All birds/Laridae/Royal Tern

AI reconstruction created with Nano Banana 2 · 1K, grounded in the profile’s documented taxonomy, habitat, natural-history sources, and an open-license visual reference when available. It is an interpretive image, not documentary evidence. Image policy →

PRB-0162Charadriiformes

Royal Tern

Charrán Real

Thalasseus maximus

Native / natural occurrenceIUCN LC · Least Concern

The royal tern (Thalasseus maximus) is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though vagrants have been identified in Europe.

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FamilyLaridaeGulls, Terns, and Skimmers

Puerto Rico occurrenceNative / natural occurrenceAvibase inferred core 380

Primary habitatcoastsCoastal

Primary dietFishAquatic predator

Average mass402.3333333333333 gGlobal trait estimate

MovementPartial migrant; Long-distance dispersal; Sedentary / residentAerial

Sound archive

Hear its voice

Explore real songs and calls. The spectrogram turns each sound into a visual trace of time and frequency.

XC901107Recording 1 of 3call

SpectrogramThalasseus maximus

0:000:21

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Sound recorded by David Tattersley · XC901107 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Visualization by Stichting Xeno-canto voor Natuurgeluiden.

Every recording retains the creator, catalogue number, and license published by Xeno-canto. Metadata via GBIF ↗

Island profile

Catalog scopeAvibase inferred core 380

About the Royal Tern

The royal tern (Thalasseus maximus) is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though vagrants have been identified in Europe.

Conservation

Least Concern

IUCN LC

Global IUCN: LC
Puerto Rico DNER: No current listing in source crosswalk
Federal ESA: No current listing in source crosswalk
Critical habitat: Not identified in source crosswalk

Natural history

How it lives

Habitat: coasts
Elevation: 0–100 m
Nest: Scrape · Building; Ground
Clutch: 1–2 eggs
Social behavior: Colonial; Social / flocking; Pairs / family groups; Singly and pairs

Keep exploring

This bird belongs to 5 paths through the atlas.

The complete catalogAll Birds of Puerto Rico402 birds →Birds by habitatCoastal Birds62 birds →Birds by habitatSeabirds & Open-Ocean Birds41 birds →ConservationLeast Concern Birds328 birds →Bird familyGulls, Terns, and Skimmers (Laridae)28 birds →

Evidence trail

Sources, media & further reading

eBird species profile↗Macaulay Library media↗iNaturalist observations↗GBIF occurrence data↗BirdLife species factsheet↗Xeno-canto recordings↗Wikipedia in English↗Wikipedia en Español↗Media source · commons.wikimedia.org↗Source record 1↗Source record 2↗Source record 3↗

Research note: Wikipedia uses Thalasseus maxima; normalized to current taxonomy Thalasseus maximus.