PRELIMINARY CLASSIFIED NOTES 65 



the tips of the feathers and round to the outer web for a short distance, and the 

 white of the under parts is suffused with a delicate rose-pink. The beak is black, 

 with a small patch of orange at the base, and the legs and toes are red. In winter 

 the forehead is more or less white, and the rose-pink of the breast is only faintly 

 traceable. The fledglings may be distinguished from those of the common and 

 Arctic terns by the white on the inner webs of the primaries, which indeed is dis- 

 tinctive at all stages and in both sexes. Skins of downy young, examined at the 

 British Museum, have the upper parts buff, mottled with grey and white, and the 

 under parts dull white. Live specimens examined by Mr. G. H. Mackay (Auk, xiii. 

 47) were grey, white, and black on the upper parts, and whitish under. Their 

 legs and feet were black. The beak pinkish flesh colour, with black tip. This 

 points to dimorphism, [w. p. p.] 



2. Distribution. In the British Isles this is now an extremely local 

 species, but one very populous colony still exists within our limits, although 

 the indiscriminate protection afforded there to both the roseate and the common 

 tern may prove prejudicial to the rarer species. In England, although care- 

 fully protected on the Fames since 1888, only two pairs were breeding in 1899, and 

 in 1900 only one pair (see Zoologist, 1902, p. 52). It has been seen off the Norfolk 

 and Suffolk coasts in the breeding season, but has not been proved to breed 

 there except casually, and formerly a colony existed on the Scillies, which has 

 now disappeared. There is, however, a colony on the Skerries, and another 

 much larger colony also exists in North Wales, where the numbers are well 

 maintained. The Walney and Foulney Islands are now deserted ; and in Scotland 

 it no longer breeds in the Firth of Clyde, but Mr. O. A. J. Lee found two pairs 

 breeding on the Culbin Sands in Moray in 1887. In Ireland the breeding colonies 

 off the Dublin and Down coasts have long ceased to exist, but there is a possibility 

 that it still nests among the other terns on the west coast, although proof is still 

 wanting. On the Continent it breeds on the coast of Brittany, and is said to nest 

 in Holland, but this statement requires confirmation. It undoubtedly breeds in 

 South Tunisia, possibly in Madeira, and in large numbers on islands off the Somali 

 coast, between the Seychelles and Mauritius, and in the Andaman Isles, where it is 

 said to be represented by a small race. Another local form also breeds in Eastern 

 Asia, Japan, Fokien, etc., and large colonies exist on Houtmans Abrolhos, as well 

 as in the Moluccas and New Caledonia, while in America breeding colonies exist 

 from Massachusetts and New York to the West Indies, Central America, and Vene- 

 zuela. In the case of a bird of cosmopolitan distribution it is difficult to ascertain 



VOL. III. I 



