182 Townsend, Ipswich Bird Notes. [ April 



IPSWICH BIRD NOTES. 1 



BY CHARLES W. TOWNSEND, M. D. 



Since my 'Birds of Essex County' was published in 1905 as a 

 Memoir of the Nuttall Ornithological Club I have collected a 

 large number of bird notes from that county which I expect in due 

 time will be published as a supplement. The following notes are 

 of especial interest and are recorded here : 



Sterna caspia. Caspian Tekn. — Although this splendid tern is a 

 fairly regular transient visitor in the autumn I have no record of so many 

 of them being seen together as in this present year when on Aug. 31, 1917, 

 twelve flew south in a loose flock over Ipswich beach within two hundred 

 yards of me. Their large size, bright red bills, black caps and snowy 

 plumage made a very striking picture. Several emitted their characteristic 

 harsh rasping cries. 



Sterna dougalli. Roseate Tern. — When the Essex County memoir, 

 was published in 1905, I noted that I had never seen the bird and that it 

 was a " Rare transient visitor." Since then there has been a great increase 

 in the number of Common Terns along this coast, and, since 1910, the 

 Roseate Tern has been seen among them and has become more and more 

 common so that this year at times it has even surpassed them in numbers. 

 The bird is easily recognized as a whiter bird than the Common Tern and 

 one with a longer tail. The dark bill at once separates it from the Common 

 Tern with its red, dark-tipped bill. Some of its cries are especially charac- 

 teristic. The " cloth-tearing " cry is easily recognized and especially the 

 rather sweet double note suggestive of the call of the Ring-neck Plover, 

 which at times is shortened and roughened so that it sounds like chivy. 



Both the Common and Roseate Terns and also the Arctic Tern feed their 

 full grown young at the beach at Ipswich. Some of these birds may have 

 come from Muskeegit on the south or the coast of Maine on the north. 

 The abundance of the sand lance, Ammodytes americanus, which often 

 fill the water in countless schools and leave with the falling tide a silvery 

 covering to the sands, makes the Ipswich beach a favorite resort for 

 terns. The young seem always to be hungry and call in a monotonous 

 and beseeching way whenever an adult appears with a fish. There are 

 three methods of receiving the fish from the parent : — either in the air, 

 on the land, or on the water. In the air the feeding of the young is often 

 a graceful and interesting performance. By a series of aerial evolutions 



1 Read before the Nuttall Ornithological Club, Oct. 15, 1917. 



