STERNA. ;i2') 



the island, some under bushes, others under stones, but the most of them in crevices between 

 iari^e rocks, some of which were far beyond arms reach and ahnost in total daricness. Upon 

 this island tliey appeared to have started nesting much later, and I did not see any younj,' birds. 

 Their eggs were in all sta;,'es of incubation. Many of the birds had very little fear of me, as I 

 caught some of them while sitting upon their single egg; others would just move a foot or two 

 from the nest, without making any attempt to fiy away. Those I caught, when liberated, 

 would Hy away with a peculiar Inioyant (light, uttering cries not unlike the barking of a very 

 small dog." 



As will be seen from the preceding notes the different sites selected as nesting-places are 

 extremely \aried. 



Only one egg is laid for a sitting, and in a large number now before me, although varying 

 considerably in shape and disposition of their marlcings, are chiefly of a colour type that 

 easily distinguishes them from the eggs of other species of the Sub-family Sterxin.i;, the 

 only ones they are likely to be confounded with are some varieties of the eggs of Stfnia iiiedia or 

 S.fiiliginosd. Typically they are oval in form, although swollen ovals and nearly true ellipses are 

 not uncommon, the shell being close-grained, smooth and lustreless, and of a chalky or dull 

 white ground colour, over which is uniformly distributed rounded freckles, dots, spots and a few 

 small irregular-shaped blotches of reddish-purple and similar but fainter underlying markings of 

 dull purplish-grey. On some specimens the markings consist almost entirely of freckles and 

 dots, on others there may be a cap of large confluent blotches on the thicker end. A rarer type 

 has the ground colour of a rich creamy-buff with many conspicuous irregular-shaped blotches 

 and blurs intermingled or scattered between the dots and spots. As a rule, however, the markings 

 whether small or large, are fairly evenly distributed over the surface of the shell ; it is a rare 

 exception to iind them at one end. Two eggs in the Australian Museum Collection, received 

 from the Trustees of the Western Australian Museum, Perth, and taken by Mr. Otto Lipfert 

 on the gth December, 1894, on Long Island, Houtman Abrolhos, Western Australia, measure : — 

 Length (A) r88 x 1-3 inches; (B) 175 x 1-25 inches. Two eggs taken in the same locality 

 in November, 1903, measure respectively: — Length (A) 178 x 1-25 inches; (B) 176 x 1-27 

 inches. Two eggs taken by Mr. Frank Hislop, on the 15th November, 1896, on Hope Island, 

 lying off the entrance to the Bloomfield Kiver, North-eastern Queensland, measure : — Length 



(A) 1-85 X 1-29 inches; (B) 1-84 x 1-33 inches; the latter egg is represented on Plate B. 

 XXIV., fig. 11. Si-xeggs in the Australian Museum Collection, procured by Mr. Allan McCulloch 

 and Mr. Bertie Jardine on the nth October, 1907, on a rocky islet off the coast of Albany Island, 

 and about six miles from Cape York, measure respectively: — Length (A) 1-87 x 1-31 inches; 



(B) 175 x 1-24 inches; (C) 176 x 1-33 inches; (D) 177 x 1-33 inches; (E) 1-87 x 1-29 

 inches; (F) 1-87 x 1-33 inches. Two eggs in Mr. Thos. P.Austin's collection, taken by him 

 on the 2oth November, 1907, on Redbill Island, about seventy-five miles from Mackay, measure 

 respectively:— Length (A) 1-84 x 1-36 inches; (B) 1-91 x 1-31 inches. Mr. Austin informed 

 me the island is about three hundred feet high, and no birds of this species was found breeding 

 on the lower half of the island, the eggs being laid underneath rocks from one hundred and fifty 

 feet lip to the summit. 



September and the four following months constitute the breeding season of the Panayan 

 Tern on the islands adjacent to its haunts in Australia. Although Mr. A. McCulloch and Mr. 

 B. Jardine found eggs and young ones as early as the nth October, eggs are more often found 

 at the latter end of November and early in December. 



