11. It provides feeding habitat during the breeding season for 75 90 red-billed tropicbirds . 12. Birds breeding on Pitcairn include the fairy tern, common noddy and red-tailed tropicbird . 13. The great frigate bird and the white-tailed tropicbird are other spectacular residents of the atoll. 14. R�union is home to a variety of birds such as the white-tailed tropicbird ( ). 15. Tropicbird chicks have slower growth than nearshore birds, and they tend to accumulate fat deposits while young.16. Tropicbirds are a family, Phaethontidae, of tropical pelagic seabirds now classified in their own order Phaethontiformes.17. The tropicbirds 'call is typically a loud, piercing, shrill, but grating whistle, or crackle. 18. The white-tailed tropicbird breeds on tropical islands laying a single egg directly onto the ground or a cliff ledge. 19. The island is home to an endemic subspecies of white-tailed tropicbird ( " Phaethon lepturus europae " ). 20. Sailors nicknamed the tropicbird the " bosun bird " due to the call's resemblance to a bosun's whistle.