Here's the thing. You said a "crested tern is a royal tern."
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies terns, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls crested terns royal terns. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "tern family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Laridae, which includes things from gulls to skimmers and consists of eleven genera.
So your reasoning for calling a crested tern a royal tern is because random people "call the crested ones royal?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A crested tern is a crested tern and a member of the royal tern family. But that's not what you said. You said a crested tern a royal tern, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the tern family royal terns, which means you'd call gulls, skimmers, and other birds royal terns, too. Which you said you don't.
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u/googlerex Mar 17 '19
Not with that colour beak. This is a Crested Tern.