308 LABIDJE. 



specks or spots, while others remind one much of many types of 

 Plovers' eggs. 



In length they vary from 1'39 to T65, and in breadth from 

 1-02 to 1-15 ; but the average of forty-eight eggs is 1-51 by T09. 



Sterna seena, Sykes. The Indian River-Tern. 



Seena aurantia (Gray\ Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 838. 



Sterna seena, Syhes, Hume, Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 985. 



The Indian River-Tern breeds throughout the Empire on sand- 

 banks in, or on the sandy banks of, our larger rivers. I am not 

 aware that it ever breeds in lakes or swamps, or in the hills either 

 of Southern or Northern India. I do not know at what season it 

 lays in Southern India, but in the Ganges and Jumna and their 

 various affluents, the Brahmapootra and the Irrawaddy, the 

 majority seem to breed in March, while in the Indus and its 

 affluents they scarcely begin to lay till the second week of April. 



The only nest they make is a small depression in the bare 

 sand. 



As a rule several pairs breed within hail of each other; and 

 generally where you find the eggs of this species, there you will 

 find not far off those of the Small Swallow-Plover (G. lactea\ of 

 the Indian Skimmer, of the Black-bellied Tern, and the Great 

 Stone-Plover. Three is the full complement of eggs. At the 

 season at which all these Terns lay, the bare white glittering sands 

 on which their eggs are deposited are often at noontide too hot to 

 touch ; and accordingly during the daytime the birds seem to 

 trust to the heat of the sun to hatch the eggs, and are rarely to be 

 found on their nests ; they pass the time wheeling round and 

 round above, or snoozing beside them. By nightfall every egg 

 is covered by one or other of the parent birds, and when it is 

 dark they sit so close that it is easy to catch them with a common 

 butterfly-net. 



I reproduce a couple of old notes on the nidification of this 

 species : 



" We procured numbers of eggs of this species on the 12th and 

 13th March in shallow circular depressions in low sandbank 

 islands of the Jumna near Sheregurh. Three was the greatest 

 number that we found in any nest. The birds did not appear to 

 have long commenced laying, as all the eggs were fresh. It is not 

 amongst rocks or rocky reefs, where so many of the Great Stone- 

 Plovers and Lapwings are nesting, that we found its eggs, but on 

 bare low spots of sand from 2 to 3 feet above the present river- 

 level. On one occasion we found a solitary nest, but usually 

 several pretty near together. On one bank, within a compass of 

 a hundred yards, we found these, the Indian Skimmer, the Black- 

 bellied Tern, and Small Swallow-Plover, all breeding, each species, 

 however, keeping pretty much to its own locality. The vigorous 

 manner in which these River-Terns attack and chase awav Crows, 



