LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN GULLS AND TERNS. 221 



Casual records. — Accidental in Texas (Corpus Christi). 

 Egg dates. — Gulf of California : Seven records, April 1 to May 1 ; 

 four records, April 9 to May 1. 



STERNA SANDVICENSIS ACUFLAVIDA Cabot. 

 CABOT'S TEEN. 



HABITS. 



Among the sandy islands and shoals of our southern Atlantic and 

 Gulf coasts we find this fine tern, everywhere intimately associated 

 with its larger relative, the royal tern ; like Damon and Pythias, they 

 are always together and seldom is one found without the other. The 

 same resorts seem to be congenial to both, but there is probably some 

 stronger bond of friendship which we do not understand. Our 

 American bird is only subspecifically distinct from the Sandwich 

 or Boy's tern of the Eastern Hemisphere, differing from it in the 

 color pattern of the primaries. This makes the species cosmopolitan 

 and gives it a wide range. The European bird ranges farther north 

 in summer than ours, which may be due to the difference in climate. 



What little evidence we have on the subject seems to indicate that 

 this species has extended, and is perhaps still extending, its breeding 

 range northward along our Atlantic coast. This, if it is a fact, is 

 both interesting and remarkable when compared with the histories 

 of other species, nearly all of which have been reduced in numbers 

 and restricted in range. In Audubon's time, Cabot's tern was not 

 supposed to breed north of Florida. Royal Shoal Island, in Pamlico 

 Sound, North Carolina, had been protected and watched carefully, 

 as a sea-bird breeding resort, for five years before Mr. T. Gilbert 

 Pearson (1908) discovered the first breeding colony, over 20 pairs, 

 of Cabot's terns on this island on June 25, 1907. Mr. Pearson says, 

 in reporting the incident: 



This bird has not previously been noticed breeding among the protected colo- 

 nies in the State, and in fact, so far as I am aware, there have been no records 

 of its occurrence in North Carolina, except one reported by Dr. Louis B. Bishop 

 (MS.), from Pea Island, August 22, 1904. 



Since that time I believe that Cabot's tern has bred regularly on the 

 North Carolina coast and in larger numbers. And now comes the 

 latest news from Mr. Harold H. Bailey (1913), telling of the exten- 

 sion of its breeding range into Virginia. He says : 



This is an extremely rare bird on our coast, and it was not until the summer 

 of 1912 that a set of two eggs of this species was secured from one of our 

 coastal islands. As there has been a small colony of these birds breeding on 

 the North Carolina coast for the last few years, the birds with us are prob- 

 ably stragglers from that colony. 



