66 On two Nesting-plocos of Gannefs and Terrnt. 



of the Great Sea-Tern {S. bernsteini [?] ■^), witli mostly fresh 

 or sliglitly incubated eggs, no young. These are the most 

 jeautiful eggs of the Terns whieh I have met Avith. One 

 egg apiece is all they lay, and there was no attempt at a nest. 

 I took about 30 eggs ; nearly all these were fresh. 



Besides S. dougalH and S. bernsteini [?] there Avas a colony 

 white Terns with black bills, apparently some form of 

 Gygis, but I had no means of identifying them at the time, aud 

 my skins were afterwards lost. These were not nesting. 



There were also a number of Turnstones on the island, 

 and from their behaviour I at first imagined that they must 

 be nesting, but such was not the case. The manager of the 

 coconut-plantation, Mr. Speirs, who was well acquainted with 

 all the birds of these islands, assured me, however, that he 

 had on one occasion found the Turnstone nesting on an island 

 of the Chagos group, where he saw the birds sitting on 

 their nests in the debris above high-water mark, and was 

 most positive about this, adding that he saw the eggs himself. 

 He said he had often searched for them since, but had never 

 again succeeded in finding them. Those I observed had their 

 breeding-organs quite undeveloped, as I shot several and 

 examined them. There was also a small species of Curlew 

 on the island, but as, like all this kind, it was very wary, I 

 could not get a shot, and was therefore unable to identify it. 

 On a few bushes round the edge of the water I found two 

 species of Pleron — the Common Heron [Ardea cincrea) and 

 another which I could not at the time identify, and, having 

 lost the skins I made, I have not since been able to do sof. 

 A. cinerea had young ones or hard-set eggs, and the other 

 sort only eggs, sometimes as many as six in a nest. 



There were a good many Frigate-birds about, but they 



* [Commander Farquhar names the bird S. maxima, a species mainly 

 American ; but it was more probably the very local 'S'. bernsteini, which is 

 fomid about Diego Garcia, Rodriguez, and the vicinity, though possibly 

 the widely-distributed Swift Tern, S. hergii. — Edd.] 



f Description of the small Heron. — Bill yellow ; head capped with 

 butf ; legs horn-coloux ; toes black ; irides yellow : all the rest white. 

 Of about tlie same size as the common Cattle-Heron of India, but not 

 corresponding to that bird in breeding-plumage. 



