Just before the sun has reached the high point of its arc, ARCTIC TERNS appear in the far north — about the middle of June. Family life commences at once and sitting birds are often snowed over. Body-warmth soon thaws a small area and incubation goes on untroubled.
Within fourteen weeks the young are awing and all move south before August has gone.
While cruising the Maine coast I sometimes saw a few birds resting on bobbing lobster-trap buoys off the out lying islands but most of them take the far traverse along an unknown track.
They appear in November along the bleak Antarctic shores and fly the cold airways until a looping sun warns them 'tis time to head north again.
No living thing sees more sunlight than these wonderful, snowy bits of flesh and feathers. Only for short periods are they without its rays and perhaps this accounts for the remarkable vitality which enables them to travel 22,000 miles in twenty weeks — an average of 150 miles per day in a straight line!
How many more miles they fly in side trips and food-pursuit never will be known, but it must be at least twice that distance.
Banded birds have been found in France and on the southeast coast of Africa, so the Antarctic route may be more circuitous than we think.
"Arctic" is an appropriate name but "Birds of Sunshine" would be better.
From Arctic to Antarctic; probably nearly cosmopolitan.