294 BULLETIlSr 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL. MUSEUM. 



Search failing to reveal any sign of the young birds, the camera was left to 

 play detective. Focusing it on the empty nest and surrounding it with " cat- 

 tails," we attached some 70 feet of tubing and retired to the high grasses of a 

 neighboring dry bank. But we were not hidden from the tern. She hovered 

 over us, shrieliing her disgust with scarcely a pause, turning her long beak to 

 this side and that, as she brought each eye in turn to bear. Finally, her crailcs 

 gi*ew softer, and, fluttering over the nest, she uttered a soft toheent-wheent- 

 wheent, which probably meant to her downings " It's all right ; come back home 

 now." After half a minute of this calling she fluttered lower and dropped out 

 of sight behind the reed barriers. Apparently, there could be little doubt that 

 with her voice she had conjured the chicks back to the nest. 



Acting on this belief, a dozen rapid strokes were given to the bicycle pump at 

 the end of the tube, and the tern promptly flew up into the air, uttering her loud 

 craik-craik in a way that plainly showed something had happened close by to 

 alarm her, and thus plainly told us that the shutter on the camera had been 

 sprung. Instantly we rushed through the mud and water to the nest, but only 

 to find it as empty as before. 



Inserting a fresh plate in the camera, we returned to our hiding place. Again 

 the tern scolded us vigorously, but after a while, as before, her fears seemed to 

 decrease ; she gradually drew nearer to the nest and eventually dropped lightly 

 down into the reeds, evidently on it. After waiting a moment for her to settle 

 herself, the bicycle pump was again used, and at the twelfth plunge of the pis- 

 ton the tern shot upward as though she were blown from the end of the tube. 

 We accepted her action as an unfailing indication that the shutter was properly 

 released and once more splashed quickly through the water to see what we might 

 see ; but only an empty nest met our gaze, and we were as ignorant of the fate 

 of the young terns as we had been in the beginning. 



The continued anxiety of the parents, however, encouraged us to continue our 

 efforts to solve the mysterious disappearance of their chicks, and, after several 

 more attempts similar to those just related, we reached the nest just in time to 

 see the two little ones paddling away into the surrounding reeds, like ducklings. 

 This caused us to believe that on each occasion they had returned to the nest 

 only to desert it again as the old bird left them ; but it was not until the plates 

 were developed, a month later, that we could really put together the whole 

 story. 



The young birds are fed by their parents until they are able to fly. 

 Rev. W. F. Henninger writes to me that they seem to be fed on 

 " spiders, water scorpions, flies, and perhajjs other swamp-loving in- 

 sects, fragments of the first three being found in the nests with 

 young." Mr, Frank M. Woodruff has sent me a photograph showing 

 a black tern alighting on its nest with a large dragon fly in its bill, 

 presumably for its young. The young terns develop very fast and 

 soon learn to fly, but their parents continue to feed them more or 

 less, sitting in long rows on the fences about the marshes or on pieces 

 of drift wood waiting to be fed. Audubon (1840) says that he has 

 " seen the parent birds feed them on the wing in the manner of 

 swallows." 



Plumages. — The young of the black tern, when first hatched, is a 

 swarthy individual, entirely different from the young of other terns, 

 It is thickly covered with long, soft, silky down, " cinnamon drab ' 



