340 



WHITE TKRN. 



in the Northern Territory, Roci^ingham Bay, in Queensland and New South Wales. In the 

 " Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum " the late Mr. Howard Saunders has listed over 

 forty specimens of Gi'^'/s landida from different localities, hut not one from any part of Australia, 

 or any of the islands contiguous to it. 



I have never known an instance of a specimen being obtained, nor have I seen a properly 

 authenticated record of its actual occurrence in Australian waters. In the Australian Museum 



Collection the nearest locality to 

 the Australian continent of a 

 specimen being obtained is one 

 labelled by Dr. E. P. Ramsay, 

 "Shot between Lord Howe 

 Island and Port Jackson, 1S78." 

 Who procured it, and in what 

 latitude, it is not stated, and 

 Lord Howe Island (where it 

 does not occur) is four hundred 

 and twenty miles north-east of 

 Port Jaclcson. The specimens 

 in the Australian Museum, in- 

 cluding eggs, were obtained 

 principally on Norfolk Island, and chieHy forwarded by Dr. P. H. Metcalfe. Other skins were 

 received from Lieutenant R. E. Vaughan, of H.M.S. " Pylades," procured by him on Pitcairn 

 Island. Mr. A. \i. Stephen showed me a photograph of the egg of the White Tern, laid on the 

 branch of a tree on Henderson or Elizabeth Island, an outlier of the Paumoto Ciroup or Low 

 Archipelago, in the South Pacihc in September, 1907. He also informed me that he found the 

 single eggs of this species laid on the top of bare rocks on the highest part of the island. 



The late Dr. P. H. Metcalfe sent me the following notes from Norfolk Island: — "The 

 White Tern (Gygis ciuididn) is the most beautiful of all the Terns that breed here. It lays a 

 single egg for a sitting, and it is deposited on the branch of a tree, generally at a good distance 

 from the ground. A depression in the bark, at a rough surface, is generally chosen, but no 

 attempt at a nest is ever made. Gy,i;is Candida does not breed like Am^ii^ iiirlanogcnys, in colonies, 

 but it returns to the same spot on the same tree season after season, and that after its single 

 egg has been removed, generally from thirty to forty feet up, but I ha\'e found them as low as 

 twenty and as high as sixty feet. The trees usually selected are the White Oalc ( Laquiiaria 

 palci'soiii), the Ironwood ( Notchea loiigi folia) and the Bloodwood {Ijalof^liia liirida ), in sheltered 

 situations. The eggs, which are handsomely marked, vary in size, some being nearly round, 

 others oval. The parent bird, when sitting, is very tame, and I have seen it lifted up and the 

 egg removed from under it. This Tern breeds on several different parts of Norfolk Island, but 

 I have not known it do so on the adjacent islands. It is fairly numerous. I have taken its eggs 

 in October, and as late as February." 



The single egg laid by the bird for a sitting is deposited in a slight cavity, or in a depression 

 in the roughened surface on the bare branch of a tree, just sufficient to hold the egg in position, 

 usually at a considerable distance from the ground, in some valley or sheltered situation. For the 

 accompanying nesting-place and egg, taken in it, together with a pair of skins of this species, the 

 Trustees are indebted to Dr. P. H. Metcalfe, who forwarded them in January, 1903, the nesting- 

 place and egg being talcen on the 6th of that month at Steel's Point, Norfolk Island. This 

 nesting-place was a hole in the top of a branch, where a thinner branch had rotted out. 

 Another subsequently received was merely a narrow fissure on the top of a horizontal branch. 



* Saunders, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus., Vol. XXV., pp. 151-2 (1S96). 



