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 34 champion migrator DHJanzen101168.jpg high resolution
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| The arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea, Laridae), here on Devon Island on 18 July is perhaps the most spectacularily specialized on the arctic of all birds. Indeed, the arctic winter does not exist for this bird. It spends the summer in the far arctic, and then flies to Antartica to spend the other half of the year there and in its environs. A feeding generalist, eating just about everything small enough to swallow, the arctic tern probably had its evolutionary origin in a mid-latitude tern that flew north during the bountiful summer months, and then as it was forced south in the fall, just kept on going all the way until it hit fertile sea waters in the southern oceans. And then reversed this process in the Antarctic fall. | ||
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