NODDY TERN. 539 



their labours, although there were nine or ten of us walk- 

 ing among the bushes, and when we had gone a few yard,s 

 into the thicket, thousands of them flew quite low over us, 

 some at times coming so close as to enable us to catch a 

 few of them with the hand. On one side might be seen a 

 Noddy carrying a stick in its bill, or a bird picking up some- 

 thing from the ground to add to its nest ; on the other, 

 several were seen sitting on their eggs unconscious of 

 danger, while their mates brought them food. The 

 greater part rose on wing as we advanced, but re-alighted 

 as soon as we had passed. The bushes were rarely taller 

 than ourselves, so that we could easily see the eggs in the 

 nests. This was quite a new sight to me, and not less 

 pleasing than unexpected. The Noddy, like most other 

 species of Terns, lays three eggs, which average two inches 

 in length, by an inch and three-eighths in breadth, and are 

 of a reddish-yellow colour, spotted and patched with 

 dull red and faint purple. They afford excellent eating, 

 and our sailors seldom failed to collect bucketsful daily 

 during our stay at the Tortugas. The wreckers assured 

 me that the young birds remain along with the old through 

 the winter, in which respect the Noddy, if this account be 

 correct, differs from other species, the young of which keep 

 by themselves until spring. At the approach of a boat, 

 the Noddies never flew off their island, in the manner of 

 the Sooty Terns. They appeared to go further out to sea 

 than those birds in search of their food, which consists of 

 fishes mostly caught amid the floating sea-weeds, these 

 Terns seizing them, not by plunging perpendicularly down- 

 wards, as other species do, but by skimming close over the 

 surface in the manner of Gulls, and also by alighting and 

 swimming round the edges of the weeds. This I had 

 abundant opportunities of seeing while on the Gulf of 

 Mexico. The flight of this bird greatly resembles that of 



