VED BING KE RIN: 757 
ing incessantly. If the water becomes too thick with mud and tangled 
vegetation to admit of easy passage, one must be content to strip off and wade 
thru black water, say six inches deep, over black mud one and a half feet deep, 
and be prepared as well for occasional plunges into uncharted depths. \Vhen 
one gets “hot” in this ancient game of hide-the-thimble, the most interested 
pair of birds will single themselves out from the hovering throng and prepare 
for defense. Unless their advances are early discouraged, the boldness of 
these two will increase until they actually strike the intruder on the head, to 
say nothing of frequent salutations with flying shearn. At the same time the 
characteristic ery, krik, krik,—lighter in character than that of the Forster 
Tern, but still guttural and harsh—is flatted by anger into kra-ack, kra-ack. 
TTA “ _ 2 
Pine nests aire 
LORIE PEPIN tobi 
placed variously in 
the swamp,  some- 
times on a _ little 
raft of floating vege- 
tation which the bird 
has brought together, 
sometimes on a trun- 
cated cone of fresh- 
cut herbage and twist- 
ed grasses resting up- 
on the solid earth, but 
oftenest upon the am- 
ple expanse of some 
Grebe’s nest, new or 
old. The little tyrants 
have no hesitation in 
appropriating a 
Grebe’s nest of fresh 
construction, even tho 
the rightful Owner “Semmes: tiiiidasamamaiiaies 
1 
| 
} 
has already deposited — Taken on Brook Lake Photo by the Author 
eggs. The spitfires NEST AND EGGS OF THE BLACK TERN. 
have the advantage in 
being able to strike from above, and it is to be feared they sometimes resort 
to mob tactics in case of serious opposition. The pale olive-brown eggs, 
heavily spotted and blotched with blackish brown, harmonize so. perfectly 
with their surroundings of decaying and mud-spattered vegetation, as almost 
to elude the sight even after being once discovered. 
