The Land of the Hills and the Glens 



non-breeding birds, meaning to stay hereabouts through the 

 summer ? 



On this day I examined several terns' nests. In each 

 case the eggs were laid on fine sand, and the nesting hollows 

 were lined with small pieces of shell brought from another 

 part of the shore. Near by there was nesting a solitary 

 pair of lesser terns. Flying with short and sharp wing- 

 beats and uttering her pleasing call, the hen left her eggs 

 while I was yet some distance away. There were two eggs 

 in her nesting hollow, but it was devoid of even a lining 

 of shells, the eggs reposing on a layer of fine sand. It 

 is not usual for one pair of lesser terns to nest by them- 

 selves; the birds generally breed in small colonies and have 

 the ringed plover as their companion, from whose eggs, 

 indeed, their own are sometimes difficult to distinguish. 



All through August the tribe of the sea swallows are 

 rearing their young. I have seen eggs as late as the middle 

 of that month, and it is not until September that the birds set 

 out on their southern migration. A Highland boatman — a 

 keen observer — near whose home many terns nest, tells me 

 how on a September day all the sea swallows from the island 

 near his home congregate together. Then, rising to a great 

 height and wheeling and screaming, they gather themselves 

 into line and set out on their journey. But, strangely enough, 

 it is not to the south, making towards Skerryvore and the 

 Irish coast, that they set their course, but due north. Can 

 it be that they make the passage round Cape Wrath and 

 the north of Scotland and go south by way of the North Sea, 

 or is their northerly flight a short one only, to join themselves, 

 perhaps, with other colonies in the neighbourhood? 



Even in October one sees terns fishing along the 

 coast, and a Hebridean fisherman assured me that on one 

 occasion he had seen a solitary individual as late as 

 December. 



Being such late nesters, the terns, when they set out for 

 the south, leave behind them numbers of their young of 



