Brown noddies
| Brown noddy | |
|---|---|
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| Brown noddies nesting in Tubbataha Reef National Park in the Philippines. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Laridae |
| Genus: | Anous |
| Species: | A. stolidus |
| Binomial name | |
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Anous stolidus (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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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 brown noddy is a tropical seabird with a worldwide distribution, ranging from Hawaii to the Tuamotu Archipelago and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, from the Red Sea to the Seychelles and Australia in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean to Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean. The brown noddy is colonial, usually nesting on elevated situations on cliffs or in short trees or shrubs. It only occasionally nests on the ground. A single egg is laid by the female of a pair each breeding season.
The first formal description of the brown noddy was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Sterna stolida. The genus Anous was introduced by the English naturalist James Francis Stephens in 1826. The genus name Anous is Ancient Greek for "stupid" or "foolish". The specific name stolidus is Latin and also means "stupid" or "foolish".
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Wikipedia