310 LARIDjE. 



colour is sometimes a delicate greenish grey, sometimes pale 

 greenish stone-colour, most commonly perhaps a sort of buffy 

 stone, occasionally, when fresh, slightly tinged with pink, and 

 sometimes suffused with olivaceous. The markings, too, vary much 

 in shape, size, and character. Typically they have small blotches, 

 lines, and streaks pretty thickly sprinkled over the whole surface 

 of the egg, at times quite hieroglyphic-like ; but in some specimens 

 the blotches are large and few in number, and occasionally they 

 consist of long streaks, reminding one of the characteristic 

 markings of Rhynchops albicollis. Whether large or small, streaks, 

 lines, spots, or blotches, as the case may be, besides these primary 

 markings, which are deep brown of one shade or another, there are 

 secondary markings underlying these, clouds and streaks of pale 

 inky purple, which convey an idea of being beneath the surface of 

 the* egg. 



In length the eggs vary from 1-5 to 1*75, and in breadth from 

 l'17to 1*32; but the average of sixty eggs is 1'65 by 1'25. 



Sterna melanogastra, Temm. The Black-bellied Tern. 

 Sterna javanica, Horsf., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 840 ; Hume, Rough 



a 

 aft 



Draft N. $ E. no. 987. 



The Black-bellied Tern, like the Indian River-Tern, breeds all 

 over the Empire in the same situations as that bird, and usually 

 more or less in company with it. March is the breeding-season 

 in the North-West Provinces, April in the Punjab, and apparently 

 in Southern India they lay in both months. 



Their nests are mere depressions in the sand of sandbanks in 

 the beds of rivers and surrounded by water ; and while the usual 

 number of eggs is three, I have repeatedly found four eggs in the 

 nests of this species. 



I have a couple of notes in regard to the Black-bellied Tern : 

 " We took many of the eggs of this species near Sheregurh on the 

 Jumna on March 12th and 13th, 1867. They were in every case 

 breeding in company in low, bare, water-surrounded sandbanks. 

 No nest that we found contained more than three eggs, but on 

 many nests (mere shallow circular depressions in the dry sand) the 

 birds were sitting, and many of the eggs were ready to hatch off. 

 They seem to lay earlier than the Eiver-Tern (S. seena}, which again 

 I take to be somewhat earlier than the Skimmer. The birds I 

 fancied were bolder than S. seena, as when, after looking at their 

 eggs without touching them, we retreated thirty or forty yards, 

 the sitting birds at/ once resumed their positions on or beside the 

 eggs. On the same banks we found parties of the Skimmer, 

 S. seena, and the Lesser Swallow-Plover breeding, each party 

 keeping pretty well to its own quarters. The eggs are generally 

 dull and glossless. Of quite fresh eggs the ground-colour is a 

 greenish stone-colour, but as incubation proceeds they assume more 

 of a cafe-au-lait hue. The markings are generally feeble, a more 



