Photo: Robert E Gill, Jr.
The Aleutian tern breeds only in Alaska and eastern Siberia, nesting coastally in dispersed colonies (North 1997). Their breeding range extends from southeast Alaska to the western Aleutian Islands and as for north as the Chukchi Sea. In Russia they breed in the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Photo: Robert E Gill, Jr.

In winter all breeding birds appear to move south west along the Pacific coast of Asia to Japan and the Indonesian islands and
as far as Java, Bali, and Sulawesi . Little banding of this species has been done and therefore knowledge of winter distributions
has been gathered from observations of birds. About 9,500 birds nest in Alaska, the largest colony of about 1,700 birds nest at
Yakutat in the Gulf of Alaska (USFWS 2006).


Map from USGS