Our New Year's Day present in 1989 was the arrival of a Royal Tern at Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, then in 2008, it managed to return. In 2008, Red Slough was the lucky location for this stately tern. Sadly, it has not been seen since, so what might we be waiting for?
The Royal Tern is a large tern with a bright orange-red bill. It is common, and found on open salt water along beaches, oceanfront inlets, and backwater bays. They are also plunge divers usually in salt water, and very rarely found in fresh water. These neotropical migrants have a completely black cap during breeding season only, and for the remainder of the year appear to resemble a bald man, with black around the ears and the back of the head.
They are usually present year round in their breeding range, and should be expected on the Gulf coast and the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Royal Terns (rear)
South Padre Island, Texas 2014
These vagrants are colonial nesters that usually breed at four years of age and only lay one egg, very rarely two. When the young hatch, they leave the nest and join others in a creche, which is a group of young birds. The parents continue to feed them, each bird recognizing family members by the sound of their voice. The young will migrate south with the parents, some heading as far as Ecuador and Argentina.
This species sometimes feeds at night, mostly eating fish and small crustaceans, as well as squid and shrimp. On the Atlantic coast, they favor blue crab.
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