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158 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 
smaller bird than the last, but easily distinguishable by that and its 
prevailing green colour. As to habits and haunts the differences 
are not great. The Shags are said to breed lower down on the 
rocks than the Cormorant, and the nests are principally com- 
posed of sea weed and grasses. The eggs are three to five in 
number, and covered with the same incrustationas those of the 
Cormorant, and equally removable. White at first, they soon 
become as soiled and stained as those of the Grebes. 
989. GANNET.—(Sula Bassana). 
Solan Goose.—Common enough in certain localities, though - 
the localities in which they occur vary with the season, When 
the breeding time comes round, they congregate in hosts of 
many thousands at some half-dozen different stations, particularly 
affected by them on different parts of our coasts. During the 
breeding season they become exceedingly tame, and will even 
suffer themselves to be touched. They make their nests of a 
large mass of sea weed and dry grass, oz rather than ¢# which they 
lay each one single egg, of no very considerable size. This, 
when first laid, is white or bluish-white, (the colour being dae 
to anincrustation similar to that of the Cormorant’s egg), but 
soon becomes soiled and stained. 
— ee 
V.—LARIDA. 
290. CASPIAN TERN—(Sterna Caspia). 
The first member of the last Family of British birds, compris- 
ing many birds of habits and peculiarities as widely distinct, when 
it is remembered they are all water-birds, from those of the two 
Families last wider notice, as is readily conceivable. The Grebes, 
Divers, Cormorants, all gifted with wonderful powers of diving; the 
Gulls and Terns incapable of diving an inch: the latter, buoyant and 
sitting as lightly on the water as a cork; the former deep-sunken 
ar 
