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Sooty tern

January 19, 2024

The sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus) is a seabird in the family Laridae. It is a bird of the tropical oceans, returning to land only to breed on islands throughout the equatorial zone.

Sooty tern
Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus (or O. f. oahuensis) on Tern Island (French Frigate Shoals)
Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Laridae
Genus: Onychoprion
Species:
O. fuscatus
Binomial name
Onychoprion fuscatus
(Linnaeus, 1766)
Subspecies

2-9, see text

Synonyms

Onychoprion fuscata (lapsus)
Sterna fuscata Linnaeus, 1766
Sterna fuliginosa J.F. Gmelin, 1789[2]
Sterna fuscata fuscata Linnaeus, 1766
Sterna fuscata nubilosa
and see text

Taxonomy edit

The sooty tern was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1766 as Sterna fuscata, bearing this name for many years until the genus Sterna was split up. It is now known as Onychoprion fuscatus.[3] The genus name is from ancient Greek onux, "claw" or "nail", and prion, "saw". The specific fuscatus is Latin for "dark".[4]

Colloquially, it is known as the wideawake tern or just wideawake. This refers to the incessant calls produced by a colony of these birds, as does the Hawaiian name ʻewa ʻewa which roughly means "cacophony".[5] In most of Polynesia its name is manutara or similar – literally "tern-bird",[6] though it might be better rendered in English as "the tern" or "common tern". This refers to the fact that wherever Polynesian seafarers went on their long voyages, they usually would find these birds in astounding numbers. It is also known as kaveka in the Marquesas Islands, where dishes using its eggs are a delicacy.[7]

The sooty tern has little interspecific variation, but it can be divided into at least two allopatric subspecies. Some recent authors further subdivide the Indopacific population into up to eight subspecies altogether, but much of the variation is really clinal. The affinities of eastern Pacific birds (including the famous manutara of Easter Island) are most strongly contested.

Onychoprion fuscatus fuscatus (Linnaeus, 1766) – Atlantic sooty tern
Underparts white. Breeds Atlantic and Caribbean.

Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus (Sparrman, 1788) – Indopacific sooty tern[8]
Underparts light grey in fresh plumage, dull white in worn plumage. Breeds from Red Sea across Indian Ocean to at least central Pacific. Some authors restrict this taxon to the Indian Ocean population and use the following subspecies for the birds from Indonesia to the Americas:

Description edit

 
O. f. nubilosus flying on Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean
 
Juvenile on Lord Howe Island

This is a large tern, similar in size to the Sandwich tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) at 33–36 cm (13–14 in) long with an 82–94 cm (32.5–37 in) wingspan. The wings and deeply forked tail are long, and it has dark black upperparts and white underparts. It has black legs and bill. The average life span is 32 years.[11] Juvenile sooty terns are scaly grey above and below. The sooty tern is unlikely to be confused with any tern apart from the similarly dark-backed but smaller bridled tern (O. anaethetus). It is darker-backed than that species, and has a broader white forehead and no pale neck collar.

The call is a loud piercing ker-wack-a-wack or kvaark.

Ecology edit

 
Adult O. f. nubilosus with egg in "nest", Seychelles
 
O. f. nubilosus at Bird Island, Seychelles, home to more than a million sooty terns at its peak

Sooty terns breed in colonies on rocky or coral islands.[12] It nests in a ground scrape or hole and lays a single egg, typically in the afternoon.[13] Although "two-egg clutches" have been reported, they probably occur when an egg from one nest rolls into another.[14] 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 to sea for 3 to 10 years.[15] Due to the lack of oil in its feathers, it cannot float, and spends that entire time on the wing.[16]

This bird is migratory and dispersive, wintering more widely through the tropical oceans. It has very marine habits compared to most terns; sooty terns are generally found inland only after severe storms. The Field Museum, for example, has a male specimen which was found exhausted on August 2, 1933 on the slopes of Mount Cameroon above Buea, about 1,000 m (3,300 ft) ASL, after foul weather had hit the Gulf of Guinea.[17] This species is a rare vagrant to western Europe, although a bird was present at Cemlyn Bay, Wales for 11 days in July 2005.[18]

