course in order to take advantage of prevailing winds. The average Arctic tern lives about 30 years and will, based on the above research, travel some 2.4 e6km during its lifetime, the equivalent of a roundtrip from Earth to the Moon more than three times.

A 2013 tracking study of half a dozen Arctic terns breeding in the Netherlands shows average annual migrations of c. 48700 km. On their way south, these birds roughly followed the coastlines of Europe and Africa.

In a 2015-2017 study of Arctic terns on the Farne Islands in Northumberland,

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