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Roseate Tern | Sterna dougallii
Dougalls stern | Charrán Rosado
The Roseate Tern is a pale tern with long white tail streamers that breeds on only a few islands in southern Africa. Unlike most terns in the region it is not a migrant from the north here, but a resident with its own small population. In South Africa it is considered Endangered.
Voice
A distinctive soft, disyllabic chew-vee and a rasping aaach or kraak, mainly at the colony.
Recording: Ricardo Hevia — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
33–38 cm, a good part of which is tail streamers. The upperparts are very pale silver-grey, paler than in Common and Arctic Terns, and the underparts are white with a pink flush in breeding plumage. In breeding plumage a black cap; the bill is then largely red with a dark tip, in birds in the region often redder than in European birds. The streamers are pure white and project well beyond the wingtip at rest. From below the wings are almost wholly white, only the outer primaries showing a narrow dark edge. In non-breeding plumage a white forehead, black bill and a faint carpal bar. The flight is strikingly fast and shallow, with stiff wingbeats.
Confusion species
Common Tern Sterna hirundo is darker grey, with a dark wedge in the primaries, a broader dark trailing edge below and shorter streamers. Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea has a shorter bill, shorter legs and greyer underparts. Antarctic Tern Sterna vittata is stockier, with grey underparts in breeding plumage. Sandwich Tern Thalasseus sandvicensis is larger, with a black bill with a yellow tip and a shorter tail.
Habitat
Inshore waters, especially over the shallow coastal shelf, and bays. It breeds on small rocky or vegetated islands off the coast, often among other seabirds, nesting in the shelter of shrubs or rocks. It fishes by plunge-diving from a few metres up, often in groups of 20 to 100 birds together with penguins and gulls over shoals of small fish.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region it breeds only in South Africa: the main colony is on Bird Island in Algoa Bay (Eastern Cape), with over 200 pairs, and a few pairs breed on Dyer Island near Gansbaai (Western Cape). After breeding the birds disperse along the south and east coasts, rarely to southern Mozambique and west to False Bay; they return to the colonies in May. Beyond the region it breeds patchily in the tropical Indian Ocean, the Atlantic and the Pacific.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best place is Algoa Bay near Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha) between May and October; feeding birds can be seen from a boat around the islands or from the point at Cape Recife. In flocks of Common Terns, look for a whiter-looking tern with a long tail and fast, stiff flight. The breeding island itself is not accessible.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened, but classed as Endangered in South Africa because of the very small population on one or two islands. Numbers fell sharply between the 1930s and 1970s and have been recovering since. Risks are disturbance of the colonies, predation by gulls, oil spills in Algoa Bay and food shortage caused by fisheries.
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.