The Sooty Tern is a bird of the tropical oceans, breeding on islands close to the equator. Sooty Terns are migratory and dispersive, wintering more widely through the tropical oceans. Sooty Terns breed in colonies on rocky or coral islands. It feeds by picking fish from the surface in marine environments, often in large flocks, and rarely comes to land except to breed, and can stay out at sea for between three to ten years!
The Sooty Tern is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2015 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). The population trend is not known, but the population is not believed to be decreasing sufficiently rapidly to approach the thresholds under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is extremely large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
The Sooty Tern is a seabird that breeds on equatorial islands. Outside of breeding, they rarely are seen on land. The Sooty Tern has two nicknames related to its loud and somewhat obnoxious call. It is called the Wideawake Tern; in Hawaiian its name means cacophony.... Read more »
This week's highlighted t-shirt is our Know Your Terns! design featuring nine different Birdorable terns: Caspian Tern; Royal Tern; Sandwich Tern; Common Tern; Arctic Tern; Least Tern; Gull-billed Tern; Black Tern; and Sooty Tern Do you know them all? [products] Read more »
