360 LARIDjE : JAEGERS, GULLS, TERNS. ETC. 



soft morning breeze, and each little glossy black cap 

 glistening in the sunlight. Forty or fifty there may be 

 altogether, with others continually arriving from the 

 distant fishing-grounds. As the incoming birds settle 

 among their fellows, a low murmur of welcome runs 

 through the assembled throng, and fifty pairs of wings 

 are simultaneously raised above their owners' backs. 

 It is like the greeting offered by men to one whom they 

 delight to honor, save that among these simple sea- 

 birds even the humblest are rarely neglected. Those 

 individuals occupying the higher portion of the bar are 

 squatted on the warm sand, or lying with wings par- 

 tially extended to the grateful rays of the sun, while 

 along the water's edge many are washing and pluming 

 themselves, scattering the salt spray in every direction, 

 or toying with the lapping waves. As the rising tide 

 encroaches on their domain, numbers of the more care- 

 less are floated off their feet, when they take wing and 

 alight again among the rest. In this way the area con- 

 tinually narrows, until the birds are massed in a com- 

 pact body upon the highest point. When this at length 

 becomes submerged, they all take wing and remove to 

 some other spot. The same bar is apt to be resorted 

 to daily, and if sufficiently elevated to be beyond the 

 reach of the tides, it is all the more likely to be chosen. 

 "About the middle of June the time varying some- 

 what with different localities the Terns repair to their 

 breeding-grounds and begin to deposit their eggs. 

 Muskegat, the outermost of a group of low, sandy 

 islands that with Nantucket form the breakwater of the 

 Vineyard Sound, is, and has been since time immemorial, 

 the largest breeding station of the Terns on the New 

 England coast. It is crescentic in shape, three miles 



