Thalasseus
   HOME
*



picture info

Thalasseus
''Thalasseus'', the crested terns, is a genus of eight species of terns in the family Laridae. It has a worldwide distribution, and many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. This genus had originally been created by Friedrich Boie in 1822, but had been abandoned until a 2005 study confirmed the need for a separate genus for the crested terns. These large terns breed in very dense colonies on coasts and islands, and exceptionally inland on suitable large freshwater lakes close to the coast. They nest in a ground scrape. ''Thalasseus'' terns feed by plunge-diving for fish, almost invariably from the sea. They usually dive directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by, for example, the Arctic tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. These species have long thin sharp bills, usually a shade of yellow or orange except in the Sandwich tern and Cabot's tern where the bills are black with yellow ti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sandwich Tern
The Sandwich tern (''Thalasseus sandvicensis'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is very closely related to the lesser crested tern (''T. bengalensis''), Chinese crested tern (''T. bernsteini''), Cabot's tern (''T. acuflavidus''), and elegant tern (''T. elegans'') and has been known to interbreed with the lesser crested. It breeds in the Palearctic from Europe to the Caspian Sea wintering to South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. The Sandwich tern is a medium-large tern with grey upperparts, white underparts, a yellow-tipped black bill and a shaggy black crest which becomes less extensive in winter with a white crown. Young birds bear grey and brown scalloped plumage on their backs and wings. It is a vocal bird. It nests in a ground scrape and lays one to three eggs. Like all ''Thalasseus'' terns, the Sandwich tern feeds by plunge diving for fish, usually in marine environments, and the offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. Taxonomy The t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sandwich Tern
The Sandwich tern (''Thalasseus sandvicensis'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is very closely related to the lesser crested tern (''T. bengalensis''), Chinese crested tern (''T. bernsteini''), Cabot's tern (''T. acuflavidus''), and elegant tern (''T. elegans'') and has been known to interbreed with the lesser crested. It breeds in the Palearctic from Europe to the Caspian Sea wintering to South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. The Sandwich tern is a medium-large tern with grey upperparts, white underparts, a yellow-tipped black bill and a shaggy black crest which becomes less extensive in winter with a white crown. Young birds bear grey and brown scalloped plumage on their backs and wings. It is a vocal bird. It nests in a ground scrape and lays one to three eggs. Like all ''Thalasseus'' terns, the Sandwich tern feeds by plunge diving for fish, usually in marine environments, and the offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. Taxonomy The t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Royal Tern
The royal tern (''Thalasseus maximus'') is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though strays have been identified in Europe.Buckley, P. A. and F. G. Buckley (2020). Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.royter1.01 Retrieved April 17, 2021 Taxonomy The royal tern was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his ''Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux'' from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the ''Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle'' which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Thalasseus
''Thalasseus'', the crested terns, is a genus of eight species of terns in the family Laridae. It has a worldwide distribution, and many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. This genus had originally been created by Friedrich Boie in 1822, but had been abandoned until a 2005 study confirmed the need for a separate genus for the crested terns. These large terns breed in very dense colonies on coasts and islands, and exceptionally inland on suitable large freshwater lakes close to the coast. They nest in a ground scrape. ''Thalasseus'' terns feed by plunge-diving for fish, almost invariably from the sea. They usually dive directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by, for example, the Arctic tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. These species have long thin sharp bills, usually a shade of yellow or orange except in the Sandwich tern and Cabot's tern where the bills are black with yellow ti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Thalasseus Acuflavidus Yucatan
''Thalasseus'', the crested terns, is a genus of eight species of terns in the family Laridae. It has a worldwide distribution, and many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. This genus had originally been created by Friedrich Boie in 1822, but had been abandoned until a 2005 study confirmed the need for a separate genus for the crested terns. These large terns breed in very dense colonies on coasts and islands, and exceptionally inland on suitable large freshwater lakes close to the coast. They nest in a ground scrape. ''Thalasseus'' terns feed by plunge-diving for fish, almost invariably from the sea. They usually dive directly, and not from the "stepped-hover" favoured by, for example, the Arctic tern. The offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. These species have long thin sharp bills, usually a shade of yellow or orange except in the Sandwich tern and Cabot's tern where the bills are black with yellow tip ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




