Caspian Tern

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Caspian Tern

(Hydroprogne caspia), a bird of the family Laridae of the order Charadriiformes. The body is about 50 cm long and weighs about 650 g. The bird is gray above and white below, with a black head cap and black legs. The Caspian tern is distributed sporadically in Europe (except the north), Western and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and North America. In the USSR it is found along the Baltic, Black, Azov, Caspian, and Aral Seas, as well as along lakes of Kazakhstan, Transbaikalia, and the southern Primor’e. The Caspian tern is a migratory bird. It nests in colonies on shoals and islands. A clutch contains two or three eggs, which are incubated by both parents for 22 or 23 days. The Caspian tern feeds on small fish, invertebrates, and, sometimes, the young of other birds.

References in periodicals archive ?

Members of Wild Bird Club of the Philippines reported seeing black-headed gulls, whiskered tern, Kentish plover, common redshank, Eurasian curlew and Caspian tern.

Mangrove shield protects village

Of the 40 species, there were nine species of shorebirds, seven dabbling ducks, five diving ducks, four waders, three gulls, and two "geese" (one was light geese, which includes Snow and Ross' Geese), in addition to Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis), American Coot (Fulica americana), White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus), Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus), Sandhill Crane, Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia), and two species that could not be identified (one dabbling duck and one sandpiper).

Use of Laguna de Bustillos, Chihuahua, by waterbirds during the 2011-2012 wintering season

Caspian tern and chick Mahabes Island Hamata -- Ahmed Waheed Caspian tern is a common bird that lives near the sea and feeds mainly on fish of its own catch.

Birds' heaven along red sea shore

"I found a dead Caspian Tern having got caught in the fishing line and a hook had pierced its wing," he told the GDN.

Bird lover urges beach clean-up

WHEN THEY WERE WILLING to put such things in print, biologists called the Caspian tern "the king of all terns." With a white body, light gray back, black cap, and bright coral red bill, they are a common sight on the lower reaches of the Columbia, patrolling on long thin wings, heads down, scanning for fish.

The rise and fall of the East Sand Empire

Most notably, Alan recorded a Caspian tern at the site in July 2007.

Some rare sightings for twitchers at Big Waters

p Apologies to photographer Steve Young - a production error meant that his splendid picture of the Leighton Moss Caspian tern in last week's column was not credited to him inthe paper.

Travel: country matters

In addition, changes in these protein classes were correlated with PCB and DDE concentrations in Caspian tern and herring gull chicks from the Great Lakes (Grasman et al.

Associations between organochlorine contaminant concentrations and clinical health parameters in loggerhead sea turtles from North Carolina, USA

Roth, in addition to Weakley and Bucher (1992), noticed that numerous shorebirds, including the least tern (Sterna antillarum), Wilson's plover (Charadrius wilsonia), black skimmer (Rhynchops niger), Caspian tern (Sterna caspia), and the endangered roseate tern (Sterna dougallii dougallii), nest in seabeach amaranth stands.

Bringing back a fugitive

We determined the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values and heavy metal concentrations for Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia), Elegant Tern (Sterna elegans) and Forster's Tern (Sterna forsteri) and their fish prey at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in southern California and, except for Elegant Tern, in south San Francisco Bay during the 1997-1999 breeding seasons.

Trophic levels and heavy metal concentrations of Terns at two California nesting colonies. (Abstracts)

-A CASPIAN Tern - the world's largest tern - took a day trip to Skinflats Lagoons, Forth, from its home around the Baltic coast of Scandinavia.

PETS AND THEIR PEOPLE: BIRDWATCH - GOLDFINCHES GONE TO SEED

TERN-ED AWAY: Provisioned with a salmon smolt, a Caspian tern (left) returns to its breeding colony on an island in Oregon's Columbia River.

THE MURRES THE MERRIER - Decoys, mirrors and mood music lure gregarious seabirds back to abandoned breeding colonies