High above a cold northern sea, an Arctic tern can look almost weightless. Its narrow wings sweep back from a small white body. A black cap covers its head. Its red bill points forward as it turns into the wind. An adult Arctic tern weighs little more than 100 grams, yet some individuals travel more than 80,000 kilometres in a year. One tracked bird from the Farne Islands in the United Kingdom was estimated to cover about 96,000 kilometres on its annual journey.
Those numbers are impressive, but they are not the most interesting part of the story. The Arctic tern does not simply fly from one end of the world to the other and back along a neat line. Its migration is shaped by food, winds, ocean currents, sea ice, weather, breeding demands and the geography of the planet itself. Different birds can take different routes. Even birds from the same breeding colony can leave at different times and travel independently.
Follow the journey far enough and the Arctic tern begins to change the way we see a map. Greenland is connected to West Africa. The Farne Islands are connected to the Southern Ocean. A stopover in the middle of the North Atlantic can matter to a bird that will later spend months near Antarctic waters. The bird's life links places that, to us, seem impossibly far apart.
That is why the Arctic tern is more than a record-holder. It is a traveller that helps us understand how seasons, oceans and ecosystems are connected across the whole planet.
Built for life on the wing, the Arctic tern makes one of the longest migrations of any animal on Earth. Credit: wirestock / Envato. Licensed The Geo Kid
Meet the Arctic Tern
The Arctic tern, Sterna paradisaea, is a slender seabird found across northern parts of Europe, Asia and North America during the breeding season. Adults in breeding plumage are easy to recognise once you know what to look for: a black cap, pale grey upperparts, white underparts, a long forked tail and a red bill. Their wings are long and pointed, giving them the light, buoyant flight typical of terns.
Arctic terns spend much of their lives around coasts and oceans. They feed mainly on small fish and marine invertebrates, often searching near the surface and dipping or plunging into the water to catch prey. Their bodies are small, but their wings are built for efficient flight. They are not carrying the heavy body of a goose or the huge wings of an albatross. Instead, they combine lightness, manoeuvrability and endurance.
They also have a remarkably broad breeding range. BirdLife International describes the species as circumpolar, breeding through Arctic and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America, with some populations extending into cooler temperate areas. After breeding, many travel far into the Southern Hemisphere, reaching Antarctic waters before eventually returning north.
Two Summers in One Year
Most animals experience one summer and one winter each year. Arctic terns arrange their lives differently. They breed during the Northern Hemisphere summer, when long daylight hours and productive northern seas can support adults and growing chicks. As northern autumn approaches, they head south. By the time many reach Antarctic waters, it is the Southern Hemisphere summer.
This is what people mean when they say Arctic terns 'chase summer'. They are not following a single comfortable temperature band, and Antarctica is certainly not tropical. They are following seasonal productivity and long periods of daylight across opposite hemispheres.
The distinction matters. When it is winter in countries such as Canada, Iceland and the United Kingdom, it is summer in Antarctica. Six months later, the pattern reverses. The Arctic tern's annual cycle makes this planetary geometry visible. Its movement is tied to the tilt of Earth and the changing seasons that tilt creates.
For Australian readers, that seasonal reversal is familiar. December is summer in Australia but winter across much of Europe and North America. Arctic terns use that same hemispheric contrast on a far larger scale, travelling from northern breeding grounds towards southern oceans and back again.
Following a Moving Feast
Why travel so far? Food is a major part of the answer. Arctic terns depend on marine prey, and the best feeding opportunities are not fixed in one place all year. Productive waters shift with seasons, currents, daylight, temperature and the movements of prey. Migration allows the birds to keep moving through regions where feeding conditions can support them.
Tracking research has shown that the journey is not one continuous marathon. Birds can spend time in important feeding areas along the way. One of the most striking discoveries came from a study of Arctic terns breeding in Greenland and Iceland. The birds used a previously unknown stopover area in the central North Atlantic, roughly between 41 and 53 degrees north and 27 and 41 degrees west. The tracked birds stayed there for an average of about 25 days before continuing south.
On a map, this region can look like empty ocean. To a migrating tern, it may be anything but empty. Ocean fronts, currents and areas where water masses meet can concentrate nutrients and prey. A stopover therefore does not need to be an island or beach. For a seabird, a productive patch of open ocean can function as a vital refuelling station.
This is one of the Arctic tern's great teaching lessons. Human maps often emphasise land. The tern's map is made of water, winds, prey and temporary opportunities.
Why Doesn't It Fly Straight South?
