Royal Tern
Thalasseus maximus
Also known as: Sea Gull
About This Species
This large, orange-billed tern is easiest to find on sandy beaches, estuary mouths and coastal lagoons, where it rests in loose flocks and plunge-dives for small fish just offshore. Listen for its harsh, grating call as birds pass overhead, and watch for the shaggy black crest that becomes more pronounced in breeding plumage. Numbers build on undisturbed beaches and sandbars during the breeding season, when colonies can hold hundreds of pairs.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- Colonies are highly sensitive to disturbance, since a flushed group can abandon eggs or chicks to gulls and heat within minutes, so keep well back from any roped-off or roosting group and use a scope or long lens rather than walking closer.
- Coastal breeding birds are legally protected across most of their Americas and West African range during the nesting season, though enforcement and buffer distances vary by country.
- Staying above the tide line and off open sandbars where flocks are loafing is the simplest way to avoid causing a flush.
LCAvesCharadriiformesLaridae
Seasonal Activity
1,363,192 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
All monthsThis month
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Laridae
Photo
Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.