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White-Tailed Tropicbird | Phaethon lepturus
Witstaartkeerkringvogel | Rabijunco coliblanco
The smallest tropicbird, white with a black diagonal bar across the wing and extraordinarily long tail streamers. It breeds on tropical islands in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and is a very rare vagrant at sea in the region, with a few reports in the waters around Oman and Socotra.
Voice
Usually silent at sea. At the colony a shrill, repeated tik-tik-tik and a rasping krrree during group display flights.
Recording: VIBERT Laëtitia — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
With streamers 70–82 cm, without about 38–40 cm; the streamers are proportionately longer than in the other tropicbirds. Adults are white with an unbarred back. A broad black diagonal bar runs across the inner upperwing coverts and tertials, and the bases of the outer primaries form a black patch on the wingtip. A black stripe runs through the eye. The bill is yellow to orange. Immatures are finely barred black above, lack the streamers and the diagonal bar and have a yellowish bill. Flight is light and buoyant, with fast beats, sometimes hovering briefly before a plunge-dive.
Confusion species
Red-billed Tropicbird (Phaethon aethereus), the tropicbird that breeds in the region, is larger and heavier, with a red bill, a finely black-barred back and no diagonal wing bar. Immatures of both species are tricky; young Red-billed Tropicbird is more coarsely barred and its black eye-stripe extends further towards the nape. Red-Tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon rubricauda), not recorded in the region, has almost white wings and red streamers. A bird without streamers can recall a tern, but the sturdy build and fast flight differ.
Habitat
Warm open ocean, far from the coast; comes ashore only to breed in rock crevices and tree holes on tropical islands. Feeds by plunge-diving for fish and squid.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
In the region there are only isolated reports at sea: in Yemen (2011, and in 2026 a photographed bird off Abd al-Kuri in the Socotra archipelago) and in the Gulf of Oman (2016). A series of undocumented at-sea reports off Western Sahara from 2011 probably rests on confusion. The species is not on the Socotra checklist and there are no records from the rest of the region. The nearest breeding sites are in the Seychelles, the Comoros, Aldabra and the Mascarenes; beyond these it breeds throughout the tropical Indian Ocean, in the tropical Pacific, the Caribbean, Bermuda and the islands of the tropical Atlantic.
How and when to look
The best chance is on boat trips in the Arabian Sea and off Socotra and Dhofar, where Red-Billed Tropicbirds also fly; any tropicbird with a plain white back and a black wing bar deserves a photo.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened, although some breeding populations suffer from rats, cats and disturbance. In the region a very rare vagrant without well-documented, accepted records; the few reports come from the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
Scientific name
Phaethon lepturus | Daudin, 1802
Daudin described the species in 1802 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Phaethon was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Phaethon goes back to the Greek phaethon 'sun, the shining one'. lepturus comes from the Greek leptos, 'slender', and oura, 'tail' — for the long, narrow central tail feathers. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mauritius.