SANDWICH TERN. 
25 
They then may be approached, as they cannot be at other 
times. They are late in breeding, seldom commencing till 
the month of June. 
The eggs are usually two, but sometimes three or even 
four in number. Meyer says, ‘The bird sits on them during 
the whole night, but only occasionally during the day, and 
as in the preceding species, some few birds remain about 
the breeding-places, to keep watch during the absence of the 
rest. It has been asserted that these birds, although laying 
two or three eggs only for a brood, will, when the eggs 
are taken out of the nest daily, continue laying for a fort¬ 
night.’ The eggs vary exceedingly, and are extremely 
beautiful. They are of a pale yellowish stone-colour, thickly 
spotted and marked with deep reddish brown, orange brown, 
blackish brown, and grey. Some are of a whitish, and others 
of a dull green ground colour, with spots of a darker shade. 
Male; length, one foot five or six inches; bill, black, the 
tip yellowish white, farther extended in winter; iris, dark 
brown. Head, crown, neck on the back, and nape, black, 
with generally a little intermixture of white, and in winter 
the forehead and crown are white, or mottled with white 
and black, the back of the head with the most black, the 
edges of the feathers white. The feathers at the back of 
the head elongated into a slight plume ending in a point, 
this is followed by white, running into the bluish grey of 
the back; head on the sides below the eyes, white. Chin, 
throat, and breast, white, with a tinge of rose-red underneath, 
that is to say in summer, not in winter; back, pale bluish 
grey. 
The wings have the first quill feather the longest; they 
expand to the width of two feet nine inches, and reach 
beyond the end of the tail; greater and lesser wing coverts, 
pale bluish grey. Of the primaries, the longest is slate grey, 
darker on the outer web, and more than half of the inner 
near the shaft from the point, the shaft white; the two or 
three next paler, and the succeeding ones still more so, till 
they shade away into the colour of the wing coverts; the 
inner webs paler than the outer; tertiaries, grey, the ends 
nearly white; greater and lesser under wing coverts, white. 
Tail, forked and white, the outside feathers dashed with grey 
on the outer webs; upper tail coverts, white; under tail 
coverts, also white. Legs and toes, dusky black, with a 
tinge of red, underneath the latter are yellowish; claws. 
