NODDY TERN 403 
been recorded. From S. fuliginosa it may be distinguished 
by its browner back and wings, longer white stripe over 
the eye, greyish tint on the neck and less fully webbed feet : 
the young bird, even as a nestling, has a white breast 
and abdomen. S. lunata, with a slate- -grey back, inhabits 
Oceania (Saunders). 
NODDY TERN. Anows stolidus (Linneus). 
Coloured Figures.—Lilford, ‘ Coloured Figures,’ vol. vi, pl. 13. 
This is another exceedingly rare wanderer from the 
Tropics and the Southern Seas, which has touched on the 
British coast on two occasions. 
About 1830, two specimens were obtained on the east 
coast of Ireland between the Tuskar Rock, co. Wexford, and 
Dublin Bay (Thompson, Nat. Hist. Irel., vol. 111, p. 308). 
One of these birds is preserved in the National Museum, 
Dublin; both specimens were adult. Mr. Ussher states 
that there is a second Noddy Tern among the Irish birds in 
the Belfast Museum, without a date, which may be the 
second bird obtained in 1830. 
Sixty- seven years later, a record appeared in the ‘ Zoo- 
logist’ for 1897, p. 510, mentioning that a Noddy Tern 
was said to have been shot about six years previously on 
the marshes of the Dee. 
The singular habit of the Noddies of building a rude nest 
of large size, composed of dry grass, sticks, sea-wrack, fish- 
bones, and other materials, on the top of a cocoa-nut or 
other tree, is worthy of note. In some places, the nests are 
on shelving rocks beneath overhanging cliffs, and more 
rarely on patches of sand or grassy slopes. 
DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 
PLUMAGE. Adult male nuptial.—Top of head, ‘ french’ 
grey; back of neck and throat, greyish-brown; breast and 
abdomen, dark brown; back and scapulars, sooty-brown ; 
wings still darker; from the eye to the base of the beak 
there is a black stripe : the tail, unlike that of other Terns, 
is not forked, the central pair of feathers being the longest, 
the marginal ones the shortest. 
