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alone, surrounded on all but the sea side with numbers of Sooty Terns ; unlike the latter species, 

 however, they did not allow one to handle them, hut left the e<,'f,' when one was about a yard 

 away from them. All the ef,'^s were fresh, and apparently on that part of the island the main 

 body of the birds had not arrived. On the same island in the month of December, Mr. A. Iv. 

 McCulloch found the Noddy breeding in company, and only on bushes and low trees, the single 

 egg being deposited in a well constructed nest formed chiefly of sticks and seaweed, several 

 nests being built on the same branch. The islanders informed me that the birds all leave 

 together after the breeding season is over, and the young are strong enough to tly, generally at 

 the latter end of February or early in March. 



Dr. W. Macgillivray sent the following notes from Broken Hill, South-western New South 

 Wales: — "All the way up the Queensland coast I had frequent opportunities of observing 

 numbers of Aiions stoliihis, as they harried the shoals of little (ish hunted to the surface by enemies 

 from beneath. This Tern seemed to me to fly nearer the surface of the sea than most of the 



NODniES NESTING ON RAT ISLAND, IIOUTMAN AllROLHOS. 



Other species of Tern, both when fishing and when flying out to a fishing ground. Their flight 

 is swift, and the dark body makes them look more compact than is the case with the lighter 

 plumaged Terns; in the manner and method of their flight they often reminded me of the Pigeon 

 tribe. In fishing the Noddy either dives on to the surface of the water and secures its prey 

 without closing the wings, or else dives completely beneath the water, but not more than just 

 below, as the bird rises immediately, shakes the water off, and resumes its flight ; this procedure 

 I noted in the case of other Terns, as well as the Noddy. On 20th October, 1910, I found this 

 species nesting freely on No. 10 of the Howick Group of islands, off the North Queensland 

 coast ; the island, which is a small vegetated sandbank about fonr hundred yards long by about 

 one hundred and fifty yards in width, covered in the centre with coarse grass and a low shrubby 

 growth, was occupied by vast numbers of this species and their nests; the latter were placed 

 either on the grass, on the ground, or up on the low shrubby plants; they were constructed 

 almost invariably of seaweed, lined with sea shells. The nests contained mostly the one egg, 

 which is the invariable clutch, though there were a fair number of young birds, from the newly 



