THE SANDWICH TERN 233 



At the Feme Islands the birds are very regular in their 

 appearance, and upon their first arrival they only stay near 

 the islands an hour or so each morning, until the serious 

 business of the year commences. In this respect they put 

 the observer very much in mind of Eooks. Unfortunately 

 the Sandwich Tern has become much scarcer at its old 

 familiar breeding-]3laces — its eggs have been wantonly 

 gathered in wholesale numbers by every tourist and sight- 

 seer, and in some years its colony has been entirely destroyed 

 by high tides. Notwithstanding these misfortunes there is 

 still a very important colony of Sandwich Terns at the 

 islands, and every lover of bird-life will join in the desire of 

 seeing them increase and prosper. Upon my last visit to the 

 Feme Islands the birds had just lost all their eggs by a high 

 tide, and the pretty shells strewed the beach in great numbers. 

 The poor birds w^ere disconsolately flying over the ruins, and 

 displayed very little anxiety at my presence. Some of the 

 more enterprising birds, however, had commenced laying 

 again on a distant part of the island, and a little branch 

 colony was established on the neighbouring islet. 



On a previous visit, however, I was much more fortunate, 

 and had ample opportunities of observing this graceful bird's 

 nesting economy. As w^e rowed to the grassy island on 

 which the colony of birds had established themselves, the 

 Arctic Terns were the first to take wing. We passed a 

 colony of this bird on the beach and wandered towards the 

 centre of the island, where the Sandwich Terns were sailing 

 anxiously about the air uttering their loud shrill screams. 

 This time they had laid their eggs much farther from the 

 shore, on the summit of a little bare plateau. On our way to 

 the main colony we passed numbers of nests in the short 

 grass and sea-campion, but the great centre of attraction was 

 the bare patch of ground, on which there must have been 

 hundreds and hundreds of nests, some of them not being more 



