CHAPTER XVII 



THE TRIBE OF THE SEA SWALLOWS 



WHEN the air is again warm, and the south wind blows 

 softly, the sea swallows reach the grassy islands of the 

 Hebrides, where they will remain for the season of their 

 nesting. They are about the last of the migrant tribes to 

 reach us. The wheatear has long since come her young are 

 already hatched; the swallows have been with us for some 

 weeks; even the swifts are screaming in restless flight round 

 the ruined castle; and yet the sea swallows linger in their 

 coming. Then one day of mid-May, when the sea thrift 

 has begun to tinge the shores with pink, one sees the gleam 

 of snow-white wings above the green waters of the quiet 

 ocean, and realises that the sea swallow has once again 

 reached the place of her nesting. 



And what flight can rival in grace that of the sea swallow ? 

 True, there are birds with more power of the wing take 

 the keen-eyed solan, who presses on his way grimly, un- 

 swervingly, in the teeth of a gale the sea swallow would be 

 scarce able to face ; or the dark mountain eagle, sailing with 

 steady wings against the force of the storm but in dainti- 

 ness and in the poetry of flight, the sea swallow is unique 

 among birds. 



The tribe of the sea swallows consists, so far as the 

 British Isles are concerned, of five distinct species, namely : 

 the roseate tern, the sandwich tern, the lesser tern, the 

 Arctic tern, and the common tern. Of these the sandwich 

 tern is considerably the largest, but both he and the roseate 

 tern are found only in a few favoured localities, and it is 

 the three latter species that people the wild islands and the 

 unfrequented shores of the Hebrides. 



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