THE COMMON TERN. 



563 



hard by; and at the Little Chicken, where our illustrations were secured 

 the following season by Mr. Walter C. Metz, of Newark. The latter island 

 boasts a clump of willows (Salix amygdaloides Andr.) and is half covered with 

 a growth of Smart-weed {Polygonum lapathifolium L.. P. persicaria L., etc.). 

 Here the soft bedded masses of drift-wood proved to be the favorite nesting 

 site, altho gravel was not forsworn. At one spot I dug my toe into an empty 

 nest for a base and "fetching a compass" with my hands, touched eggs or 

 young in fifteen nests. Something like a thousand Terns claimed this reef for a 

 home, while two hundred or more of visiting Black Terns, having done with 



NEST AND EGGS OF 



MMON I l',RX. 



domestic cares long since, mingled idly in the circling throng, or betook them- 

 selves to undisturbed areas. 



The breeze of early morning having died down, the sun beat upon the 

 rocks unmercifully, cooking, I fear, many a tender baby Tern. We got away 

 as hastily as might be, not to interfere with the ministrations of the anxious 

 parents. Never have I felt so like a bold, bad buccaneer as upon this occasion, 

 and I warrant the Tern population heaved a sigh of relief when Bluebeard and 

 Blackbeard with Captain Kid(d) finally pushed from shore. 



-More romantic still, was the scene at North Harbor Island, some six miles 

 further to the northwest. Here a limestone knob, two acres in extent, rough- 

 chiseled by the ancient glacier, supports a skirting fringe of gravel on one side, 

 and a considerable grove of hackberrv trees in the center. As we drew near 

 this charming spot, toward sunset, the island with its attendant halo of timor- 

 ous Terns, rose out of the western sea like the fabled Atlantis in miniature, an 



