BIRDS OF LOCH AND MOUNTAIN 107 



perhaps at last succeeding in hatching off a 

 clutch. 



I have visited a colony of many hundreds of 

 these birds during the nesting season, and have 

 found scarcely a single nest which has escaped the 

 eyes of the plunderers. Notwithstanding this, the 

 birds still hover over their nesting haunt, and it is 

 pathetic indeed to hear them uttering their wild 

 note, and to see them endeavouring to drive off 

 the intruder, although they have been deprived of 

 their treasures. 



The Common and Arctic Terns are practically 

 indistinguishable while on the wing, and there is so 

 very little difference between them that they can 

 scarcely, I venture to assert, be quite a distinctive 

 species. The Arctic Tern is supposed to be the 

 more common in Scotland, and the Common Tern 

 further south. In Aberdeenshire, however, the 

 Arctic Tern is rarely met with never, I be- 

 lieve, as the breeding species while the Common 

 Tern nests in great abundance. 



The Sea Swallow the local name for the Common 

 Tern is a charmingly graceful bird in every sense 

 of the word, and it is a very pretty sight to watch 

 them hovering above the surface of the water in 

 quest of small fish. With quickly beating wings 

 they keep perfectly motionless, poised in mid air, 

 and then dashing suddenly into the water reappear 

 with a fish in their bills, which is at once carried 

 off to the brooding mate or young ones. 



Unlike the Little Tern, which, I believe, in- 

 variably nests on the sea-coast, the Common Tern 

 rears its young ones on the banks of the majority 

 of our Scottish rivers, wherever there is a shingly 

 beach suitable for a nesting site. 