It is also not normally found on the Pacific coasts of the Americas due to its pelagic habits. At Baja California, where several nesting locations are offshore, it can be seen more frequently, whereas for example only two individuals have ever been recorded on the coast of El Salvador - one ring recovered in 1972, and a bird photographed on October 10, 2001 at Lake Olomega[19] which was probably blown there by a storm.[20] Hurricanes can also devastate small breeding colonies, as has been surmised for example for the sooty tern nesting sites on cays off the San Andrés Islands of Colombia.[21]

An exceptionally common bird, the sooty tern is not considered threatened by the IUCN.[1]

Role in Easter Island culture edit

On Easter Island, this species and the spectacled tern (O. lunatus) are collectively known as manutara. The manutara played an important role in the tangata manu ("birdman") ritual: whichever hopu (champion) could retrieve the first manutara egg from Motu Nui islet would become that year's tangata manu; his clan would receive prime access to resources, especially seabird eggs.

Gallery edit

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ a b BirdLife International (2020). "Onychoprion fuscatus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2020: e.T22694740A168895142. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T22694740A168895142.en. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  2. ^ "Onychoprion fuscatus". Avibase.
  3. ^ Bridge et al. (2005)
  4. ^ Jobling, James A (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 167, 282. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  5. ^ From ʻewa, "crooked, out of shape, imperfect" (Pukui et al. 1992: p.17)
  6. ^ The Polynesian word for terns (tara) is the same as the word for "pointed"; it is easy to see how these sharp-billed fork-tailed birds came to be called thus (Tregear, 1891)
  7. ^ Blond, Becca; Brash, Celeste; Rogers, Hilary (2006). Tahiti & French Polynesia. Ediz. Inglese. Lonely Planet. p. 217. ISBN 978-1-74059-998-6.
  8. ^ Or "Indian Ocean sooty tern" if more subspecies are accepted.
  9. ^ Fernández-Ordóñez, Juan Carlos (June 2003). "Sooty Tern (Crissal) Onychoprion fuscatus crissalis (Lawrence, 1872)". Avibase - the world bird database.
  10. ^ Fernández-Ordóñez, Juan Carlos (June 2003). "Sooty Tern (kermadeci) Onychoprion fuscatus kermadeci Mathews, 1916". Avibase - the world bird database.
  11. ^ FWS
  12. ^ Streets (1877)
  13. ^ Brown, William Y. (1977). "Temporal Patterns in Laying, Hatching and Incubation of Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies". The Condor. Oxford University Press. 79 (1): 133–136. doi:10.2307/1367549. JSTOR 1367549.
  14. ^ Brown, William Y. (1975). "Artifactual Clutch Size in Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies". The Wilson Bulletin. 87 (1): 115–116. JSTOR 416059.
  15. ^ Plunkett, Dennis (2013). "The Sooty Tern". The Dry Tortugas.
  16. ^ Loyer, Bertrand; Bedel, Jacques; de Riberolles, François; Irons (Narrator), Jeremy (January 2014). "Pioneers Of The Deep". Life On Fire.
  17. ^ Boulton & Rand (1952)
  18. ^ "Sooty Tern Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey, Wales". michaelmckee.co.uk.
  19. ^ "Mexico - Central America" (PDF). The University of New Mexico. 2002.
  20. ^ Herrera et al. (2006)
  21. ^ Estela et al. (2005)

