Black noddy
species of bird
The black noddy (Anous minutus), also known as white-capped noddy, is a species of tern in the family Laridae. It is a medium-sized seabird with black plumage and a white cap that closely resembles the lesser noddy with which it was at one time considered conspecific. 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 in 1844 under its current binomial name. The genus name Anous is ancient Greek 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 (Sulu Sea)
A. m. minutus Boie, 1844 – northeast Australia and New Guinea to Tuamotu Archipelago
A. m. marcusi (Bryan, 1903) – Marcus and Wake Islands through Micronesia to the Caroline Islands
A. m.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Black noddy” as species of bird. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of bird. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1273772. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1844, 1911 and 1903.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black noddy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.