The elegant tern (Thalasseus elegans ) is a tern in the family Laridae. It breeds on the Pacific coasts of the southern United States and Mexico and winters south to Peru, Ecuador and Chile.
This species breeds in very dense colonies on coasts and islands, including Isla Rasa and Montague Island (Mexico), and exceptionally inland on suitable large freshwater lakes close to the coast. It nests in a ground scrape and lays one or two eggs. Unlike some of the smaller white terns, it is not very aggressive toward potential predators, relying on the sheer density of the nests (often only 20–30 cm apart) and nesting close to other more aggressive species, such as Heermann's gulls, to avoid predation.
The elegant tern feeds by plunge-diving for fish, almost invariably from the sea, like most Thalasseus terns. It usually dives directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by the Arctic tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display.
This Pacific species has wandered to western Europe as a rare vagrant on a number of occasions, has nested in Spain and has interbred with the Sandwich tern in France; there is also one record from Cape Town, South Africa, in January 2006, the first record for Africa. An elegant tern was recorded in the British Isles, in Pagham, West Sussex, in June 2017. In May 2021, 1500 sand nests with thousands of eggs were abandoned when a drone crashed land near a nesting site in Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, scaring off 2,500 nesting elegant terns and leading to a catastrophic loss.
The current genus name is derived from Greek Thalassa, "sea", and elegans is Latin for "elegant, fine". The genus was created when a 2005 study implied that the systematics of the terns needed review.
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CarnivoreA carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of a...
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PiscivoresA piscivore is a carnivorous animal that eats primarily fish. Piscivorous is equivalent to the Greek-derived word ichthyophagous. Fish were the die...
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TerrestrialTerrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, snails), as compared with aquatic animals, which liv...
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TerritorialA territory is a sociographical area that which an animal consistently defends against the conspecific competition (or, occasionally, against anima...
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CongregatoryCongregatory animals tend to gather in large numbers in specific areas as breeding colonies, for feeding, or for resting.
Oviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
Precocial species are those in which the young are relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching. Precocial species are normall...
Soaring birds can maintain flight without wing flapping, using rising air currents. Many gliding birds are able to "lock" their extended wings by m...
Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, b...
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Cooperative breederCooperative breeding is a social system where offspring receive care not only from their parents but also from additional group members, often call...
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ColonialColonial animals live in large aggregations composed of two or more conspecific individuals in close association with or connected to, one another....
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MigratingAnimal migration is the relatively long-distance movement of individual animals, usually on a seasonal basis. It is the most common form of migrati...
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starts withThis is a medium-large tern, with a long, slender orange bill, pale grey upperparts and white underparts. Its legs are black. In winter, the forehead becomes white. Juvenile elegant terns have a scalier pale grey back. The call is a characteristic loud grating noise like a Sandwich tern.
This bird could be confused with the royal tern or Forster's tern, but the royal tern is larger and thicker-billed and shows more white on the forehead in winter. Out of range, it can also be easily confused with the lesser crested tern. See also orange-billed tern, and the external link below.
This species is marginally paler above than the lesser crested tern with a white (not grey) rump, with a slightly longer, more slender bill with a different curve. The black of the crest that comes down from the crown extends through the eye, creating a small black "smudge" in front of the eye. On royal terns, the black crest stops at the eye, and lesser crested tern has a less shaggy crest
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Social animals are those animals that interact highly with other animals, usually of their own species (conspecifics), to the point of having a rec...