42 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



28 [70] Sterna hirundo Linn. 



Common Tern; Wilson's Tern; "Mackerel Gull." 



Abundant transient visitor, locally common summer resident. May 13 to 

 November 4. 



Eggs: June 14 to July 19. 



In 1905, I said that " Common Terns very rarely visit Ipswich Beach before 

 the first of August. ... By the middle of the month they are common and flocks 

 of young and old to the number of two or three hundred disport themselves about 

 the beach." This tern has increased very much since that day and appears at 

 Ipswich Beach earlier in the season. Thus on July 23, 1907, there were 400 at 

 the beach and on July 11, 1914, I estimated a thousand birds in a flock there. In 

 1918, the first terns I saw at Ipswich were on July 14 when six or eight were 

 fishing at the mouth of the Essex River. That afternoon about four o'clock eighty 

 or ninety flew south over the water outside the beach. On July 15, just after 

 sunset, I heard the distant screams of this species from my garden at Ipswich, 

 and, looking up, I saw about seventy-five fiying south very high up in the air. 

 They were preceded by a small flock of Hudsonian Curlews. On August 14, 



1908, I estimated that there were 3,000 Common Terns at Ipswich Beach. In 



1909, the largest number I saw at the beach was 400. In 1913, there were fully 

 2,000 birds there. The number varies from year to year dependent on the food 

 supi)ly, which is chiefly the sand-lance at Ipswich. This fish takes the place of 

 the capelin of more northern waters. 



At times the beach is lined in places with young but fully fledged terns 

 screaming to be fed. The young are able to plunge and catch fish for themselves, 

 but are not as graceful or skillful as their parents, and, like spoiled children, evi- 

 dently prefer to have the work done for them. The various methods of feeding 

 the young, — in the air, on the beach, and on the water, — are similar to those of 

 the Roseate Tern. 



I have seen Common Terns dart down and pick up sand-fleas from the beach, 

 and Mr. F. H. Allen saw one at Ipswich dart down and pick up a sea-worm, 

 leaving the mark of its bill on the sand. I have seen them on the Labrador coast 

 follow whales and dart down at the water whenever the whale breached and then 

 disappeared, in the same way they are said to follow and reveal the presence 

 of submarines. 



Common Terns sometimes drop the small fish from their bill and catch it in 

 the air. Sometimes after plunging and bringing up a fish, they throw it up in 