If the goal is to reach Antarctic waters, the shortest route might seem obvious: fly south. Arctic terns do not behave that way. Their journeys bend across the Atlantic and around continents because the most energy-efficient route is not always the shortest route on a map.
In the Greenland and Iceland tracking study, birds travelled south through the eastern North Atlantic and then split into two broad route types. Some continued along the coast of West Africa. Others crossed the Atlantic towards Brazil and then moved south along the South American side. Farther south, the birds shifted from a mainly southward journey into broad east-west movements through Southern Ocean waters.
The return journey was different again. Rather than simply reversing their southbound tracks, birds used broad curved routes through the Atlantic. These shapes are consistent with the idea that Arctic terns take advantage of prevailing winds and large-scale atmospheric and ocean systems.
A migrating bird is constantly solving an energy problem. A longer route with favourable winds and good feeding opportunities can be better than a shorter route through poor conditions or persistent headwinds. What looks indirect to us may be highly efficient for the bird.
How Far Does an Arctic Tern Travel?
Arctic terns are long-lived birds, and their extraordinary migration is not a once-in-a-lifetime journey. Adults make the north-to-south-and-back migration each year, and some individuals may repeat it for decades. The oldest recorded Arctic tern was at least 34 years old.
For many years, books repeated an estimate of about 40,000 kilometres for the Arctic tern's annual migration. That figure was based largely on the distance between northern breeding grounds and Antarctic waters. Tiny tracking devices changed the picture.
In a landmark study published in 2010, researchers tracked 11 Arctic terns from Greenland and Iceland. The average annual distance travelled was about 70,900 kilometres. Individual estimates ranged from approximately 59,500 to 81,600 kilometres. The southbound journey averaged around 34,600 kilometres and the northbound journey around 25,700 kilometres, with additional movement in the Southern Ocean contributing to the annual total.
Later work on birds breeding on the Farne Islands produced even larger estimates. One tracked individual was reported to have travelled about 96,000 kilometres in a year. These figures remind us why 'distance between the poles' is not the same as 'distance actually flown'. The birds wander, feed, respond to winds, cross ocean basins and use different routes on the outward and return journeys.
If an Arctic tern repeatedly completes migrations of this scale over a long life, its lifetime travel can reach astonishing totals. But we should treat lifetime-distance claims carefully because they combine annual estimates with assumptions about lifespan and how consistently an individual migrates. The strongest evidence comes from journeys that have actually been tracked.
How Many Arctic Terns Are There?
Counting Arctic terns across a circumpolar breeding range is difficult. Colonies are scattered across remote coasts and islands, and birds spend much of the year at sea. Global totals are therefore estimates rather than a simple head count.
BirdLife International's current species factsheet cites a global population estimate of more than two million Arctic terns, based on a Wetlands International estimate from 2015. The same factsheet lists the species as Least Concern globally but describes the global population trend as decreasing.
Those two statements can both be true. 'Least Concern' does not mean a species faces no problems, and a large global population does not mean every colony is doing well. Conservation categories consider factors such as population size, rate of decline and geographical range. Local and regional populations can fall even when the species as a whole remains widespread.
For that reason, conservation status should always be checked close to publication. Assessments can change as new evidence becomes available.
One Species, Many Routes
It is tempting to draw one great loop from the Arctic to Antarctica and label it 'the Arctic tern migration'. The science tells a more interesting story. Arctic terns share a broad seasonal pattern, but individual journeys vary.
Our migration map follows four real route examples drawn from tracking studies. Two represent the broad alternatives recorded in birds breeding in Greenland and Iceland: one moving south via West Africa and another crossing towards Brazil. Two more represent individual birds from the Farne Islands, identified in the research as G84 and G30.
The map is deliberately simplified. Geolocators do not produce a perfect GPS dot for every moment of a bird's journey, and the published studies themselves show broad tracks rather than a single permanent route. The purpose of the map is therefore to show patterns: breeding origins, important stopover regions, different southbound corridors, wide use of Antarctic waters and broad return routes.
Most importantly, the four lines should not be read as four lanes in the sky. They are examples of what particular tracked birds did. Another Arctic tern may make a different journey.
Does an Arctic Tern Make the Journey Alone?
At breeding colonies, Arctic terns are anything but solitary. They nest near other terns, defend their territories noisily and can gather in groups to feed or rest. Migration, however, is more complicated than the image of one enormous flock travelling from pole to pole together.