References edit

  • Boulton, Rudyerd & Rand, A.L. (1952): A collection of birds from Mount Cameroon. Fieldiana Zoology 34 (5): 35–64. Fulltext at the Internet Archive
  • Bridge, E.S.; Jones, A.W.; Baker, A.J. (2005). (PDF). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 35 (2): 459–469. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2004.12.010. PMID 15804415. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-07-20.
  • Brown, William Yancey (1973). Breeding Biology of the Sooty Tern and Brown Noddy on Manana or Rabbit Island, Hawaii. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hawaii.[1]
  • Collinson, M (2006). "Splitting headaches? Recent taxonomic changes affecting the British and Western Palaearctic lists". British Birds. 99 (6): 306–323.
  • Estela, Felipe A.; Silva, John Douglas; Castillo, Luis Fernando (2005). "El pelícano blanco americano (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus) en Colombia, con comentarios sobre los effectos de los huracanes en el Caribe [The American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus) in Colombia, with comments on the effects of Caribbean hurricanes]" (PDF). Caldasia (in Spanish). 27 (2): 271–275.
  • Herrera, Néstor; Rivera, Roberto; Ibarra Portillo, Ricardo; Rodríguez, Wilfredo (2006). "Nuevos registros para la avifauna de El Salvador. ["New records for the avifauna of El Salvador"]" (PDF). Boletín de la Sociedad Antioqueña de Ornitología (in Spanish). 16 (2): 1–19.
  • Olsen, Klaus Malling & Larsson, Hans (1995): Terns of Europe and North America. Christopher Helm, London. ISBN 0-7136-4056-1
  • Pukui, Mary Kawena; Elbert, Samuel Hoyt; Mookini, Esther T. & Nishizawa, Yu Mapuana (1992): New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary with a Concise Grammars and Given Names in Hawaiian. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-1392-8
  • Streets, Thomas H. (1877): Some Account of the Natural History of the Fanning Group of Islands. Am. Nat. 11 (2): 65–72. First page image
  • Tregear, Edward (1891): Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary. Lyon and Blair, Wellington.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Onychoprion fuscatus.
 
Wikispecies has information related to Onychoprion fuscata.

