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Arctic Terns are medium-sized terns. When in Australia, adults are always found in non-breeding plumage. In "eclipse the front, sides of the neck and forehead are white. Only the back of the head remains black and the rest of the back remains light-grey. Being the bird species with the longest migration of all (of up to 70,000 km and beyond), Arctic Terns are optimised for flight. Compared to other species of terns, they have longer wings, longer tail streamers and a shorter neck, giving them a buoyant flight. Immature Antarctic Terns resemble non-breeding adults.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Arctic Tern is available HERE .

Arctic Terns are a global species - and they are the birds with the longest annual migration of all species (up to 90,000 km). Both in summer and winter their distributions are circumpolar. Their summer breeding grounds are in central and northern Eurasia and North America, plus islands such as Greenland and Iceland, all round the globe. Most breed inside the Arctic circle, but a significant part of the population also settles in more moderate climatic regions. They spend the northern winters in the Southern Ocean, as far to the South as the edge of the Antarctic continent. Their migration routes lead through the eastern Northern Atlantic to the Southern Atlantic Ocean, through the central Pacific Ocean and through the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Around Australia, Arctic Terns are non-breeding migrants found only to the South of the continent. They are usually found off-shore, on pelagics, but on occasion also from the southern coastline. They stay southward of about Geraldton, WA, along the West coast and southward of the NSW Central Coast along the East coast of Australia.

When not breeding in the Arctic in northern summers, Arctic Terns are found mostly above the open ocean and coastal waters.

We have not seen an Arctic Tern in Australian territory or Australian territorial waters yet. The photo shown below was taken by C. Pears between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula in December 2024. All photographic information presented on this page has kindly been contributed by C. Pears.