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
Aleutian
tern, Sterna kamtschatica
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