The 2010 Greenland and Iceland tracking study reported that migration flock sizes were typically small, often fewer than 15 birds, and found no evidence that the tagged Greenland birds stayed together in persistent flocks throughout their migration.
Research on pair bonds at the Farne Islands adds another layer. Six tracked breeding pairs did not travel south as inseparable couples. Partners could depart at different times, use different routes or Antarctic areas, and return independently. G84 and G30, for example, were a breeding pair in 2017, yet their annual journeys remained individual. Even when their Antarctic longitudes were relatively similar, they were separated by hundreds of kilometres on average, and the female returned to the colony days after the male.
So the answer is neither 'always alone' nor 'always in a flock'. Arctic terns can associate with other birds, but tracking evidence shows that an individual's migration is not simply dictated by its mate or colony.
Returning North
After months in southern waters, Arctic terns turn north again. The return journey is not simply the southbound migration played backwards.
Tracked birds from Greenland and Iceland followed broad S-shaped or sigmoidal routes through the Atlantic. Rather than hugging the same coastlines they had used on the way south, they crossed large stretches of open ocean. The pattern allowed them to make use of prevailing wind systems and probably to encounter productive feeding areas as they moved north.
Farne Islands birds also returned mainly through the Atlantic and were generally less tied to coastlines on the northbound journey. Eventually, the immense global movement narrows back towards a particular nesting place: an island, beach or patch of ground visited in an earlier year.
This ability to return across thousands of kilometres raises one of the most fascinating questions in migration biology: how does a bird know where to go?
Life at the Top of the World
For all the attention given to migration, breeding is the reason Arctic terns return north. They need suitable places to lay eggs and raise young during the short northern summer.
Arctic terns often nest in colonies on islands, beaches, gravel, tundra and other open coastal ground. Their nests can be remarkably simple: little more than a shallow scrape lined with bits of vegetation or nearby material. Eggs are camouflaged against the ground, but the nest remains exposed to weather and predators.
The adults compensate with fierce defence. Anyone who has walked through an Arctic tern colony knows how seriously the birds take an intruder. They circle, call loudly and dive towards perceived threats. This behaviour protects eggs and chicks, but it also means breeding colonies need careful management where people and wildlife share space.
Northern summer provides long daylight hours and abundant feeding opportunities, but it is brief. Chicks must grow quickly enough to fledge before adults and young birds begin moving away from the breeding area.
Every Great Migration Begins With a Chick
An Arctic tern's first months of life are very different from the effortless-looking flight of an experienced adult. Chicks hatch on the ground and depend on their parents for food and protection. Adults repeatedly return with small fish and other prey, helping the chicks grow feathers, muscles and the flight skills they will soon need.
After fledging, young terns are capable of flight but may continue to receive parental care for a period. This transition is important when we talk about the first migration. It is easy to imagine a chick simply taking off beside its parents and following them all the way to Antarctica, but the evidence does not support such a tidy universal story.
Some post-fledging association between juveniles and parents occurs, yet the extent to which family members remain together during the first full southward migration is not clearly understood. We therefore should not claim that every juvenile migrates south with a parent, or that every juvenile makes the entire journey independently.
That distinction teaches us something important about science. A good explanation does not fill gaps in knowledge with a story simply because the story sounds plausible. Sometimes the most accurate answer is: researchers know part of the process, but not all of it yet.
Built for Life on the Wing
The Arctic tern's body reflects the demands of a life spent travelling and feeding over water. Long pointed wings help it fly efficiently. A deeply forked tail assists with manoeuvring. Its light body reduces the energy required to stay airborne, while strong flight muscles provide power when conditions demand it.
The bird also behaves in ways that reduce the cost of migration. It can exploit tailwinds rather than forcing a straight course into unfavourable air. It feeds during migration rather than carrying enough stored energy for the entire journey. It uses ocean regions where food is likely to be concentrated. Migration is therefore not only about physical endurance; it is about timing and decisions.
This is why comparing the Arctic tern with an aircraft can be misleading. A plane is usually trying to reach a destination quickly along a planned route. An Arctic tern is living throughout the journey. It must find food, avoid dangerous conditions, manage its energy and eventually arrive in breeding condition. The journey itself is habitat.
Arctic Terns in Motion
Photographs can freeze the details of an Arctic tern's wings, but video reveals something different: how lightly the bird moves through the air. This short film brings together Arctic terns in flight and around their breeding habitat, giving us a closer look at the grace, speed and control behind a migration measured across oceans.
