22 



THE OSPREY. 



wandering- young- Nig-ht Heron, all 

 beak, crop and legs, who straightway, 

 with a "cack!" of open-breasted terror, 

 would straddle and flop away into the 

 rushy mazes for refuge. 



Certainly many eg-gs are deserted, and 

 very many young- Terns are killed and 

 eaten. It is not unusual to find eggs, 

 stale and unincubated, lying either in the 

 hollows or near the lower margins of the 

 rat houses, having rolled or been rolled 

 away. Partly eaten eggs are sometimes 

 found, aud I have in my cabinet a desert- 

 ed egg, on the apex of which is tele- 

 scoped and firmly glued the half-shell of 

 a partly devoured egg. I have never 

 chanced to see a young Tern more than 

 four inches long, and those that ccr^'seen ap- 

 pear to be incessantly in hiding. Nothing, 

 indeed, protects them while the parents are 

 abroad for food, save their exquisite 

 simulation and their habit of squatting 

 motionless. The untrained eye sees, in 

 late June, upon the big rat houses only, 

 (and that after a real scrutiny) a chance 

 nest of incubated eggs, or, quite as often, 

 fresh ones, while the framed eye detects, 

 here and there, among the grey wads of 

 weeds, a delicately mottled bit of brown- 

 ish-black and grayish-white negation, 

 which proves, on examination, to have 

 an anaesthetic temper; pale flesh-colored 

 web-feet; a sternate beak ; and a pair of 

 tell-tale black-bead eyes. 



A single note from my final entry, on 

 this species, for 1894 well illustrates 

 what I have just said: "June 30, one 

 large house set of 3, incub. begun, near 

 top. Set of 2, incub. 0, on side. Set of 

 3, near base, incub. 0. All deserted. 

 Hollows very slight." 



The autumn of 1894 was very dry at 

 Heron Lake. Great sections of the lake 

 dried up, entirely. The Heronry and 

 the Tern-ery above referred to, were 

 utterly fire-swept, in the spring of 1895. 

 In June of that year I discovered about a 

 mile northwest of my old exploring 

 ground, an evidently famous haunt for 

 Pied-bill Grebes, Coots, Gallinules, For- 

 ster's Terns and Franklin's (xulls. The 

 rat houses were very large and very 

 abundant. Here I found, on June 10, a 

 great many nests of the Forster's Tern, 

 there being, in one case, six nests on one 

 house. 



We were all out that afternoon — hus- 

 band, wife and child and camera. I 

 poled the light boat swiftly among the 

 sparser beds of rushes, feasting the eyes 

 of the boy, ever and anon, upon a glimpse 

 of a cosy coot-nest rising and falling in 

 its clump of rushes, with the waves, 

 while the mother bird hurried awa}" with 

 bobbing head and an occasional comical 

 hen-like "c-r-r-r-t" of warning. 



Amid this floating sea of aquatic nests 

 I saw an unusual number of well con- 

 structed homes of the Tern. Among 

 these was one that I count a perfect nest. 

 It rested on the perfectly flat foundation 

 of a small decayed rat house, which was 

 about fourteen inches in diameter. The 

 nest, in form a truncated cone (barring 

 the cavity), was about eight inches high 

 and ten inches in diameter. The hollow 

 — quite shallow — was about seven inches 

 across, being thus unusually large. The 

 whole was built up of bits of rushes, 

 carried to the spot, these being quite 

 uniform in length — about four inches. 



The nest contained an incomplete set 

 of two rarely beautiful eggs, olive clay 

 in color, with rich black-brown markings, 

 in form much like those often found on 

 eggs of Cabot's Tern. 



It being too late in the day for photo- 

 graphing, I took the eggs, intending to 

 bring them back, to photograph the nest 

 by earlier and brighter light. Too bad! 

 The birds removed every single bit of the 

 rush, before my return, the three signal 

 rags tied to the rushes and the bare flat 

 of moss-mould only, greeting me. The 

 strange feature of the removal is that 

 there were literally /oiis of rushes round- 

 about. Had I left the set the chances 

 are that the mother-bird would have been 

 unmolested, the nest likewise. 



In one instance only have I ever found 

 such a nest as comprehensive book state- 

 ments and the laconic datas would have 

 led one to expect. On the long "streak" 

 of reed-bogs previously referred to, I 

 found, at a certain point, an old dry and 

 beaten-down rat house. On this was a 

 nest — depression — near which nestled a 

 pretty Tern fledgling-, only a few days 

 old. But on a "reef" of rushes, thrown 

 up beside the rat house by the waves of 

 the higher water, the year before, lay in 

 a plainly artificial depression, a single 

 egg, deserted. 