January 19, 2024
sooty, tern, sooty, tern, onychoprion, fuscatus, seabird, family, laridae, bird, tropical, oceans, returning, land, only, breed, islands, throughout, equatorial, zone, onychoprion, fuscatus, nubilosus, oahuensis, tern, island, french, frigate, shoals, conserva. The sooty tern Onychoprion fuscatus is a seabird in the family Laridae It is a bird of the tropical oceans returning to land only to breed on islands throughout the equatorial zone Sooty ternOnychoprion fuscatus nubilosus or O f oahuensis on Tern Island French Frigate Shoals Conservation statusLeast Concern IUCN 3 1 1 Scientific classificationDomain EukaryotaKingdom AnimaliaPhylum ChordataClass AvesOrder CharadriiformesFamily LaridaeGenus OnychoprionSpecies O fuscatusBinomial nameOnychoprion fuscatus Linnaeus 1766 Subspecies2 9 see textSynonymsOnychoprion fuscata lapsus Sterna fuscata Linnaeus 1766Sterna fuliginosa J F Gmelin 1789 2 Sterna fuscata fuscata Linnaeus 1766Sterna fuscata nubilosa and see text Contents 1 Taxonomy 2 Description 3 Ecology 4 Role in Easter Island culture 5 Gallery 6 Footnotes 7 References 8 External linksTaxonomy editThe sooty tern was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1766 as Sterna fuscata bearing this name for many years until the genus Sterna was split up It is now known as Onychoprion fuscatus 3 The genus name is from ancient Greek onux claw or nail and prion saw The specific fuscatus is Latin for dark 4 Colloquially it is known as the wideawake tern or just wideawake This refers to the incessant calls produced by a colony of these birds as does the Hawaiian name ʻewa ʻewa which roughly means cacophony 5 In most of Polynesia its name is manutara or similar literally tern bird 6 though it might be better rendered in English as the tern or common tern This refers to the fact that wherever Polynesian seafarers went on their long voyages they usually would find these birds in astounding numbers It is also known as kaveka in the Marquesas Islands where dishes using its eggs are a delicacy 7 The sooty tern has little interspecific variation but it can be divided into at least two allopatric subspecies Some recent authors further subdivide the Indopacific population into up to eight subspecies altogether but much of the variation is really clinal The affinities of eastern Pacific birds including the famous manutara of Easter Island are most strongly contested Onychoprion fuscatus fuscatus Linnaeus 1766 Atlantic sooty tern Underparts white Breeds Atlantic and Caribbean Onychoprion fuscatus nubilosus Sparrman 1788 Indopacific sooty tern 8 Underparts light grey in fresh plumage dull white in worn plumage Breeds from Red Sea across Indian Ocean to at least central Pacific Some authors restrict this taxon to the Indian Ocean population and use the following subspecies for the birds from Indonesia to the Americas Onychoprion fuscatus infuscatus Sunda sooty tern Lichtenstein 1823 Sunda Islands and vicinity Onychoprion fuscatus oahuensis Central Pacific sooty tern Bloxam 1826 Bonin Islands through Micronesia to southern Polynesia Onychoprion fuscatus serrata Melanesian sooty tern Wagler 1830 Australia New Guinea New Caledonia Onychoprion fuscatus luctuosa Juan Fernandez sooty tern Philippi amp Landbeck 1866 Juan Fernandez Islands Onychoprion fuscatus crissalis East Pacific sooty tern Lawrence 1872 9 Eastern Pacific from Guadalupe Island to Galapagos Islands Onychoprion fuscatus kermadeci Kermadec sooty tern Mathews 1916 10 Kermadec Islands Onychoprion fuscatus somaliensis Somali sooty tern Maydh Island Gulf of Aden Description edit nbsp O f nubilosus flying on Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean nbsp Juvenile on Lord Howe IslandThis is a large tern similar in size to the Sandwich tern Thalasseus sandvicensis at 33 36 cm 13 14 in long with an 82 94 cm 32 5 37 in wingspan The wings and deeply forked tail are long and it has dark black upperparts and white underparts It has black legs and bill The average life span is 32 years 11 Juvenile sooty terns are scaly grey above and below The sooty tern is unlikely to be confused with any tern apart from the similarly dark backed but smaller bridled tern O anaethetus It is darker backed than that species and has a broader white forehead and no pale neck collar The call is a loud piercing ker wack a wack or kvaark Ecology edit nbsp Adult O f nubilosus with egg in nest Seychelles nbsp O f nubilosus at Bird Island Seychelles home to more than a million sooty terns at its peakSooty terns breed in colonies on rocky or coral islands 12 It nests in a ground scrape or hole and lays a single egg typically in the afternoon 13 Although two egg clutches have been reported they probably occur when an egg from one nest rolls into another 14 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 to sea for 3 to 10 years 15 Due to the lack of oil in its feathers it cannot float and spends that entire time on the wing 16 This bird is migratory and dispersive wintering more widely through the tropical oceans It has very marine habits compared to most terns sooty terns are generally found inland only after severe storms The Field Museum for example has a male specimen which was found exhausted on August 2 1933 on the slopes of Mount Cameroon above Buea about 1 000 m 3 300 ft ASL after foul weather had hit the Gulf of Guinea 17 This species is a rare vagrant to western Europe although a bird was present at Cemlyn Bay Wales for 11 days in July 2005 18 It is also not normally found on the Pacific coasts of the Americas