonies of other terns.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Its status in the region is hard to judge from the limited data. The tropical form breeds as a summer visitor in small colonies on islands along the coast of Oman, including around Masirah and the Hallaniyat Islands, and on islands in the southern Saudi and Yemeni Red Sea; outside the breeding season it is seen along the coasts of Oman and Yemen. Rare to vagrant in the Gulf, along the Egyptian Red Sea coast and at Eilat. In the west a rare migrant at sea off Morocco's Atlantic coast, in autumn on its way to West Africa; a vagrant with a few records in the Mediterranean and Israel. Beyond the region it breeds patchily along the coasts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the western Pacific, from Ireland and northeastern America to East Africa, Australia and Japan.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chance is in summer at the islands around Masirah and off the Dhofar coast in Oman, or on a boat trip to the Daymaniyat Islands, where it may turn up among White-Cheeked and Bridled Terns. Look for a tern that shines strikingly white and has a long white tail.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In the region it occurs in small, scattered colonies that are sensitive to disturbance, egg collecting and predation by rats and cats on the breeding islands.
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. Sterna goes back to Old English stearn, which appears in the poem The Seafarer; the Frisians used a related word for terns. dougallii honours the Scottish physician and collector Peter McDougall (1777–1814), who supplied the first specimen. The specimen the first description was based on came from the Cumbraes, Scotland.