The Arctic tern has returned to its summer breeding grounds in Iceland after having spent the winter in the seas off the coast of Antarctica. The first five tern were spotted in the vicinity of Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in South East Iceland on Tuesday morning. On Friday the Bird Watching Station in the town of Höfn í Hornarfirði in S.E. Iceland caught a photo of a small flock of tern over a pond north of the town.
2-3 times as many tern as humans in Iceland
The tern usually returns on April 20-25 after having spent the summer on the other side of the world, in the waters off the coast of Antarctica. An ornithologist with the Höfn Bird Watching Station told the local newspaper Morgunblaðið that the tern were unusually early this year. He said that the terns have been returning earlier every year in the past few years. The likely explanation is global climate change.
The tern spend the summer at its breeding grounds around the northern polar circle. It is not known how many breeding pairs of Arctic tern summer in Iceland, but the figure is believed to be somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000, which means there are 2-3 times as many Arctic tern as humans in Iceland!
The longest migratory route of any bird
No other bird has a longer migratory route: Each year the tern flies a distance which equals a circumnavigation of the globe. The tern is an extremely active bird, spend most of its entire life airborne, flying long distances. Ornithologists have calculated that in their lifetimes terns cover a distance which equals flying to the moon and half the distance back.
The Arctic tern has returned to its summer breeding grounds in Iceland after having spent the winter in the seas off the coast of Antarctica. The first five tern were spotted in the vicinity of Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in South East Iceland on Tuesday morning. On Friday the Bird Watching Station in the town of Höfn í Hornarfirði in S.E. Iceland caught a photo of a small flock of tern over a pond north of the town.
2-3 times as many tern as humans in Iceland
The tern usually returns on April 20-25 after having spent the summer on the other side of the world, in the waters off the coast of Antarctica. An ornithologist with the Höfn Bird Watching Station told the local newspaper Morgunblaðið that the tern were unusually early this year. He said that the terns have been returning earlier every year in the past few years. The likely explanation is global climate change.
The tern spend the summer at its breeding grounds around the northern polar circle. It is not known how many breeding pairs of Arctic tern summer in Iceland, but the figure is believed to be somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000, which means there are 2-3 times as many Arctic tern as humans in Iceland!
The longest migratory route of any bird
No other bird has a longer migratory route: Each year the tern flies a distance which equals a circumnavigation of the globe. The tern is an extremely active bird, spend most of its entire life airborne, flying long distances. Ornithologists have calculated that in their lifetimes terns cover a distance which equals flying to the moon and half the distance back.
