ARCTIC TERN, MACHIAS SEAL ISLAND,GULF OF MAINE,US/CANADA, 8/12/2019

   Even though we can't see the head or face of this tern, we can still ID it as an Arctic Tern as follows:

• Very long, pointed gray wings
• Long, forked tail.   If you look closely you can see the fork.
• We visually saw that this was a tern, but couldn't get a fast enough photo to get the face and head of the bird.
• Gray belly
• Both our birding guide and Merlin bird photo ID identified this bird as an Arctic Tern (Merlin narrowed the ID to two species of terns; we were able to eliminate the other species).

   The Arctic Tern is strongly migratory.  It migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later.. Recent studies have shown that the annual round trip length for birds nesting in the Netherlands is about 56,000 miles and for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland is about 44,100 miles.  These

are by far the longest migrations known in the animal kingdom.

   The Arctic Tern is a new species to our Photographic Life List, which now stands at 912.