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Terns
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, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 marin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caspian Tern
The Caspian tern (''Hydroprogne caspia'') is a species of tern, with a subcosmopolitan but scattered distribution. Despite its extensive range, it is monotypic of its genus, and has no accepted subspecies. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''hudros'', "water", and Latin ''progne'', " swallow". The specific ''caspia'' is from Latin and, like the English name, refers to the Caspian Sea. Description It is the world's largest tern with a length of , a wingspan of and a weight of . Adult birds have black legs, and a long thick red-orange bill with a small black tip. They have a white head with a black cap and white neck, belly, and tail. The upper wings and back are pale grey; the underwings are pale with dark primary feathers. In-flight, the tail is less forked than other terns, and wingtips are black on the underside. In winter, the black cap is still present (unlike many other terns), but with some white streaking on the forehead. The call is a loud heron-like croak. Dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laridae
Laridae is a family of seabirds in the order Charadriiformes that includes the gulls, terns, skimmers and kittiwakes. It includes around 100 species arranged into 22 genera. They are an adaptable group of mostly aerial birds found worldwide. Taxonomy The family Laridae was introduced (as Laridia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. Historically, Laridae were restricted to the gulls, while the terns were placed in a separate family, Sternidae, and the skimmers in a third family, Rynchopidae. The noddies were traditionally included in Sternidae. In 1990 Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist included auks and skuas in a broader family Laridae. A molecular phylogenetic study by Baker and colleagues published in 2007 found that the noddies in the genus '' Anous'' formed a sister group to a clade containing the gulls, skimmers and the other terns. To create a monophyletic family group, Laridae was expanded to include the genera that had previously been in Ste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 tip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noddy (tern)
The noddies, forming the genus ''Anous'', is a genus of seabirds in family Laridae which also contains the gulls, terns and skimmers. The genus contains five species. The noddies inhabit tropical oceans and have a worldwide distribution, ranging from Hawaii to the Tuamotu Archipelago and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, from the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Australia in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean to Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean. They nest in colonies on cliffs or in short trees or shrubs, seldom on the ground. The female lays one egg in each breeding season.''Anous'' TOLWEB These birds feed on small fish which they catch by dipping their bills beneath the surface while flying; they do not plunge dive. |
Procelsterna
The noddies, forming the genus ''Anous'', is a genus of seabirds in family Laridae which also contains the gulls, terns and skimmers. The genus contains five species. The noddies inhabit tropical oceans and have a worldwide distribution, ranging from Hawaii to the Tuamotu Archipelago and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, from the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Australia in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean to Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean. They nest in colonies on cliffs or in short trees or shrubs, seldom on the ground. The female lays one egg in each breeding season.''Anous'' TOLWEB These birds feed on small fish which they catch by dipping their bills beneath the surface while flying; they do not |
Onychoprion
''Onychoprion'', the "brown-backed terns", is a genus of seabirds in the family Laridae. The genus name is from Ancient Greek , "claw" or "nail", and , "saw". Species Although the genus was first described in 1832 by Johann Georg Wagler the four species in the genus were until 2005 retained in the larger genus '' Sterna'', the genus that holds most terns.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. Three of the four species are tropical, and one has a sub-polar breeding range. The sooty tern has a pan-tropical distribution; the bridled tern also breeds across the Tropical Atlantic and Indian Ocean but in the central Pacific it is replaced by the spectacled tern. The Aleutian tern breeds around Alaska and Siberia but winters in the tropics around South East Asia. ''Manutara'' is the Rapa N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Large-billed Tern
The large-billed tern (''Phaetusa simplex'') is a species of tern in the family Laridae. It is placed the monotypic genus ''Phaetusa''. It is found in most of South America (east of the Andes and north of the Pampas). It has occurred as a vagrant in Aruba, Bermuda, Cuba, Panama and the United States. Its natural habitats are rivers and freshwater lakes. Taxonomy The large-billed tern was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's ''Systema Naturae''. He placed it with the other terns in the genus ''Sterna'' and coined the binomial name ''Sterna simplex''. Gmelin based his description on the "simple tern" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book ''A General Synopsis of Birds'' from a specimen that had been collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The large-billed tern is now the only species placed in the genus ''Phaetusa'' that was introduced for the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anous
The noddies, forming the genus ''Anous'', is a genus of seabirds in family Laridae which also contains the gulls, terns and skimmers. The genus contains five species. The noddies inhabit tropical oceans and have a worldwide distribution, ranging from Hawaii to the Tuamotu Archipelago and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, from the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Australia in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean to Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean. They nest in colonies on cliffs or in short trees or shrubs, seldom on the ground. The female lays one egg in each breeding season.''Anous'' TOLWEB These birds feed on small fish which they catch by dipping their bills beneath the surface while flying; they do not plunge dive. |
Inca Tern
The Inca tern (''Larosterna inca'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is the only member of the genus ''Larosterna''. This uniquely plumaged bird breeds on the coasts of Peru and Chile, and is restricted to the Humboldt Current. In 2021 a single Inca Tern successfully made the south shores of Oahu and Hawaii (Big) Island, its home. It is an erratic, rare visitor to the southwest coast of Ecuador. It can be identified by its dark grey body, white moustache on both sides of its head, and red-orange beak and feet. Description The Inca tern is a large tern, approximately long. Sexes are similar; the adult is mostly slate-grey with white restricted to the facial plumes and the trailing edges of the wings. The large bill and legs are dark red. Immature birds are purple-brown, and gradually develop the facial plumes. Behaviour Breeding The Inca tern breeds on rocky cliffs. It nests in a hollow or burrow or sometimes the old nest of a Humboldt penguin The Humboldt penguin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasites
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: an endoparasite lives inside the host's body ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wetland
A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from terrestrial land forms or Body of water, water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants, adapted to the unique anoxic hydric soils. Wetlands are considered among the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal species. Methods for assessing wetland functions, wetland ecological health, and general wetland condition have been developed for many regions of the world. These methods have contributed to wetland conservation partly by raising public awareness of the functions some wetlands provide. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent. The water in wetlands is either freshwater, brackish or saltwater. The main wetland typ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