due to its pelagic habits At Baja California where several nesting locations are offshore it can be seen more frequently whereas for example only two individuals have ever been recorded on the coast of El Salvador one ring recovered in 1972 and a bird photographed on October 10 2001 at Lake Olomega 19 which was probably blown there by a storm 20 Hurricanes can also devastate small breeding colonies as has been surmised for example for the sooty tern nesting sites on cays off the San Andres Islands of Colombia 21 An exceptionally common bird the sooty tern is not considered threatened by the IUCN 1 Role in Easter Island culture editOn Easter Island this species and the spectacled tern O lunatus are collectively known as manutara The manutara played an important role in the tangata manu birdman ritual whichever hopu champion could retrieve the first manutara egg from Motu Nui islet would become that year s tangata manu his clan would receive prime access to resources especially seabird eggs Gallery edit nbsp Sooty tern rookery on Tern Island French Frigate Shoals nbsp Chick on Tern Island French Frigate Shoals nbsp Sooty tern chicks seeking shade under the shadow of a young black footed albatross nbsp A chick is snatched by a predatory great frigatebird nbsp EggFootnotes edit a b BirdLife International 2020 Onychoprion fuscatus IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020 e T22694740A168895142 doi 10 2305 IUCN UK 2020 3 RLTS T22694740A168895142 en Retrieved 19 November 2021 Onychoprion fuscatus Avibase Bridge et al 2005 Jobling James A 2010 The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names London Christopher Helm pp 167 282 ISBN 978 1 4081 2501 4 From ʻewa crooked out of shape imperfect Pukui et al 1992 p 17 The Polynesian word for terns tara is the same as the word for pointed it is easy to see how these sharp billed fork tailed birds came to be called thus Tregear 1891 Blond Becca Brash Celeste Rogers Hilary 2006 Tahiti amp French Polynesia Ediz Inglese Lonely Planet p 217 ISBN 978 1 74059 998 6 Or Indian Ocean sooty tern if more subspecies are accepted Fernandez Ordonez Juan Carlos June 2003 Sooty Tern Crissal Onychoprion fuscatus crissalis Lawrence 1872 Avibase the world bird database Fernandez Ordonez Juan Carlos June 2003 Sooty Tern kermadeci Onychoprion fuscatus kermadeci Mathews 1916 Avibase the world bird database FWS Streets 1877 Brown William Y 1977 Temporal Patterns in Laying Hatching and Incubation of Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies The Condor Oxford University Press 79 1 133 136 doi 10 2307 1367549 JSTOR 1367549 Brown William Y 1975 Artifactual Clutch Size in Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies The Wilson Bulletin 87 1 115 116 JSTOR 416059 Plunkett Dennis 2013 The Sooty Tern The Dry Tortugas Loyer Bertrand Bedel Jacques de Riberolles Francois Irons Narrator Jeremy January 2014 Pioneers Of The Deep Life On Fire Boulton amp Rand 1952 Sooty Tern Cemlyn Bay Anglesey Wales michaelmckee co uk Mexico Central America PDF The University of New Mexico 2002 Herrera et al 2006 Estela et al 2005 References editBoulton Rudyerd amp Rand A L 1952 A collection of birds from Mount Cameroon Fieldiana Zoology 34 5 35 64 Fulltext at the Internet Archive Bridge E S Jones A W Baker A J 2005 A phylogenetic framework for the terns Sternini inferred from mtDNA sequences implications for taxonomy and plumage evolution PDF Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 35 2 459 469 doi 10 1016 j ympev 2004 12 010 PMID 15804415 Archived from the original PDF on 2006 07 20 Brown William Yancey 1973 Breeding Biology of the Sooty Tern and Brown Noddy on Manana or Rabbit Island Hawaii Ph D Dissertation University of Hawaii 1 Collinson M 2006 Splitting headaches Recent taxonomic changes affecting the British and Western Palaearctic lists British Birds 99 6 306 323 Estela Felipe A Silva John Douglas Castillo Luis Fernando 2005 El pelicano blanco americano Pelecanus erythrorhynchus en Colombia con comentarios sobre los effectos de los huracanes en el Caribe The American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchus in Colombia with comments on the effects of Caribbean hurricanes PDF Caldasia in Spanish 27 2 271 275 Herrera Nestor Rivera Roberto Ibarra Portillo Ricardo Rodriguez Wilfredo 2006 Nuevos registros para la avifauna de El Salvador New records for the avifauna of El Salvador PDF Boletin de la Sociedad Antioquena de Ornitologia in Spanish 16 2 1 19 Olsen Klaus Malling amp Larsson Hans 1995 Terns of Europe and North America Christopher Helm London ISBN 0 7136 4056 1 Pukui Mary Kawena Elbert Samuel Hoyt Mookini Esther T amp Nishizawa Yu Mapuana 1992 New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary with a Concise Grammars and Given Names in Hawaiian University of Hawaii Press Honolulu ISBN 0 8248 1392 8 Streets Thomas H 1877 Some Account of the Natural History of the Fanning Group of Islands Am Nat 11 2 65 72 First page image Tregear Edward 1891 Maori Polynesian Comparative Dictionary Lyon and Blair Wellington External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Onychoprion fuscatus nbsp Wikispecies has information related to Onychoprion fuscata Sooty tern article at BirdNote org Archived 2011 07 21 at the Wayback Machine Sooty terns on Ascension Island South Atlantic Archived 2012 03 02 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sooty tern amp oldid 1192751918, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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