Watch: Arctic Terns in Flight | Nature's Navigators. A short visual companion showing Arctic terns in motion and around their breeding habitat. Video: The Geo Kid.How Does an Arctic Tern Find Its Way?
Scientists know that migratory birds can use several kinds of information to navigate. These include the position of the sun, patterns of stars, landmarks, odours and Earth's magnetic field. Different species may rely on different combinations of cues, and the importance of each cue can change with age, weather and location.
For Arctic terns specifically, tracking studies reveal where birds go far more clearly than they reveal every sensory mechanism used to get there. It is reasonable to discuss the navigation tools known from bird science, but we should not pretend that researchers have identified a complete Arctic tern 'navigation system' with one dominant compass.
Young birds may possess inherited directional tendencies while also learning from experience and environmental conditions. Adults returning to familiar breeding areas may combine large-scale orientation with local recognition as they approach places they have used before.
The remarkable part is not that there must be one secret sense we have yet to discover. It is that a small bird can integrate enough information, over weeks and months, to move successfully through a changing three-dimensional world.
How Do Scientists Follow a Bird Across the Planet?
For most of human history, the Arctic tern's journey could only be pieced together from sightings and bird ringing. Ringing remains valuable: a bird is fitted with a uniquely coded ring, and if it is later found or recaptured somewhere else, the two records reveal a connection between places.
The limitation is obvious. A ring tells us where a bird was marked and where it was encountered again. It does not show what happened in between.
Miniature geolocators changed that. The devices used in key Arctic tern studies were small enough to be carried on a leg ring. They recorded light levels over time. Researchers could later retrieve the device, download the data and estimate latitude and longitude from patterns of sunrise, sunset and day length.
Geolocators are not the same as GPS. Their position estimates are much less precise, especially around the equinoxes when day length changes in ways that make latitude difficult to calculate. They also usually need to be recovered from the bird, meaning researchers depend on tagged individuals surviving and returning to a place where they can be caught again.
Despite those limitations, the technology transformed our understanding of Arctic tern migration. It revealed stopovers in open ocean, huge annual distances, contrasting routes and extensive movement in Antarctic waters that could never have been reconstructed from a handful of ringing recoveries alone.
The Stopover Nobody Knew Was There
The North Atlantic stopover discovered in the Greenland and Iceland study is a perfect example of why tracking matters. Before the birds carried geolocators, researchers did not know that individuals from different breeding populations were spending weeks in the same broad oceanic region.
There was no obvious island colony to count and no land-based observation point from which to watch them arrive. The habitat was open sea. Only by following the birds through time did the pattern appear.
Discoveries like this can change conservation thinking. Protecting a migratory species cannot focus only on breeding nests and the place where it spends the opposite season. Stopovers and feeding areas between those endpoints may be essential. If a bird cannot refuel along the way, the rest of the route may become much harder to complete.
A tern plunges towards the water in search of prey. Its light body, long wings and remarkable manoeuvrability allow it to hunt while spending much of its life on the move. Credit: GreensandBlues / Envato. Licensed The Geo Kid.
At the Other End of the Earth: Antarctic Waters
Arctic terns do not arrive in Antarctica and settle at one fixed wintering site. During the Southern Hemisphere summer they can range widely through Southern Ocean waters, including areas associated with Antarctic sea ice.
Research using geolocators has shown extensive use of sea-ice regions. The edge of sea ice is biologically important: seasonal melting, light and ocean mixing can support productive food webs. For a tern searching for small marine prey, these waters can offer valuable feeding opportunities.
The phrase 'Antarctic wintering grounds' can therefore be misleading for readers in Australia. The birds are in the south during the Southern Hemisphere summer, even though that period corresponds with winter back in their northern breeding regions. In this article, 'southern summer' is the clearer description.
They are also not tied to a nest while they are there. That freedom allows individual birds to move across enormous areas of ocean in response to food and conditions.
An Australian Connection: Farne Islands to Melbourne
In 1982, Arctic Tern CE 77150 was ringed as a nestling on the Farne Islands off Northumberland on 25 June. Just 115 days later, the bird was recovered in Melbourne, Australia.
Think about the distance contained within those two records. The bird began life on a small group of islands off northern England and, within a few months, had reached the other side of the world.
The ringing record cannot tell us the exact route the young tern followed, so we should not draw a line between the Farne Islands and Melbourne and call it its migration path. What it does demonstrate is the extraordinary scale of movement possible very early in an Arctic tern's life.
