i66 GULL GROUP 



the upper-parts mottled with brown. In the chick the general ground- 

 colour is huffish with a black stripe down each side of the bod)', a 

 black line above the eye, and black mottlings on the back and head. 



Romney ^larsh in Kent, Crowland Wash and other parts of the 

 fen-district of Lincolnshire, and the Broads and other swampy districts 

 of Norfolk, were the favourite British breeding-haunts of the blue dove, 

 as the species was localh- called. In the first half of the last century 

 the nests of this handsome bird might have been found by hundreds 

 in some of the districts mentioned, and more especially amid the alder 

 swamps of Norfolk ; but after the year 1853, by which time it had 

 already become scarce, it had practically ceased to breed in the last- 

 named county, although a nest is recorded from there so late as the 

 year 1S58. Nowada\'s, it is seen in the British Islands only as a 

 spring and autumn visitor, mainly represented by immature birds 

 passing up and down the coasts, although a few adults in full summer- 

 dress may occasionally be seen on the Berkshire reaches of the Thames. 

 The young birds from the north usually begin their southward passage 

 in August and may be seen till October on our coasts, where they make 

 their reappearance on their northward flight in April. The marshes of 

 Scandinavia, Russia, Hungary, Holland, etc., are now some of the chief 

 breeding-places of these terns ; and in such situations the birds may be 

 seen rising in hundreds during the height of the nesting-season at the 

 end of May. Small fishes, leeches, worms, freshwater-shrimps, and insects 

 constitute the chief diet of this tern. In a substantial nest of water- 

 weeds and other herbage, which may be built either on patches of firm 

 ground in the marsh, or merely supported on the floating rubbish in 

 the water itself, the female tern lays three eggs. As a rule, these var)- 

 in ground-colour from clay-brown to greenish grey, stone, or buff, upon 

 which are black blotches, with a marked tendency to coalesce, and 

 indistinct underlying spots of grey. More rarely, however, the surface 

 markings take the form of scribbl}' lines or dots ; and in other cases 

 the colour of the blotches may be chestnut or chocolate. The length 

 is from just over i^j; inches to just short of i-^ inches. 



Ten records in a century (that is to say, from 1836 to 1894), of 

 which one is referable to Ireland and one to Scotland, scarcel}- entitle 

 the white-whiskered tern {^Hydrochelidon Jiyhridii) to a definite place 

 among British birds. The species is a native of southern Europe, 

 whence it extends eastwards across temperate Asia to China, and 

 southwards to Africa and India (where it breeds), and thence across 

 the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago to Australia. It is a small 

 species, measuring i 1 inches in length, specially distinguished by the 



