The Long-tailed Jaeger is a slender seabird that breeds on Arctic tundra and hunts lemmings during the breeding season. Outside that season, it travels to oceans in the Southern Hemisphere.
It has a slender build, and breeding adults grow long central tail feathers. Many birds show no prominent long tail streamers outside the breeding season.
Eight adult Long-tailed Jaegers breeding in northeast Greenland and Svalbard wore light-level geolocators, which recorded their annual movements. All eight wintered in the Southern Hemisphere: five along southwest Africa and three farther south, reaching the southwest Indian Ocean. Their journeys measured 43,900–54,200 km over a year.
In autumn, all but one tracked bird paused in the Grand Banks region off Newfoundland; five used it again in spring, with some spring stays lasting more than six weeks. Two birds also stopped off Iberia and near the Azores. The study connects Arctic breeding sites with feeding and resting areas across the North and South Atlantic.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Many of the tracked birds used the Grand Banks off Newfoundland during both autumn and spring. The authors identify important marine areas in the North and South Atlantic and state that sustainable management of these ocean basins can benefit Long-tailed Jaegers and other trans-equatorial migrants.