When is the Android Fragment onCreateOptionsMenu method called?

Android FAQ: When is the Android Fragment onCreateOptionsMenu method called?

I was just working through a problem with an Android Menu and MenuItem, and added some debug code to the methods in my Android Fragment, and found that the onCreateOptionsMenu method is called after onStart. I didn’t put Log/debug code in every activity lifecycle method, but for the ones I did add logging code to, the specific order of the fragment method calls looked like this:

1. onCreate
2. onCreateView
3. onActivityCreated
4. onStart
5. onCreateOptionsMenu

I was surprised, I thought onCreateOptionsMenu was called earlier — which led to my null pointer exceptions — but this is the way the calls worked with Android 7.x.

The Android method lifecycle image comes from this android.com page.