For Australian families, the record makes the Arctic tern story unexpectedly close to home. A bird associated with northern breeding colonies and Antarctic waters can also appear in the history of Australian bird records. Migration does not respect the way we divide the world into distant chapters.
What Does Home Mean to an Arctic Tern?
Humans often imagine home as one place. For a migratory animal, home can be a network.
An Arctic tern may return to a particular breeding colony, but its annual survival depends on far more than that nesting ground. It also depends on feeding areas near the colony, oceanic stopovers, migration corridors, Southern Ocean habitat and the atmospheric systems that help shape its travel.
This is why conserving migrants can be difficult. A protected breeding island cannot compensate for every problem elsewhere. A bird can cross waters belonging to many nations and spend long periods far beyond any coastline. Changes thousands of kilometres away may influence whether it returns to breed the following year.
The Arctic tern is therefore a powerful example of ecological connection. Its 'home' is not a dot. It is an annual pathway through a changing planet.
A Bird Without Borders
Arctic terns cross national boundaries almost as soon as they leave their breeding regions. Some pass along Europe and West Africa. Others cross towards South America. Farne Islands birds can move around southern Africa and into the Indian Ocean. In Antarctic waters, national borders become even less relevant to the bird's immediate life.
That creates a conservation challenge. No single country can protect the whole migration. Effective protection depends on international agreements, responsible fisheries, protected breeding sites, healthy oceans, careful management of disturbance and long-term research.
Migratory birds make an important point about environmental responsibility: nature does not organise itself according to political maps. A decision made in one region can affect an animal that people in another region consider part of their own natural heritage.
An Arctic tern carries a fish over the waters of Iceland. Finding enough food is essential not only for the birds themselves, but also for raising young before the long journey south begins. Credit: GreensandBlues / Envato. Licensed The Geo Kid.
What Threatens Arctic Terns?
Arctic terns remain widespread, but they face pressures at different stages of the annual cycle. At breeding colonies, predators, human disturbance, severe weather and changes in food availability can reduce breeding success. Ground nests are especially vulnerable because eggs and chicks cannot simply move away from danger.
Marine food webs matter just as much. If small fish or other prey become less available near breeding sites or along migration routes, adults may have to travel farther or work harder to feed themselves and their chicks. Fisheries, changing ocean conditions and shifts in prey distribution can all influence what food is available, although the effects differ from place to place.
Pollution is another concern. Marine plastics and chemical contaminants can enter ocean food webs. Artificial lights and increasing human activity can also alter coastal environments used by seabirds.
Because the Arctic tern's annual range is so large, threats are unlikely to be identical everywhere. Conservation needs to be based on local evidence while still recognising the global journey that links those local places together.
Migration on a Changing Planet
Climate change adds another layer of uncertainty because Arctic terns depend on conditions across both hemispheres and several ocean systems. Warming can shift the timing and distribution of prey. It can alter breeding conditions in northern regions, ocean productivity along migration routes and sea-ice habitat in the south.
Recent modelling of Arctic tern migration suggests that projected changes in wind alone may have relatively minor effects on total migration costs in many scenarios, although stronger or shifting Southern Ocean westerlies could alter the strategies birds use. A clearer potential pressure comes from projected reductions in marine productivity in parts of the North Atlantic, where terns feed during important stages of their annual cycle.
Antarctic sea ice is also changing rapidly, but the consequences for Arctic terns are not simple enough to summarise as 'less ice equals fewer terns'. Sea ice affects ocean productivity, prey and where feeding opportunities occur. Researchers are still working to understand how those changes will influence the birds over time.
The responsible conclusion is not that we know exactly how Arctic tern migration will change. We do not. What we do know is that a species depending on seasonal conditions across an enormous geographical range can encounter climate-driven changes at many different points in the same year.
One Journey, Many Links
By now, the Arctic tern's migration looks less like a line and more like a chain of relationships. Northern breeding ground. Coastal feeding waters. Open-ocean stopover. Tropical Atlantic. African or South American corridor. Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea ice. Atlantic return. Breeding ground again.
Break one link and the bird may still have alternatives. Break enough links, or change them quickly enough, and the journey becomes harder.
That does not mean every Arctic tern needs exactly the same sites. The tracking studies show the opposite: individuals can be flexible. But flexibility has limits. The birds still need food, safe breeding habitat, suitable ocean conditions and enough time and energy to complete the annual cycle.
Understanding those links is one of the reasons scientists track migratory animals. The point is not simply to draw a spectacular map. It is to discover which places and processes matter to survival.
