Arctic tern: Where It Lives, Map & Facts

Where the Arctic tern lives – recorded in 30 countries, with quick facts from Wikidata and an introduction from Wikipedia.

Scientific name	Sterna paradisaea
Group	Waders, gulls, terns & auks
Status	Least concern (Wikidata, IUCN category label)
Found in	30 countries
Continents	Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America
Mass	114 g (adult weight)
Class	Bird
Order	Charadriiformes
Family	Sternidae

Where does the Arctic tern live?

Open-licence (CC0 / CC BY) wild records published on GBIF place the Arctic tern in 30 countries and territories across Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America. Wikidata gives its range as: Africa, Brazil, South America, Indonesia.

Countries with at least a handful of records (a minimum share of the species’ records, to leave out vagrants and escapes). Records with coordinates only; captive and fossil records excluded.

How big is an Arctic tern?

Wikidata records the following for the Arctic tern: mass 114 g (adult weight).

Is the Arctic tern endangered?

The Arctic tern’s conservation status recorded in Wikidata is “Least concern” (an IUCN Red List category label). Source: Wikidata.

What kind of animal is the Arctic tern?

The Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) is a bird in the order Charadriiformes and the family Sternidae, genus Sterna. (Taxonomy from Wikidata.)

About the Arctic tern

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.

Text in “About” is quoted from the Wikipedia article Arctic tern (revision 1381390398), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: lead section excerpted verbatim, formatting removed. Quick facts, taxonomy and status: Wikidata Q26800 (CC0). Countries and pin: GBIF.org occurrence records (CC0 / CC BY 4.0).