310 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



open. Those that were on the wing flew round 

 and round us, creaking and bleating, and often 

 so near that every detail of form and color was 

 vivid in our eyes. The immense majority were 

 royal terns, big birds with orange beaks. With 

 them were a very few Caspian terns, still bigger, 

 and with bright-red beaks, and quite a number 

 of Cabot's terns, smaller birds with yellow- 

 tipped black beaks. These were all nesting 

 together, in the same nurseries. 



It has been said on excellent authority that 

 terns can always be told from gulls because, 

 whereas the latter carry their beaks horizontally, 

 the terns carry their bills pointing downward, 

 "like a mosquito." My own observations do 

 not agree with this statement. When hovering 

 over water where there are fish, and while 

 watching for their prey, terns point the bill 

 downward, just as pelicans do in similar cir- 

 cumstances; just as gulls often do when they 

 are seeking to spy food below them. But 

 normally, on the great majority of the occasions 

 when I saw them, the terns, like the gulls, 

 carried the bill in the same plane as the body. 



On another island we found a small colony 

 of Forster's tern; and we saw sooty terns, and 

 a few of the diminutive least terns. But I 

 was much more surprised to find on, or rather 



