WATER BIRDS 



as a hawk, dart in amongst the snowy terns, 

 and scatter them to the right and left. Now 

 he singles out one bird and chases it vigor- 

 ously as it twists and turns in a vain effort 

 to escape. Wearied at last, the tern drops a 

 jfish, which is at once seized by the intruder 

 before it strikes the water. This is the way 

 the jaegers, as these hunters are called, obtain 

 their daily food, for they are robber barons, 

 not laboring men. But '' there are as good 

 fish in the sea as ever were caught," and the 

 terns do not suffer much, I suppose, from this 

 tyrann3^ Occasionally^ however, the victim 

 appears to lose its temper and turns and 

 chases the jaeger. The screaming is incessant 

 and the two twist about in a bewildering way, 

 as each tries to rise abovie the other, but I have 

 never seen any harm result. There are three 

 kinds of jaegers to be seen at Ipswich, the 

 Pomarine, the parasitic and the long-tailed, 

 and all have a light and a dark plumage, which 

 are as different from each other in appearance 

 as the red fox is from the black fox. 



Perhaps the most spectacular performance 

 by birds along this coast is the herring fishing 

 in which the gannets indulge. Gannets are 

 migrants only, birds of passage, and are often 



135 



