SANDWICH TERN. 275 



nests were merely slight hollows in the bare sanely in diameter and 

 depth of the dimensions of a checse-])late, and they and their contents 

 were so difficult to distinguish from the sand and fine gravely that my 

 first discoA'Cry of the colony was to find that I had ^' put my foot in \i," 

 and broken a Sandwich Tern^s egg. In the thick of them there must 

 have been on an average a nest per square yard. The birds, which were 

 not then sitting (it was the 3rd of June), soon discovered that their colony 

 was being invaded, and flew in hundreds over us for a short time. In a 

 quarter of an hour we found the nest of an Eider Duck containing eggs, 

 several nests containing eggs of the Lesser Black-backed Gull, a Einged 

 Plover^s nest containing four eggs, two Oyster-eatcher^s nests (one with 

 three and the other with four eggs), a dozen eggs of the Arctic Tern, and 

 we certainly saw more than two hundred eggs of the Sandwich Tern. 



In the year when I found them in still greater abundance they had chosen 

 the same locality for their colony; but they were so much molested that they 

 soon deserted the place, and moved their quarters to the grass-covered 

 island adjoining, where their eggs were in such profusion that we inad- 

 vertently trod on many of them. In this locality many of the birds had 

 arranged the scattered bits of dead weed which were lying about into the 

 semblance of a nest. In addition to the krr-ee, which seems^ in a more or 

 less modified form, to be common to all the Terns, the Sandwich Tern has 

 a note which may be represented by the syllables skerr-i'ek. Although 

 this Tern is preeminently a salt-water species, and generally breeds on out- 

 lying islands at some distance from the shore, it does not always do so. 

 In 1819 Naumann visited a colony on the island of Norderog, off the coast 

 of Schleswig, and estimated the numbers of Sandwich Terns breeding there 

 at upwards of half a million ; but on the west shores of the Black Sea I 

 have taken eggs from a small colony on an island in a lagoon some dis- 

 tance inland, and my friend Mr. Warren found a small colony in County 

 Mayo, on an island in a moorland tarn some miles from the sea and quite 

 unconnected with it {' Zoologist,^ 1877, p. 101). 



The eggs of the Sandwich Tern are remarkably handsome, and are un- 

 rivalled in the boldness of the markings which they occasionally display. 

 Tlie ground-colour varies from pure white to brownish buff; the com- 

 monest colour is creamy white, and the rarest white with a slight tinge of 

 olive. The colour of the surface-spots is dark brown, frequently approach- 

 ing black, whilst the underlying markings, which are generally very con- 

 spicuous, are pale slate-grey. The size, shape, and distribution of the spots 

 present almost endless variations. In some of the handsomest eggs a 

 fantastically shaped spot covers a third of the visible surface, and occa- 

 sionally eggs are met with in which the spots are delicate though short 

 streaks. They vary in length from 2'3 to 1'9 inch, and in breadth from 

 1'5 to 1*3 inch. The eggs of the Sandwich Tern are not easily confused 



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