300 STERNA DOUGALLI. 
fulfilled to the uttermost. The joy of the whole thing was indescribable, as 
those must know who have had experience of it, and even after more than fifty 
years, in the course of which I have been at many bird-stations, some of them 
vastly more thronged, there has not been one to surpass this in beauty or 
interest—the last in some measure due to the great variety of species there 
present. It is hardly possible elsewhere on the coast of Western Europe to 
find four species of Tern, three of Gull, two of Cormorant, beside Puffin, 
Guillemot and Razorbill, Hider-Duck and Oyster-catcher—to say nothing of 
tock-Lark—all breeding within so small a space. We did not, it is true, find 
eggs of the Shag, but to the best of our belief there was at least one nest, and 
we took moderate spoil of the rest, Razorbill excepted. The Terns were 
naturally our chief object, and the Roseate Tern chief among them'. We 
had not been long on one of the islands? before we recognized several birds 
whose call-note—crake—was so unlike that of the rest as at once to attract 
attention, and when the individual bird that uttered it was made out from the 
cloud of others that hovered or darted overhead and circled round us, the 
difference in appearance and action was easily perceptible, for it would often 
come close enough to shew its black bill, while generally it looked far whiter 
in colour, particularly beneath and at the bend of the pinions, it had a longer 
tail, and its flight seemed more buoyant ; but the roseate colour of the breast 
was seldom perceptible. The number of birds shewing these characters was 
very small in proportion to the others, and I think we could not satisfy our- 
selves that there were more than eight or ten. The next thing was to watch 
one of them to a nest, and we soon made the discovery that to do this success- 
fully we must lie down to windward of the birds, for hardly a Tern of any sort 
would alight, or sit on the ground, except with its head to the wind, nor would 
it do so if we were behind it. After waiting for some time we had the 
extreme gratification of seeing first one, and then a second, Roseate Tern settle 
on what we presently found to be a nest—in the former case there were two 
eggs, in the latter one; but we were not satisfied without putting the birds up 
and letting them return more than once, while we steadily and repeatedly 
examined them through a field-glass, when, the distance not being great in 
either case, we could see the owners sitting on their nests as plainly as though 
we held them in the hand. In this way we determined beyond all doubt the 
first three of the eggs above entered (§§ 4421, 4422), while the fourth (§ 4428) 
is one on which we did not actually see a bird sit, though one alighted more 
than once close to it, and from its similarity to the other three we were 
1 (In 1850 I was at the Cumbraes in the Firth of Clyde, where Dr. MacDougall 
got the specimens of the species described by Montagu not forty years before; and 
though my visit was not in the breeding-season, I had satisfied myself that it could 
no longer breed there.—ED. | 
* [This was called by our boatmen Kettle Island, a name I do net find on any 
map, being replaced in all I have seen by Inner or West Wide-open. At low 
water it is connected by land with Outer or East Wide-open, as well as with 
Knocks Reef, otherwise called Noxeys, and the bay formed by the bank laid bare 
by the falling tide is marked The Kettle on the last Ordnance Map (Survey of 1861, 
revised 1809).—Eb. } 
