16 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
Birps. 
The total number of species of birds breeding on Sable Island is ten, 
and in relative order of abundance they stand about as follows: Sterna 
paradisea, Sterna hirundo, Atgialitis semtpalmata, Ammodramus prin- 
ceps, Tringa minutilla, A@gialitis meloda circumcincta, Sterna dougalli, 
Merganser serrator, Anas obscura, and Actit?s macularia. 
The sandy character of the island, with its lagoon and its bars, makes it 
a paradise for Terns, which are by far the most abundant and most con- 
spicuous of its feathered inhabitants. These snowy and graceful birds 
hover thick as snowflakes over the level stretches of dry sand-bar 
where great colonies lay their eggs regardless of storms and tides that 
sometimes urge the heavy surf far beyond its usual bounds and sweep 
away eggs and young by the thousand. The eggs are excellent eating, 
and ‘ egg-picking,’ as it is called, is systematically carried on by the life- 
saving crews for several weeks after the birds begin to lay. Finally every- 
body wearies of egg diet and the Terns are left to rear their young without 
further molestation from man. The ‘egg-pickers’ pass over the same 
ground nearly every day and spare such previously overlooked nests as 
chance to contain three eggs or more. I was told that, as the season 
advanced, the eggs became so much more plentiful that a smaller and 
smaller territory needed to be covered each time before the pails and 
baskets were filled to overflowing. Since foxes have been introduced the 
Terns have had a new and dangerous enemy, as attested by the numerous 
wings and feathers that lie about the fox burrows. It is to be hoped every 
effort will be made by the proper authorities to protect these birds from 
their worst enemy, man—or, to be more exact, in this case, woman, — 
for elsewhere along our Atlantic coast they have been wellnigh exter- 
minated in order to furnish the strange headgear that Fashion thought- 
lessly imposes. 
Probably more than two thirds of the birds I saw were Arctic Terns, and 
a large portion of the other third Common Terns, with a goodly sprinkling 
of Roseates, the latter a species hardly to be expected so far northward and 
associated with such boreal species as the Least Sandpiper and Semipalmated 
Plover. A few individuals of the Arctic Terns were in the peculiarly 
striking plumage in which they were once described as the Portland Tern. 
Dissection showed that such birds were immature and not breeding. Rare 
indeed was the moment when a Tern was not somewhere in sight, and the 
incessant din of their cries was never out of my ears. Even during the 
midnight hours, when all was still and the distant undertone of the dashing 
sea seemed hushed, the sudden cry of a restless bird passing overhead 
