An Arctic tern in flight taking a fish back to it’s young chick. The Arctic tern is a seabird of the tern family. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America (as far south as Brittany and Massachusetts). The species is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast. Recent studies have shown average annual roundtrip lengths of about 44,100 miles for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland and 56,000 miles for birds nesting in the Netherlands. These are by far the longest migrations known in the animal kingdom. They have a length of 11–15 inches and a wingspan of 26–30 inches and may live to 30 years of age.