

This is why it’s colder during the winter in places north of the Equator, like the United States. During winter, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun’s warming rays. Seasons happen because Earth is tilted on its axis while it revolves around the sun. Why Migrate? Arctic terns migrate to follow the summer sun. But their extraordinary yearly wandering puts them in their own category in the bird world. Their diet, appearance, and behavior are similar to other marine birds. It might be easy to scoff at how normal the arctic tern might seem. After dread, the colony will take to the air and leave their home nests all at once. Just as migration is about to take place, the normally noisy colony will fall silent. A group of arctic terns is called a colony. This is a very long lifespan for such a small bird with such an extreme lifestyle. Arctic terns, which mate for life, can live to be more than 30 years old. They have gray-white bodies and a head of jet-black feathers, which looks almost like a baseball cap. Arctic terns have beaks that are almost the same shade of tomato-red as their webbed feet.

Rarely, arctic terns will snatch flies or other insects out of the air, but they prefer fish and other marine creatures, such as shrimp. Unlike pelicans or ducks, arctic terns are not good swimmers and don’t spend a lot of time in the water. They catch fish by gliding over the ocean, then plunging their feet or beaks in the water to skim fish near the surface. Bird Behavior Like a lot of other birds, arctic terns eat fish. This makes the arctic tern’s migration one of the longest of any animal on Earth. Because arctic terns do not fly in a straight line, the distance they fly every year is even longer than the approxi mately 30,000-kilometer (18,641-mile) from Arctic Circle to Antarctic Circle. During the unbearably cold, dark arctic winter, the arctic tern flies south, follo wing the summer season all the way to the Antarctic Circle on the other side of the Earth. The arctic tern is a water-loving bird that hatches during summer in the Arctic Circle, the northernmost part of the Northern Hemisphere.
