The black noddy or white-capped noddy (''Anous minutus'') is a

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

from the

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Laridae Laridae is a family of seabirds in the order Charadriiformes that includes the gulls, terns, skimmers and kittiwakes. It includes around 100 species arranged into 22 genera. They are an adaptable group of mostly aerial birds found worldwide. ...

. It is a medium-sized species of

tern Terns are seabirds in the family Laridae that have a worldwide distribution and are normally found near the sea, rivers, or wetlands. Terns are treated as a subgroup of the family Laridae which includes gulls and skimmers and consists of e ...

with black plumage and a white cap. It closely resembles the

lesser noddy The lesser noddy (''Anous tenuirostris''), also known as the sooty noddy, is a seabird in the family Laridae. It is found near the coastlines of Comoros, Kenya, India, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, Sri Lanka and United Arab Emirates ...

(''Anous tenuirostris'') with which it was at one time considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organis ...

. The black noddy has slightly darker plumage and dark rather than pale lores.

Taxonomy

The black noddy was first formally described by German naturalist and lawyer

Friedrich Boie Friedrich Boie (4 June 1789 – 3 March 1870) was a German entomologist, herpetologist, ornithologist, and lawyer.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universit ...

in 1844 under its current binomial name. The

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

name ''Anous'' is

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

for "stupid" or "foolish". The specific name ''minutus'' is the Latin for "small". There are seven subspecies: *''A. m. worcesteri'' (McGregor, 1911) – Cavilli Island and

Tubbataha Reef The Tubbataha Natural Park, also known as the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park ( fil, Bahurang Tubbataha), is a protected area of the Philippines located in the middle of the Sulu Sea. The marine and bird sanctuary consists of two huge atolls (name ...

( Sulu Sea) *''A. m. minutus''

Boie Boie is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Friedrich Boie (1789–1870), German entomologist, herpetologist, ornithologist, and lawyer * Heinrich Boie Heinrich Boie (4 May 1794, Meldorf, Holstein – 4 September 1827, Bogor, ...

, 1844 – northeast Australia and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

Tuamotu Archipelago The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands (french: Îles Tuamotu, officially ) are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extendin ...

*''A. m. marcusi'' (Bryan, 1903) – Marcus and Wake Islands through

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and ...

to the

Caroline Islands The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the ce ...

*''A. m. melanogenys''

Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...

, 1846 – Hawaiian Islands *''A. m. diamesus'' ( Heller and

Snodgrass The family name Snodgrass is said to originate from lands in the parish of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, known as Snodgrasse, or Snodgers, at a bend in the River Garnock at 55°38' north, 4°42' west, which were rented out in plots. Both forms are ...

, 1901) –

Clipperton Island Clipperton Island ( or ; ) is an uninhabited, coral atoll in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is from Paris, France, from Papeete, Tahiti, and from Mexico. It is an overseas state private property of France under direct authority of the Minis ...

(off western

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

) and

Cocos Island Cocos Island ( es, Isla del Coco) is an island in the Pacific Ocean administered by Costa Rica, approximately southwest of the Costa Rican mainland. It constitutes the 11th of the 13 districts of Puntarenas Canton of the Province of Puntarena ...

(off western Costa Rica) *''A. m. americanus'' ( Mathews, 1912) – islands in the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

*''A. m. atlanticus'' ( Mathews, 1912) – tropical islands in the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

Description

The black noddy has a length of , a wingspan of and a weight of . It has dark plumage and a pale crown. There is a small white crescent under each eye and a white spot above. It has long tapering wings and a truncated tail. The sharply pointed bill is black. The feet are fully webbed and are black in most subspecies but orange in ''melanogenys''.

Behaviour

These birds may have become known as "noddies" because of the behaviour of both sexes as they constantly dip their heads during their breeding display. They are very tolerant of humans even to the extent that they can be picked up off the nest. They feed on fish and squid which they gather by flying low over the surface of the sea and picking them up. They may associate with other seabirds in areas where predatory fish are driving small fish to the surface. The nests of these birds consist of a level platform, often created in the branches of trees by a series of dried leaves covered with bird droppings. One egg is laid each season, and nests are re-used in subsequent years. The trees used for this purpose are various but the ''

Pisonia ''Pisonia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the four o'clock flower family, Nyctaginaceae. It was named for Dutch physician and naturalist Willem Piso (1611–1678). Certain species in this genus are known as catchbirdtrees, birdcatcher trees o ...

'' is most often used, and in large trees, there are often several nests. The guano produced by these birds adds large quantities of nutrients to the soil which is of great importance to the plant communities on coral islands.

Distribution

The black noddy has a worldwide distribution in tropical and subtropical seas, with

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

widespread in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

and more scattered across the Caribbean, central

and in the northeast

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

. At sea it is usually seen close to its breeding colonies within 80 km of shore. Birds return to their colonies, or to other islands, to roost at night.

Cultural significance

This is one of the landfinding birds whose daily foraging flights were traditionally employed by Pacific navigators to locate unseen atolls.

Gallery

File:Anous minutus by Gregg Yan 01.jpg, Nesting in Tubbataha Reef National Park, Philippines File:Anous minutus.JPG, Calling at colony. File:Anous minutus -nesting -Heron Island-8.jpg, Nesting on Heron Island, Australia File:Black noddy and chick.jpg, Black noddy with chick File:Black Noddy Head.jpg, Black noddy head File:Common Noddy head.JPG,

Common noddy The brown noddy or common noddy (''Anous stolidus'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. The largest of the noddies, it can be told from the closely related black noddy by its larger size and plumage, which is dark brown rather than black. The ...

head - note stouter beak, greyer cap File:Black Noddy Tern.JPG, Black noddy Anous minutus MHNT.ZOO.2010.11.131.19.jpg, ''Anous minutus'' - MHNT

References

* Guager, V.H. (1999) Black Noddy ''Anous minutus'', in ''The Birds of North America, No412 (Poole, A. and Gill, F. eds) The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and The American Ornithologists’ Union, Washington, D.C.

External links

Midway atoll US Fish and Wildlife page on the black noddy

USDA information
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1273772 Anous

black noddy The black noddy or white-capped noddy (''Anous minutus'') is a seabird from the family Laridae. It is a medium-sized species of tern with black plumage and a white cap. It closely resembles the lesser noddy (''Anous tenuirostris'') with which it ...

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