A long-winged tern with a pointed bill that catches small fish in shallow coastal waters.
Breeding adults have a black crest and orange bill; nonbreeders have a white forehead.
Royal terns sometimes move north from their breeding coast before heading south. Adults nesting on an island in Virginia travelled north along the Atlantic seaboard during summer and autumn; the tracked birds reached as far as Jamaica Bay, New York. Their journeys therefore included coasts north of their breeding colony before movement toward southern non-breeding areas.
In 2022, researchers fitted transmitters to adults on Rip-Raps Island and analysed movements of nine birds. Tracking duration differed among individuals, and the analysis used more than 19,000 hourly locations between June and early December. Monthly average positions shifted northeast until September or October, then southwest. One individual continued transmitting beyond the main analysis period until February 2023, when its last position was near Puerto Cortes, Honduras. The authors proposed that the northward movement might track seasonal changes in prey-fish distribution. The transmitters revealed a journey north before a later movement south.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Road and tunnel expansion made the former South Island nesting site unsuitable. In 2020, Virginia DWR prepared replacement habitat at nearby Fort Wool, converting lawn to sand, installing barriers to keep chicks out of interior spaces, and using decoys and calls to attract seabirds. The agency reported banding more than 2,100 royal tern chicks at Fort Wool alone on 4 July that year.