How Families Can Help
Most families will never stand beside an Arctic tern colony or research vessel, but that does not make the species irrelevant to everyday life. The oceans supporting Arctic terns are connected to the same global systems that influence climate, fisheries and biodiversity everywhere.
Learning to identify local birds is a useful starting point. In Australia, that may mean noticing terns and other seabirds along beaches, estuaries and headlands. Identification matters because closely related species can look similar. Recording observations through reputable citizen-science programs can contribute to larger datasets when records are accurate and responsibly submitted.
At breeding colonies or wildlife sites, follow local guidance. Keep appropriate distance from nesting birds, stay on designated paths, control pets where required and never approach chicks for a photograph. A small disturbance repeated by thousands of visitors can become a significant pressure.
Families can also reduce single-use plastic where practical, choose seafood using credible sustainability guidance available in their own country, and support organisations protecting seabirds, oceans and important habitats. The most useful action is usually local and evidence-based rather than symbolic.
Perhaps the simplest contribution is curiosity. Ask where the birds on your coast came from. Ask where they are going. Ask what they need along the way. Migration turns an ordinary sighting into a question about the whole planet.
The World From a Tern's Point of View
Imagine looking at Earth without country borders. The continents are shapes below you, but the important features are different: a wind that helps you move north, a patch of ocean rich with fish, a safe island where eggs can hatch, a belt of sea ice alive with feeding opportunities.
From that perspective, the distance between Greenland and Antarctica is not an abstract measurement. It is a sequence of decisions. Feed here. Wait. Move south. Follow the coast. Cross the ocean. Turn east. Search the ice. Months later, turn north and find the way back.
A bird weighing little more than 100 grams completes that sequence without a timetable, map or satellite navigation system. Scientists have now followed enough individuals to reveal some of the pattern, yet many details remain unknown.
That combination of knowledge and mystery is part of what makes the Arctic tern so extraordinary. Its migration is not impressive because it fits neatly into a record book. It is impressive because one small bird connects seasons, oceans and ecosystems on a planetary scale, then returns to begin again.
Words to Know
Circumpolar: Found around the high northern regions surrounding the Arctic.
Migration: Regular seasonal movement between different regions.
Geolocator: A small tracking device that records light levels so researchers can estimate where a bird has travelled.
Stopover: A place or region where a migrating animal pauses, often to rest and feed.
Fledgling: A young bird that has developed enough feathers to leave the nest and begin flying.
Sea ice: Frozen seawater that forms and melts seasonally over parts of the polar oceans.
Marine productivity: The production of biological material in the ocean, beginning with organisms such as phytoplankton and supporting larger food webs.
Prevailing winds: Winds that tend to blow from a particular direction in a region over time.
Discover the Story Behind This Design
The Arctic tern's migration inspired The Geo Kid's Wings of the World design. Its journey connects northern breeding grounds with Antarctic waters, following changing seasons, productive seas and the rhythms of a planet in motion. The design celebrates endurance, navigation and the extraordinary scale of a journey made by one small bird.
Wings of the World is available across The Geo Kid's Nature's Navigators T-shirt range for Kids/Youth, Women's and Men's sizes. Each design connects what families wear with the story and science behind the animal journey.
Keep Exploring
The Arctic tern is one of many animals whose survival depends on movement across enormous landscapes and seascapes. Continue with Nature's Navigators to compare how very different animals respond to seasons, food, weather and geography.
The Great Migration: Following the Rains Across the Serengeti-Mara — follow wildebeest and zebras as rainfall, grass, rivers and changing conditions shape movement across East Africa. Read the Great Migration article
The Monarch Butterfly Migration: The Remarkable Journey No Single Butterfly Can Complete — discover a migration that crosses North America but is completed across several generations. Read the Monarch Butterfly Migration article
Explore all Nature's Navigators stories
Sources and Further Reading
- BirdLife International: Arctic Tern species factsheet (checked 16 August 2026)
- Egevang et al. (2010): Tracking of Arctic terns reveals longest animal migration
- Redfern (2021): Pair bonds during the annual cycle of a long-distance migrant
- Redfern & Bevan (2020): Overland movement and migration of Arctic Terns from the North Sea
- Redfern & Bevan: Antarctic sea-ice use by Arctic Terns tracked from the Farne Islands
- Morten et al. (2023): Global warming and Arctic terns
- Hunter Bird Observers Club (1983): Farne Islands Arctic tern recovered in Melbourne
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Newcastle University (2016): Record-breaking bird migration revealed in new research