Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Charadriiformes > Laridae > Thalasseus > Thalasseus bergii

Thalasseus bergii (Swift Tern; Great Crested Tern; Greater Crested Tern)

Synonyms: Sterna bergii; Thalasseus bergii checklist

Wikipedia Abstract

The greater crested tern (Thalasseus bergii), also called crested tern or swift tern, is a seabird in the tern family 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.
View Wikipedia Record: Thalasseus bergii

Infraspecies

Thalasseus bergii bergii
Thalasseus bergii cristatus
Thalasseus bergii enigma
Thalasseus bergii thalassinus
Thalasseus bergii velox

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
1
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
9
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 2.88693
EDGE Score: 1.35762
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  310 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [2]  70 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  20 %
Diet - Scavenger [2]  10 %
Forages - Water Surface [2]  50 %
Forages - Underwater [2]  50 %
Clutch Size [4]  1
Clutches / Year [1]  1
Fledging [1]  39 days
Incubation [3]  27 days
Mating Display [4]  Ground and non-acrobatic aerial display
Mating System [4]  Monogamy
Maximum Longevity [3]  22 years
Wing Span [3]  3.772 feet (1.15 m)
Female Maturity [1]  1 year 12 months

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Aldabra Special Reserve 86487 Seychelles    
Ashmore Reef Commonwealth Marine Reserve 144062 Australia      

Important Bird Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Competing SpeciesCommon Prey Count
Laticauda laticaudata (Common or blue-lipped sea krait)1
Microcarbo melanoleucos (Little Pied Cormorant)6
Phalacrocorax varius (Australian Pied Cormorant)7

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 4Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6Feeding ecology of the piscivorous birds Phalacrocorax varius, P. melanoleucos and Sterna_her i in Moreton Bay, Australia: diets and dependence on trawler discards, S. J.M. Blaber and T.J. Wassenberg, Marine Marine Biology 101, 1-10(1989)
♦ 7Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 8Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0