Listen to the Arctic tern
Tip: press play to see the sound's live frequency spectrum in blue over the waveform.
About the Arctic tern
The Arctic tern is a bird in the family Laridae (order Charadriiformes). Its conservation status on the IUCN Red List is “least concern”. Adults have a wingspan of about 80 cm and weigh around 114 g.
What does the Arctic tern sound like?
Most birds have two kinds of vocalisation: songs, which are learned or innate phrases delivered mainly in spring and summer, and calls – brief contact, alarm and begging notes heard all year round. Listening for both helps with identification.
The recordings here are labelled as alarm call, call and flight call. Listen for differences in rhythm, pitch and repetition – the spectrum display makes it easy to see whether a sound is a pure whistle (a thin line), a harsh call (a broad band) or a trill (rapid repeated marks).
From Wikipedia
The Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and subarctic regions of Europe (as far south as Brittany), Asia, and North America (as far south as Massachusetts). The species is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later. Recent studies have shown average annual round-trip lengths of about 70,900 km (38,300 nmi) for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland, and about 48,700 km (26,300 nmi) for birds nesting in the Netherlands, while an individual from the Farne Islands in Northumberland with a light level geolocator tag covered a staggering 96,000 km (52,000 nmi) in ten months from the end of one breeding season to the start of the next. These are by far the longest migrations known in the animal kingdom.
Related birds in the genus Sterna
More from the family Laridae
Black-headed gull
Chroicocephalus ridibundus
European herring gull
Larus argentatus
Common gull
Larus canus
Lesser black-backed gull
Larus fuscus
Caspian tern
Hydroprogne caspia
Black-legged kittiwake
Rissa tridactyla
Gull-billed tern
Gelochelidon nilotica
Great black-backed gull
Larus marinus
Black tern
Chlidonias niger
Sandwich tern
Thalasseus sandvicensis
Frequently asked questions
What does an Arctic tern sound like?
You can hear 2 recordings of the Arctic tern on this page, including its alarm call, call and flight call. Most birds have two kinds of vocalisation: songs, which are learned or innate phrases delivered mainly in spring and summer, and calls – brief contact, alarm and begging notes heard all year round.
Is the Arctic tern endangered?
The IUCN Red List classifies the Arctic tern as “least concern”.
What family does the Arctic tern belong to?
The Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) belongs to the family Laridae in the order Charadriiformes.
Sources & credits
- Alarm call, call, flight call · "the Fen", near Churchill Northern Studies Centre… by Doug Hynes – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Holm of Papa Sterna paradisaea by Gunther Tschuch – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Wikidata Q26800 – CC0
- Wikipedia: Arctic tern – CC BY-SA 4.0
- Photo by W. Bulach – CC BY-SA 4.0