114 JUNGLE FOLK 



the gulls were carr^dng them off and swallowing their 

 contents as fast as they could devour them." River 

 terns do not construct any nest. They deposit their 

 eggs on the bare, dry sand. The eggs have a stone- 

 coloured ground, sometimes suffused \\ith pink, 

 blotched with dark patches, those at the surface of the 

 shell ha\'ing a sepia hue, and those deeper down 

 appearing dark grejish mauve. The eggs, although not 

 conspicuous, may, without difficult}^ be detected w^hen 

 l}ing on the sand. Their colouring would seem to 

 be adapted to match a stom', rather than a sandy 

 en\ironment, but the fact that the colouring of the 

 eggs is but imperfectly protective does not much matter 

 when the latter he on a sand island, to which but few 

 predaceous creatures have access ; the watchfulness of 

 the parent birds more than compensates for the com- 

 parative conspicuousness of the eggs. 



Young terns, hke most other birds, are bom helpless, 

 and are then covered with a greyish down ; but before 

 the tail feathers have broken through their sheaths, 

 and while the wing feathers are quite rudimentary^ 

 the temlets learn to run about and swim upon the 

 water. At this stage the httle terns look hke ducklings 

 when on the water, and, as they run along the w^ater's 

 edge, may easily be mistaken, at a httle distance, for 

 sandpipers. 



When a young tern is surprised by some enemy, his 

 natural instinct is to crouch down, half buried in the 

 sand, and to remain there quite motionless until the 

 danger has passed. The colouring of his down is such 

 as to cause him to assimilate more closely to the sandy 



