CalCOFI.io CalCOFI.io open data ecosystem

Sterna paradisaea

Arctic Tern

Speciesaccepted · checked 2026-08-05WoRMS 137165ITIS 176890key itis:176890
i

2026-08-05: worms_id 137165 via WoRMS TSN crosswalk (status accepted)

calcofi:seabirds

The Arctic tern is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America.W CalCOFI holds 116 observations of it in 1 dataset between 1987 and 2022.R

116
observations
116
records
116
sampling events
1987–2022
years
1
datasets
38 cm
max length
Arctic tern, it breeds in the north polar region (Iceland, Norway) and winters in the south polar region. The arctic tern is considered to be the migratory bird with the longest migration route.
Photo · W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons

Observed in 1 dataset
i

One row per dataset, and beside it one cell per year, darker with more observations — the same strip the front door draws per dataset. Each row ends with the name that dataset uses (dataset_taxon); the accepted name is written once, in the title above. A quiet pill marks a name the authority does not accept.

Ways inExplorerdb-queryERDDAPRPythonThis page as JSON

Code and endpoints ERDDAP · R · Python · JSON
ERDDAPCalCOFI's own server, the Seabirds & Marine Mammals table constrained to this taxon
https://erddap.calcofi.io/erddap/tabledap/farallon_bird-mammal.html?&taxon_key=%22itis:176890%22

Read from taxa.json of release v2026.10.21, written at release by calcofi4db::build_taxa_catalog(). The catalog's index is /species/.

How big is it 38 cm max
Arctic Tern38 cm
bongo net ring71 cm

max · sealifebase

Every mark is a measured length with its own source — hover one to read it. The reference objects are _data/size_reference.csv: two of them, the 505 µm bongo mesh and the net's ring, are CalCOFI's own sampling gear.

Lineage 11 ranks · Animalia to Sterna
Credits silhouette · photo · text · length
Elsewhere Wikidata · iNaturalist · GBIF · eBird

WikidataiNaturalistGBIFeBird

The same organism on the services the faces were fetched from; the authorities' own pages are the ids in the head.

Cite the release, v2026.10.21

Cite the release, v2026.10.21; each dataset's own citation, licence and DOI are on its page. How to cite ↗