Arctic tern migration Sterna paradisaea
Press ▶ to play the year. Glow: GBIF records per month, adjusted for observer effort. Lines: tracked individuals (Movebank).
| Scientific name | Sterna paradisaea |
|---|---|
| Wingspan | 80 cm |
| Adult weight | 114 g (adult) |
| IUCN status | Least concern |
| Records mapped | 574,855 (GBIF) |
| GPS / geolocator tracks | none with an open licence yet |
Facts from Wikidata Q26800 (CC0).
When does the arctic tern arrive in the UK?
A summer visitor in the records: sightings rise sharply from mid April, are near their peak by early May, and fall away after early October.
Bars: this species’ share of all UK bird records in GBIF (CC0/CC BY), by month, scaled to the peak month. Based on 36,046 UK records. Weekly counts from the GBIF occurrence search API (country=GB). Dates are read from records, not from a survey, so treat them as a guide.
Migration in the data
574,855 GBIF records (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 licences only) are mapped here, in 1.41° grid cells, month by month.
Worldwide, the centre of the records (adjusted for observer effort) is furthest north in July (about 65°N) and furthest south in February (about 65°S).
More than half of the effort-adjusted signal is south of the Equator in: January, February, March, November, December.
Month by month: centre of records in worldwide
| Month | Centre (latitude) | South of the Equator |
|---|---|---|
| January | 14°S | 61% |
| February | 65°S | 100% |
| March | 62°S | 99% |
| April | 37°N | 19% |
| May | 59°N | 1% |
| June | 64°N | 0% |
| July | 65°N | 0% |
| August | 64°N | 0% |
| September | 55°N | 2% |
| October | 35°N | 19% |
| November | 6°S | 62% |
| December | 43°S | 90% |
Tracked birds
No openly licensed (CC0 / CC BY) tracking data package for this species was found in the Movebank Data Repository yet, so only records are shown.
About the arctic tern
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. The species is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later. …
From the Wikipedia article “Arctic tern” (revision 1381390398), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources
GBIF occurrence records, licence CC0 1.0 or CC BY 4.0 only, observations only (no specimens), filtered with: taxonKey=5229230&license=CC0_1_0&license=CC_BY_4_0&occurrenceStatus=PRESENT&hasGeospatialIssue=false&basisOfRecord=HUMAN_OBSERVATION&basisOfRecord=MACHINE_OBSERVATION&basisOfRecord=OBSERVATION. Monthly queries: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec. GBIF.org (22 October 2026) occurrence data accessed via the GBIF API; a GBIF download DOI is still to be added. Contributing datasets.