Sooty Tern  Onychoprion fuscatus

Texas Offshore Status: Fairly common to common summer resident in pelagic waters off the Texas coast. Often found near deepwater tuna schools and often in large flocks. Very local breeding species along the Lower Laguna Madre near Arroyo City (April-June). Occasionally seen along the coast at South Padre Island and Boca from April-September. There are many records along the coast and at scattered inland locations following tropical storms.

Habitat: pelagic waters, spoil islands (for nesting) and coastal beaches

Similar Species: Most closely resembles the slightly smaller Bridled Tern. Sooty Tern can often be distinguished from Bridled Tern because of its jet-black plumage and stockier build, however, distant birds on the open ocean can prove to be challenging. Juveniles are completely black, and are easiest to identify. In addition to plumage differences, adult Sooties show only narrow white outer tail feathers (Bridled are much more extensively white) and a more limited amount of white in forehead.

Voice: a distinctive high nasal, “wackee-wak”

(1) TOS Handbook of Texas Birds; by Mark W. Lockwood and Brush Freeman (2005)
(2) Lower Texas Coast Status from Brad McKinney’s annotated checklist (updated 2009).

Seasonal Occurrence Graph

Texas Pelagics Sightings Distribution 

Map 1) The live Google map above shows the geographic distribution of Sooty Tern found in Offshore Texas from lat-long data I’ve captured from 35 years of Texas Pelagics. 
Click on the box in the upper left of the map to view the map legend.
Click on each sighting symbol and the data label will appear showing the time, date and the number of birds seen.
Click on the symbol on the top right of the map to view a larger map.

The next two map images are copied from eBird.

Map 2) The map below is zoomed into Texas and Louisiana to show individual locations.

Map 3) The bottom map is zoomed out to show the GOM, the northern Caribbean Sea and the adjacent western tropical Atlantic ocean. 

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