NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



39 



64. CASPIAN TERN (Frtom Brehm). 



Texas, in May. The late Mr. B. F. Goss found it nesting on the islands of Lake 

 Michigan. Large numbers of this species are said to breed on Pelican Island in the 

 Gulf of Mexico. The nests are mere hollows scooped in the dry sand, in which the 

 birds deposit two or three eggs. These vary from white to greenish-buff, spotted 

 and blotched with brown and lilac of different shades; broader and more elliptical 

 than those of the next species; size 2.66x1.77. 



65. ROYAL TERN. Sterna maxima Bodd. Geog. Dist. Tropical America 

 and warmer parts of North America, northward to Massachusetts, the Great Lakes 

 and California. West coast of Africa north to Tangiers. 



This handsome tern, next in size to the Caspian, breeds in large colonies along 

 the Atlantic coast, from New Jersey southward, depositing from one to three or four 

 eggs on the bare sand. It breeds abundantly along the coasts and on the marshes of 

 Florida. On some of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico it nests in immense numbers. 

 Very abundant on many of the lagoons and marshes of Southern Texas. Prof. Robert 

 Ridgway records the Royal Tern breeding on Cobb's Island, Va., in the first part of 

 July. In an area of about an eighth of an acre the eggs were so numerous that it 

 was almost impossible to walk through the nesting site without crushing a greater 



