Inca Tern - Larosterna inca

These lovely birds live off the coasts of Chile and Peru and they feed by plunge diving and surface dipping for anchovies and other small fish also crustaceans and offal. The male and the female have mustaches and scientists have looked into the mustaches and they believe that the length of the Inca Terns mustaches is a reliable signal of its body condition, and the longer the mustaches the better, they appear to mate with a bird with a similar length of mustaches and they bond together for a long period of time, a juveniles only get their mustache when they are about two years old and they live for roughly 14 years. These birds have two breeding seasons per year, one is April until July and then October until December they lay between one and three eggs per clutch and the eggs are tan or light brown with dark brown spots, both the male and female incubate the eggs and when the eggs hatch it is both the parents job to feed them and the young birds fledge when they are about seven weeks old.

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