414 LARIDA. 
type of A. ridgwayt on Socorro Island !!, where it was breeding. Grayson had formerly 
noted that a Noddy replaced the Sooty Tern on the Revillagigedo group of islands 
(cf. Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. xiv. p.301). It is also doubtless this bird which Salvin 
observed off the Pacific coast of Guatemala’. Grayson found A. pileatus breeding in 
communities on the north end of Isabel Island, the nests being placed under over- 
hanging rocks and quite inaccessible 8. 
Mr. Nelson noticed numbers of these Terns at sea between San Blas and the Tres 
Marias Islands, off which a few were seen during May. The species was common at 
the end of April on Isabel at the north-eastern point of the island. Here it inhabited 
the rugged faces of the cliffs and rocks and was very tame. He writes :—‘ While 
perched on the black lava-cliffs, their dark colour blended so closely with the 
background that it was very difficult to distinguish them, even when within fair 
gunshot. The day we left the island we visited their resting-place and fired a dozen 
or more shots while they were on the rocks or flying about, but the noise of the reports 
did not seem to give them much alarm. They would circle out a short distance, and, 
after hovering for a few moments over their killed or wounded companions floating in 
the water, would return to the same part of the cliff from which they had just been 
started. ‘They were not heard to utter any notes, and the silence with which they 
would suddenly appear out of the cliff, and then return and vanish again in its gloomy 
face, produced an uncanny effect.” Mr. Nelson says that, when at sea, the Noddies 
fly close along the surface of the waves with long graceful wing-strokes, their dark 
colour and habit of keeping close to the water causing them on many occasions to be 
mistaken for Petrels !. 
Mr. Anthony found this species breeding in abundance on a small rock about a mile 
off the western end of Socorro Island. After several unsuccessful attempts, a landing 
was made at the risk of life and limb, and a series of eggs obtained. The latter were 
all laid on the bare rock, without any attempt at nest-building, and were often placed 
on protruding shelves but little wider than the egg, so that it was a mystery how they 
escaped rolling off into the sea". 
Three eggs from Socorro, sent to the British Museum by Mr. Anthony, are described 
by Mr. Oates as remarkably pale in colour, the ground being white or very pale cream- 
colour, with a cluster of rusty-brown spots or blotches at the large end. These brown 
spots are almost entirely absent from the remainder of the egg, while the pale purple 
underlying spots are more evenly distributed over the whole shell 14, 
MICRANOUS. 
Micranous, Saunders, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, iv. p. xix (1895); Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xxv. p. 143 
(1896). 
Micranous embraces a small group of Noddy Terns which are of sombre plumage, 
