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THE COMMON TERN. 
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WHAT a piece of work is a Tern! how gentle in instinct! how un-- 
trammelled in discursion! in form and moving how elegant and admirable! 
inaction how like the swallow! in innocence how like the dove! the beauty of 
the air! the paragon of sea-birds! 
Terns are the animating spirits of summer seas. Not bluff and sturdy 
like the Gulls, they have little place in winter’s storm, but when the sun has 
re-established his dominion and only Zephyr pricks the caracoling waves, then 
the blue-gray daintiness of the Tern is as necessary to the scene as are 
the criss-cross mirrors of the amethystine sea. We hail with delight the 
appearance in the offing of a busy, happy company of the white-winged birds, 
weaving in the air by their incessant plyings a close-meshed fisher-net, 
wherein many a luckless minnow is entangled. Soon a lone straggler from 
out the company drifts shoreward, parting the air with graceful wing, now 
pausing critically over a suspected fish, like some pensive mosquito with his 
beak down-turned ; now dropping with a splash beneath the wave, or making 
a nimble catch at the surface without wetting his plumage. Ever and anon 
the muffled undertone of the waves is pierced by a weird and half-petulant 
cry, te-er te-erve, childish, plaintive, yet somehow thrilling and exultant. 
And as the bird passes to rejoin his companions, you find he has borne away 
your fancy evermore to hover where blue skies laugh at blue waters, and 
innumerable wavelets trifle with innumerable sunbeams. 
It is passing strange that the Common Tern should be so little known 
as a bird of Washington. It is regular and sometimes abundant during 
the migrations, at least on Puget Sound, yet none of the older authorities 
make mention of it. Edson has both seen and shot it at Bellingham, 
and I have taken specimens at Blaine, else we should begin to doubt 
the evidence of our eyes. There are perhaps no nesting colonies within 
the limits of the State, certainly not along the west shore within the 
confines of the Olympiades. We have word however, of an extensive ternery 
off the west coast of Vancouver, and others unquestionably exist in southern 
Alaska. 
Common Terns nest upon low-lying islands of the larger interior waters, 
as well as upon both coasts. A visit to such an island is a treat, not only 
because one sees eggs enough (if that were possible), but because birds in 
quantity maintain an electric atmosphere of excitement which is tonic to 
jaded nerves. It was once the author's good fortune to visit such a group 
of islands in Lake Erie. Upon one of these, Chicken Island, a gravelly 
reef of perhaps an acre’s extent, we found only a small fisherman's hut and 
two stunted willow trees, while the birds, to the number of 2000, were every- 
where, even invading the deserted hut itself. The odor of guano was rather 
strong, but the sight of the restless, hovering multitude of “Sea Swallows” 
made anything endurable. 
