LARID^. 



629 



THE ROSEATE TERN. 



Sterna dougallj, Montagu. 



This slender and elegant species was discovered on the Cumbraes 

 in the Firth of Clyde by Dr. MacDougall of Glasgow, who sent a 

 specimen to Montagu. Selby subsequently found it breeding in 

 some numbers on the Fame Islands, which were afterwards almost 

 deserted, but where of late years several pairs have again been 

 noticed; and although some were shot in 1880 by one of the 

 Trinity lighthouse-keepers in defiance of the law, there is now a pros- 

 pect of efficient private protection. Foulney and Walney Islands on 

 the Lancashire coast, as well as some of the Scilly Islands, were for- 

 merly frequented by the bird, though of late it has seldom been 

 observed in any of those localities. I am inclined to attribute its 

 diminution in a great measure to the increase of the larger stronger- 

 billed Common Tern, before which, as Dr. Bureau informs me of 

 his own knowledge, three colonies of the Roseate Tern have suc- 

 cessively given way on the coast of Brittany in the course of a feu- 

 years. Indiscriminate egging on the part of fishermen has undoubt- 

 edly been very prejudicial, especially as regards some former settle- 

 ments in the north of Ireland ; while the havoc caused by gunners, 

 who used to shoot all kinds of Terns for sport or for plumes for 



