LARID.E. 



THE COMMON TERN. 



Sterna fluviatilis, Naumann. 



The Common Tern is deservedly so named as regards the greater 

 part of the British Islands, but there is considerable difficulty in 

 sketching its northern summer-range with exactitude, owing to the 

 fact that this over-laps the southerly limits of the Arctic Tern. 

 Broadly speaking, I believe that the Common Tern is the predomi- 

 nant species along the shores of the Channel and on the west side 

 of Great Britain as far north as the Isle of Skye ; while on the east 

 it is found from Kent to the Moray Firth, and was the only species 

 that I observed near Nairn during August 1885. Continuing north- 

 wards, we find it yielding numerically to the Arctic Tern, and showing 

 a liking for fresh-water lochs or estuaries rather than for exposed 

 islands, though Mr. Harvie-Brown states that in 1885 it was nesting 

 abundantly at the west end of the Pentland Skerries, while the 

 eastern was occupied by a colony of Arctic Terns. I have no con- 

 clusive evidence of the occurrence of the Common Tern in the 

 Shetlands, Orkneys or Outer Hebrides. When the two species 

 inhabit the same area, they frequently shift their ground from year 

 to year in a most confusing manner, and this, no doubt, led so 

 accurate an observer as Mr. E. Booth to miss seeing the Common 



