110 THE TERNS 



rocks, sand, turf, in campion, marram-grass, and other positions where 

 their plumage has no protective value, but where they thrive as well 

 as when they nest in shingle, which renders them as invisible as it 

 does the smaller species. 



The conditions that govern the struggle for existence in the case 

 of the Terns, as of many other birds, have been altered by man. He 

 is at once their chief enemy and their chief friend. He destroys their 

 other enemies, and protects them from the more predaceous of his 

 own kind in the breeding season, while he leaves them often to be 

 slaughtered afterwards. Against him concealing coloration is no 

 defence, not even as a protection to the eggs, for he has only to watch 

 the bird alight on its nest, and carefully mark the spot to be sure of 

 obtaining the clutch. 



I know of one case, however, in which the little-tern profited by 

 its conservative habits. This was at Walney Island in 1905. While, 

 as noted on p. 93, the eggs of the Arctic-terns, laid inland among the 

 sand-hills, were almost all devoured by rats, those of the little-terns 

 down on the beach escaped. How far this was due to the concealing 

 coloration of the latter species it would be difficult to say, for the rats 

 might have in any case avoided the beach, even if the whole colony 

 of Arctic-terns had moved thereto. 



Naumann, whom I quote because he was very familiar with the 

 genus under consideration, never saw a lined nest of the little-tern. 

 The few stalks he occasionally found in them had the appearance of 

 being there by accident and not design. Yet nests lined with shells 

 (PL XLIV.) or small pebbles 1 are not infrequently found in some of 

 the British breeding-places, and there is a record of one " lined with 

 a few dry stems of grass.' l Sometimes the eggs are laid on a bed of 

 shells, or bits of shells an inch or two deep. The shells are brought 

 either from a distance or gathered from the immediate surroundings 

 of the nest, in the latter case a distinct bare zone being perceptible 

 between the nest and the encircling shell-bed. 2 Usually the eggs are 



1 Macpherson, Fauna of Lakeland, p. 418. ' Irish Naturalist, 1899, p. 191 (Patten). 



