ROSEATE TERN.— COMMON TERN. 257 



ROSEATE TERN. 



Sterna dougalli. 



This is the most elegant^ as well as the rarest, of our native 

 Terns. I can find but one record of its having visited the 

 Sussex coast, viz. that of Mr. Southwell, of Norwich, in the 

 '^ Zoologist^ for 1885 (p. 481), stating that a specimen in the 

 collection of Mr. Rising, of Horsey, near Great Yarmouth, 

 was shot on the Sussex coast, near Eastbourne, about the 

 year 1848. At the sale of this collection in September, 1885, 

 the bird was purchased by Mr. Ashmead, the taxidermist of 

 Bishopsgate Street, London. 



This Tern formerly bred on one of the Scilly Isles, and 

 more lately on the Fames, as well as on a few islands off the 

 coast of Scotland and Ireland. Though it has a very wide 

 range, its diminution at all its breeding-quarters leads one 

 to fear that it is doomed to become an extinct species. 



COMMON TERN. 



Sterna fluviatilis. 



This is the most abundant of all the Terns on the coast of 

 Sussex, known also as the Sea-SwalloAV, and is a constant 

 summer visitant. Our rivers not being sufficiently large to 

 induce it to go far inland, it is, with us, rarely met with far 

 from the sea. 



It occasionally occurs, however, on some of the larger 

 pieces of water, feeding principally on small fish. On the 



