Birds
Sooty Tern
Onychoprion fuscatus · also called sooty terns
Snatching a fish from the surface without ever landing on the water, a sooty tern can remain continuously airborne for years at a stretch, touching down only when it finally returns to a crowded tropical island to breed.
Overview
The sooty tern, Onychoprion fuscatus, is a pantropical seabird native to ocean and coastal habitat across tropical regions worldwide. Its extraordinary capacity for years-long sustained flight, sooty-black and white plumage, and enormous, densely packed breeding colonies make it one of the most aerial and behaviourally extreme seabirds found anywhere in the world’s tropical oceans.
A life spent almost entirely in the air
Few birds test the limits of sustained flight the way the sooty tern does, some individuals staying aloft over open ocean for years without ever touching down, a lifestyle that pushes the very definition of what it means to be an aerial animal.
Status
Least Concern, remaining abundant across suitable ocean and coastal habitat throughout the tropics.
Sooty Tern: common questions
How long can a sooty tern stay in the air?
This species can remain continuously airborne over open ocean for years after fledging, with some individuals not touching land again until they return to breed, one of the most extreme examples of sustained flight found in any bird.
Why doesn't the sooty tern land on the water?
This species rarely lands on the water itself, instead snatching fish and squid from near the surface while remaining in flight, a hunting strategy that fits its almost entirely aerial lifestyle.
How large are sooty tern breeding colonies?
This species breeds in enormous, densely packed colonies on tropical islands, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands of pairs, among the largest seabird colonies found anywhere in the world.
Where is the sooty tern found?
This species has a pantropical distribution, found across suitable tropical ocean habitat in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, coming to land only to breed on remote tropical islands.