28 
ROSEATE TERtf. 
Their flight is as interesting and deserving of notice as 
that of the other species, and as you may have seen any 
of these birds in days of yore, so will you see them still 
and always, for nature changes not, but like her Maker, 
and obedient to His laws, is the ‘same yesterday and to-day.* 
‘The sea is His and He made it’ and ‘all that therein is;’ 
and it and all that belong to it obey ever and always His 
‘perpetual decree.* 
These birds feed on small fish. 
The note is expressed by the word ‘crake,’ or ‘crae,’ uttered 
in a hoarse and grating manner. 
This species makes its nest among the herbage there may 
be on low banks of sand, or shingle, or upon the bare ground 
itself. 
The eggs are two or three in number; the ground colour 
yellowish cream white, pale brown, or yellowish olive green, 
spotted and speckled with grey and brown. 
Male; length, one foot three inches and a half; bill, jet 
black, slender, and slightly curved, the base vermilion red; 
the inside of the mouth bright orange red. Iris, dark 
brownish black. Forehead, crown, neck on the hack, and 
nape, jet black, the feathers on the latter parts elongated, 
and terminating in a point; the sides of the head, under 
the eyes, white. Chin, throat, and breast, white, the latter 
with a tinge of rose-colour, from which the bird derives its 
name, reminding an entomologist of the delicate moth called 
the ‘maiden’s blush.’ This transient colour, like the hopes of 
early youth, ‘too bright to last,’ fades away with the life 
of the bird, and I hope that all the ladies who are my 
readers will preserve the same pleasing attraction as long as 
they live, remembering the maxim of Dr. Gregory, ‘when 
a woman ceases to blush, she loses the most powerful 
charm of beauty:’ so it is with the bird; its beauty is in 
its life—who then can wantonly shoot the graceful and 
chaste-coloured Sea Swallow? 
Back, pale grey; greater and lesser wing coverts, pale grey; 
primaries, dark hoary grey on the outer webs, paler on the 
inner, verging to white at the tips. The shafts white, the 
first one has the outer web dark hoary, or nearly black; 
tertiaries, tipped with white. The tail, which is greatly forked, 
and the outer feathers narrow, is very long, and extends two 
inches, or in some specimens, nearly three inches beyond the 
closed wings, its colour white or very pale grey; the tail 
