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Arctic Tern : Arctic Tern Teqirayuli Look out! Here they come! Gotcha, didn’t they? Well, that’s what these little terns do if you venture too close to their nests or young. Yupik people don’t call them Teqirayuli or Teqiyaaraq for nothing. Between the two names, they loosely translate as, “The dear little bird that is good at using its bottom to disadvantage others.” You know what I mean? I learned the hard way myself when I was canoeing down the John River, in the Brooks Range, a few years ago. As I came ashore I flushed a momma Arctic tern from her nest on the gravel beach. I went back for my camera, quickly took a couple of pictures of the nest and eggs, then hightailed it. As I retreated, both male and female terns swooped down on my head from behind and, you guessed it. Bullseye! Not all Yupik names for this little tern are pejorative, however. At least one, “Nacallngaaraq,” relates to its small black cap. And the Inupiaq name, “Mitkotailyaq,” means simply, “drooping feathers.” Any way you cut it, all of these names are a great deal more colorful than the English, “tern,” which derives from the Anglo Saxon word, “stearn.” Even the scientific name, Sterna paradisaea, isn’t very colorful. It simply translates as “paradise tern,” and was so named in 1763 by Eric Pontipiddan, the Danish Bishop of Bergen, Norway, who collected it from Christiansoe Island, Denmark. In its unpopulated state, he thought the island represented a form of heaven or paradise. There weren’t many places like that in Europe, even in the 1700’s. Back to Alaska and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which is still very much like a paradise in its wild sections. Now that it’s spring, the Arctic terns will soon be cruising along the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and their tributaries, searching for food. Watch them as they hover 30-40 feet over the river on beating wings, then dive suddenly straight into the water with a grand splash. When they surface they shake their feathers vigorously, then fly away with their catch, which may be either a small fish or eel, or a crustacean. Like Peregrine falcons and Golden plovers, Arctic terns are world travelers, migrating from their nesting sites in the Arctic, southward across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to spend their “second summer” in Antarctica. Some terns, in their longest journeys, make a round trip of more than 47,000 miles in a single year! Wears me out just thinking about it. In this way, the Arctic tern probably sees more daylight in its lifetime than any other animal. That’s a lot of daylight, since these birds have been known to live more than 34 years. When they finally return to the Arctic, these terns are ready and rearing to settle down and begin the process of raising a family. To do this, they first hollow out a shallow depression in a sunny spot on the sand and gravel near a creek or river course. Here 3-4 flecked brownish-green eggs are laid, and after 3 weeks of incubation by the female, the eggs hatch. Within another 3-4 weeks, the young take their first flight. Even after they learn to fly, however, it takes a long time for them to learn to feed themselves. Since Arctic terns usually nest in colonies, their child rearing also takes place in what appear to be nurseries. And these are the very spots you’d best be wary of, for that’s where the terns earned their notorious reputation among Yupik people (and at least one other person) as “the dear little bird that is good at using its bottom to disadvantage others.” » List of Yupik Birds

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