SOOTY TERN. 3;^ 



Voung- Birds. — The fully-grown young in its first plumage is 

 sooty- brown above and below, the under surface being, perhaps, 

 a trifle paler, and the lower abdomen white ; the feathers of 

 the back, wing-coverts, secondaries, and tail-feathers tipped with 

 a bar of sandy-rufous, which soon bleaches to white. 



Characters. — As in the preceding species, the dark colour of 

 the upper parts is the chief characteristic. It is a larger bird 

 than S. ancBstheta, with a longer wing; and it is further dis- 

 tinguished from that species by having the web between the 

 middle and inner toe nearly full, and far less excised than in 

 S. a]i(V,st]ieta. 



Range in Great Britain. — Only three occurrences of the present 

 species in England appear to be beyond dispute, as Mr. 

 Saunders says that most of the examples identified as Sooty 

 Terns have turned out to be Black Terns. One specimen w^as 

 procured at Tutbury, near Burton-on-Trent, in October, 1852 ; 

 another near Wallingford, in Berkshire, on the 21st of June, 

 1869; and another near Bath on the 4th of October, 1885. 



R9.nge outside the British Islands. — "Tropical and juxta-tropical 

 seas, wherever suitable islands and reefs exist ; occasionally 

 wandering to Maine in North America and to Europe. Almost 

 unknown on the South American side of the Pacific ; other- 

 wise very generally distributed '' {^H. Saunders). 



Habits. — The enormous quantities of this Tern which frequent 

 certain isolated breeding-places of sea-birds, such, for instance, 

 as the volcanic island of Ascension, have often been v,'ritten 

 about, and a description of " Wide-awake Fair," as the assem- 

 blage of Terns is called on that island, has more than once been 

 published. Two hundred dozen of eggs have been collected 

 on Ascension in a single morning. Macgillivray, too, speaks 

 of the enormous numbers which he found breeding on Raine's 

 Islet in Torres Straits. He writes : — " During the month of 

 June, 1844, about 1,500 dozen of eggs were procured by the 

 party on the island. About the 20th of June nearly one-half 

 of the young birds (hatched twenty-five or thirty days previ- 

 ously) were able to fly, and many were quite strong on the 

 wing. Great numbers of young birds unable to fly were killed 

 for the pot ; in one mess of twenty-two men the average 

 ^5 P 