West African Crested Tern
The West African crested tern (''Thalasseus albididorsalis'') is a bird species in the family Laridae. Until 2020 it was considered a subspecies of the New World royal tern, ''Thalasseus maximus''.R. Terry Chesser, Shawn M. Billerman, Kevin J. Burns, Carla Cicero, Jon L. Dunn, Andrew W. Kratter, Irby J. Lovette, Nicholas A. Mason, Pamela C. Rasmussen, J. V. Remsen, Jr., Douglas F. Stotz, and Kevin Winker. "Sixty-first supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s ''Check-list of North American Birds''". ''The Auk'' 2020, vol. 137:1-24 retrieved July 1, 2020 Taxonomy and systematics The West African crested tern was long thought to be a subspecies of royal tern. A study published in 2005 showed that it is more closely related to the lesser crested tern (''Thalasseus bengalensis'').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. ''Molecular Phy ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lesser Crested Tern
The lesser crested tern (''Thalasseus bengalensis'')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. ''Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution'' 35: 459–469. is a tern in the family Laridae. Etymology The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''Thalasseus'', "fisherman" from ''thalassa'', "sea". The specific ''bengalensis'' means "of Bengal", the type locality, historically referring to much of northern India and Bangladesh. Distribution It breeds in subtropical coastal parts of the world mainly from the Red Sea across the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific, and Australia, with a significant population on the southern coast of the Mediterranean on two islands off the Libyan coast. Accidental breeding has also been reported in Italy and France. The Australian birds are probably sedentary, but other populations are migratory, wintering south to South Afr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Cabot's Tern
Cabot's tern (''Thalasseus acuflavidus'') is a tern in the family Laridae formerly considered as a subspecies of the Sandwich tern. It has since been shown to be more closely related to the elegant tern (''Thalasseus elegans''). The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''Thalasseus'', "fisherman" from ''thalassa'', "sea". The specific ''acuflavida'' is Latin from ''acus'', "needle", and ''flavidus'', "yellowish". The IOC recognizes the bird as distinct, but most other taxonomists, including both committees of the AOU, consider it conspecific with the Sandwich tern. The former species, ''T. s. eurygnatha'' (Saunders 1876), is sometimes treated as a separate species called the Cayenne tern (''T. eurygnatha''), which breeds on the Atlantic coast of South America from Argentina north to the Caribbean, intergrading with ''T. acuflavidus'' in the north of its range. The DNA analysis showed that Cayenne tern differed genetically from ''T. acuflavidus'', but the difference was not sufficient ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Greater Crested Tern
The greater crested tern Retrieved 28 February 2012 (''Thalasseus bergii''), also called crested tern or swift tern, is a tern in the family Laridae that nests in dense colonies on coastlines and islands in the tropical and subtropical Old World. Its five subspecies breed in the area from South Africa around the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific and Australia, all populations dispersing widely from the breeding range after nesting. This large tern is closely related to the royal and lesser crested terns, but can be distinguished by its size and bill colour. The greater crested tern has grey upperparts, white underparts, a yellow bill, and a shaggy black crest that recedes in winter. Its young have a distinctive appearance, with strongly patterned grey, brown and white plumage, and rely on their parents for food for several months after they have fledged. Like all members of the genus ''Thalasseus'', the greater crested tern feeds by plunge diving for fish, usually in marine en ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Elegant Tern
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 dis ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Chinese Crested Tern
The Chinese crested tern (''Thalasseus bernsteini'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is the county bird of Lienchiang County, Fuchien. Description It is closely related to the Sandwich tern, ''T. sandvicensis'', and the lesser crested tern, ''T. bengalensis''. It is most similar to the former, differing only in the bill pattern, which is the reverse of the Sandwich tern's, being yellow with a black tip. From the lesser crested tern, which it overlaps in wintering distribution, it can be told by the white rump and paler grey mantle, as well as the black tip to the bill, which seen from up close also has a white point. The larger greater crested tern is also similar, differing in its stouter, all-yellow bill and darker grey mantle and rump, as well as in size. Distribution and conservation It is a critically endangered species, and previously thought extinct. Only four pairs were rediscovered in 2000 nesting in a greater crested tern colony on an islet in the Matsu Islands (a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tern
Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of eleven genera. They are slender, lightly built birds with long, forked tails, narrow wings, long bills, and relatively short legs. Most species are pale grey above and white below, with a contrasting black cap to the head, but the marsh terns, the Inca tern, and some noddies have dark plumage for at least part of the year. The sexes are identical in appearance, but young birds are readily distinguishable from adults. Terns have a non-breeding plumage, which usually involves a white forehead and much-reduced black cap. Terns are long-lived birds and are relatively free from natural predators and parasites; most species are declining in numbers due directly or indirectly to human activities, including habitat loss, pollution, disturbance, an ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]