BIRD LIFE OF SOUTH GEORGIA 



Xiiio native species of birds of a subantnrctic island twelve hundred miles east of Cape Horn — Portraits 



made during the South Georgia Expedition of the American Museum of Xatural History 



and Die Urooklyn Muscu-.n, 1912 and 19i:$ 



PHOTOGRAPHS AND ORIGINAL DATA BY ROBERT CUSHMAN MURPHY 



A SOUTH GEORGIAN TERN AND ITS EGG 



Tliis small tern (Sterna vittntn yrnniUi') is unlike our northern representatives in that it lays but a single 

 egg. often among the bare pebbles of the terminal moraines of glaciers. The egg or the chick is con- 

 stantly covered by one of the parents, not only because of the prevailingly inclement weather, but 

 also for fear of enemies which include cannibalistic members of its own species. During 

 the almost daily summer snowstorms, the mother tern sometimes broods the egg or 

 young so persistently that a visitor may touch her before she will abandon it. 

 Photographed at Grace Glacier, Bay of Isles, January 24, 1913 



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