GULLS AND TERNS. 275 
Terns had drawn this little creature to the scene, having frequently 
witnessed his anxious curiosity on similar occasions in the woods. 
“The Lesser Tern feeds on beetles, crickets, spiders, and other in- 
sects, which it picks up from the marshes, as well as on small fish.” 
The Skimmer, Razor-bill or Cut-water, is a most 
curious bird that comes from southern waters late in 
spring as far north as New Jersey, but seldom con- 
tinues beyond Sandy Hook. Of course, southward, 
it is seen earlier. As in the case of probably every 
species of sea-bird nesting on the ground, these 
skimmers are now far less numerous than when Wil- 
son studied them in the marshes of Cape May. 
During a long stay in that neighborhood, with excel- 
lent opportunities to see what birds were then about, 
in 1892, I saw but one specimen, and that my guide 
could give me no name for or information about. 
He had seldom seen them. Wilson tells us that 
this bird 
‘is most frequently seen skimming close along shore, about the 
first of the flood, at which time the young fry, shrimp, etc., are most 
abundant in such places. There are also numerous inlets among the 
low islands between the sea-beach and main land of Cape May where 
I have observed the Shearwaters, eight or ten in company, passing 
and repassing at high water particular estuaries of those creeks that 
run up into the salt marshes, dipping, with extended neck, their open 
bills into the water, with as much apparent ease as Swallows glean 
up flies from the surface. On examining the stomachs of several of 
these, shot at the time, they contained numbers of a small fish. . . . 
‘«« The voice is harsh and screaming, resembling that of the Tern, but 
stronger. It flies with a slowly flapping flight, dipping occasionally, 
with steady expanded wings and bended neck, its lower mandible 
into the sea, and with open mouth receiving its food as it ploughs along 
the surface. It is rarely seen swimming on the water, but frequently 
rests in large parties on the sand-bars at low water. One of these 
birds which I wounded in the wing, and kept in a room beside me for 
