578 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
confinement, and to become very tame; at least I can 
answer for one that I saw in the Zoological Gardens 
last summer; it was so tame that it would take 
small fish from the keeper’s hands. In a wild state 
the food consists of fish, small shell-fish, young 
frogs, frog-spawn, also various sorts of insects, which 
it catches very dexterously on the wing; shrimps 
seem rather a favourite food, as many as fifteen full- 
sized shrimps having been found in the stomach of 
one bird.* 
The Black Tern does not at present breed in any 
part of our county, although it may have done so in 
some parts before drainage and cultivation interfered 
with it: it still, however, breeds in some parts of 
England. ‘The nests are said to be placed on tufts 
of grass and rushes, sometimes in very wet situa- 
tions, and barely raised above the level of the water: 
they are made of flags and coarse grass. t 
This bird is rather larger than the Lesser but 
smaller than the Common Tern. The adult birds 
killed in April had the bill black; the irides dusky ; 
the whole of the head, neck, breast, belly and flanks 
black; the back and all the rest of the upper sur- 
face smoky grey, lightest on the tail-coverts and tail, 
which is forked, but not so much as in some of the 
Terns; the primary quills are much darker than the 
« * Zoologist’ for 1866 (Second Series, p. 266). 
+ Yarrell, vol. i., p. 530. 
