Black-naped Tern

Black-necked Tern ( Sterna sumatrana )

The black-necked Tern ( Sterna sumatrana ) is a Seeschwalbenart which is common in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the australo Pacific.

Features

The black-necked Tern is 34 to 37 cm long and has a wingspan of about 60 cm. The top is colored light gray. The underside is white and sometimes tinged slightly pink. From the white head and neck, a black neck and eye line take off. The beak is black with a yellow tip, feet and legs are black. The white tail is deeply forked, the central feathers are gray.

Juveniles are grayish - brown striped, her skull is gray mottled brown with a black spot in the neck. Their primaries are lined with gray and white inside. The beak is yellow, legs and feet are yellow-brown.

Distribution and population

The black-necked Tern is found mainly on tropical islands. As habitat it prefers lagoons and is hardly to be found inland. In the Indian Ocean there are breeding population on Mayotte, the Comoros, the Maldives, the Seychelles and the Chagos Archipelago. In Southeast Asia, the spread of the coasts of the Malay Peninsula and Indochina extends northward to southern China, to the east of the Indonesian region of the southern Philippines to the Banda Sea. In addition, the species breeds on many Pacific islands in and around Micronesia - northward to the Northern Mariana Islands, east to the Cook Islands and south to New Caledonia. In Australia, it breeds in the area of ​​the Great Barrier Reef.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources ( IUCN) classifies the black-necked Tern as not threatened (Least Concern LC).