Royal Tern

• Its chicks form crèches of hundreds of birds, and each adult finds its own in the crowd by recognising its voice: the identification is so precise that a parent can feed its chick among a thousand without error.
• It breeds in extremely tight colonies where the nests are less than thirty centimetres apart, a density that reduces predator success by swamping them.
• Its intensely orange bill distinguishes it from the lesser crested tern, which is smaller with a paler orange bill and shares many of its African colonies.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Coasts, barrier islands, estuaries and coastal lagoons of the Americas and West Africa

Sexual maturity

3 years

Gestation / incubation

28 days

Litter / clutch size

2

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Thalasseus maximus

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.