JOURNAL OF* MAINK ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 63 



the place where we intended to anchor, the Terns took the alarm 

 and rose into the air in a screeching, protesting mass, as thick as 

 mosquitoes over a steaming swamp on a warm evening. From 

 every part of the island they came and hung over our heads, turn- 

 ing and wheeling like swallows, whose flight they imitate very 

 closely. They can remain on the wing almost indefinitely, and 

 during the hour or more that we staid on the island, the air was 

 constantly filled with their hostile cries directly over us. They 

 finally grew somewhat accustomed to our presence, and I imagined 

 that they displayed less concern during the latter part of our visit. 

 If that was so it was because they grew tired of trying to drive us 

 away, rather than that they showed any less fierceness at our 

 unwelcome intrusion. 



August 9th was the day we were there. At that date the 

 breeding was in every degree of progress. Many young birds were 

 on the wing in company with the old ones. Others were so nearly 

 full-grown that they were almost able to fly. Still more were half- 

 grown and were not ready to begin the use of their wings. These 

 could run with much facility over the rocks in their desperate 

 efforts to escape from us. Many nests, loosely constructed of 

 seaweed gathered in little bunches just sufficient to hold the eggs in 

 place, contained young birds not long out of the shell. Other nests 

 had in them eggs that were doubtless well advanced in their incu- 

 bation, while some eggs looked as if they were fresh-laid. Here 

 and there a dead young bird was seen among the rocks, where it 

 had perished from the intense heat of the sun or a fall from the low 

 cliffs. It seemed to me that the parent Tern knew when I w^as near 

 its offspring, for often the same bird would dart down at me with a 

 vicious swoop, repeating the operation several times, until I had 

 passed along a rod or two. In the same way, I noticed a young 

 bird swimming near the shore, and saw an old bird fly down to it 

 time after time, so that I had little doubt that this was the mother 

 of the youngster. It was not an easy thing to do to keep the same 

 bird in view among the thousand others which did not differ from it 

 in the smallest particular, so far as the eye could discern, but by con- 



