io BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



the throat sooty and the under surface buff. In a short time the chick becomes 

 fully fledged, and appears in its first complete feathering, which differs from the 

 summer vestment described above, in the forehead, a ring round the neck, the 

 margin of the wings, and the entire under side being white, or greyish-white ; a 

 bar through the eyes, the back of the head and nape blackish-brown ; the mantle, 

 the scapulars, and the lesser upper wing-coverts blackish-brown (from the grey 

 plumage being margined with this colour) ; the rest of the upper side and of the 

 wings slate-grey, margined with brown and white. The bill brown, its base 

 pinkish-white ; and the tail less forked. Altogether the birds have a general 

 immature look. Before they finally leave our shores on their way to their winter 

 quarters, many of the young birds show a tendency to lose the brownish colour 

 and become greyer. 



By next spring a great deal of the bars and mottling is lost, and these birds, 

 as may be seen during their stay on their first northward migratory passage, have 

 become very similar to their maturer fellows ; the head, neck, and breast being 

 black, but the belly shows more or fewer black feathers amid the white, the latter 

 decreasing with the age of the bird, while the upper side only differs by a dark 

 line along the edge of the wing. 



This immature plumage remains till the autumn. When their first winter 

 dress which is very different from that of the summer is assumed, the forehead, 

 neck, throat and collar are white, speckled with black; the back of the head, the 

 nape and round the eyes black, with pale margins ; the breast and belly white, 

 variegated with black (the amount varying with the stage of moult) ; the shoulders 

 and margins of the wing greyish-black. 



In the following spring these Terns appear, after their second true moult, in 

 their first nuptial dress, and being about twenty months old, they have mated or 

 will soon do so, and are about to begin the duties of incubation. In the succeeding 

 autumn, when again on our shores on passage to a more southern latitude for the 

 winter, they are completing the change which will annually come over them 

 from their summer to their winter plumage. 



The food of the Black Tern consists of insects of all kinds which, like most 

 of the Marsh-Terns, it captures on the wing; of small fishes, or other aquatic life 

 which they plunge into the water to secure. They are constantly to be seen, as 

 Dr. Elliott Coues has graphically described in his " Birds of the North West," 

 "hovering over the marshes in airy troops, fluttering hither and thither like so 

 many Swallows or Night-Hawks, busily foraging for insects. These fall arrivals 

 were chiefly young birds; and of the old ones, none were seen wearing the 

 breeding dress, which, therefore, must be early laid aside. These Terns, like the 



