250 SHORT-TAILED TERN. 



dissection, and found both sexes alike in colour. Their sto- 

 machs contained grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, &c. but no fish. 

 The people on the seacoast have since informed me, that this 

 bird comes to them only in the fall, or towards the end of sum- 

 mer; and is more frequently seen about the mill-ponds, and 

 fresh water marshes, than in the bays; and add, that it feeds on 

 grasshoppers, and other insects, which it finds on the meadows 

 and marshes, picking them from the grass, as well as from the 

 surface of the water. They have never known it to associate 

 with the Lesser Tern, and consider it altogether a different bird. 

 This opinion seems confirmed by the above circumstances, and 

 by the fact of its greater extent of wing, being full three inches 

 wider than the Lesser Tern; and also making its appearance 

 after the others have gone off. 



The Short-tailed Tern measures eight inches and a half, from 

 the point of the bill to the tip of the tail, and twenty-three in- 

 ches in extent; the bill is an inch and a quarter in length, sharp 

 pointed, and of a deep black colour; a patch of black covers the 

 crown, auriculars, spot before the eye, and hind-head; the fore- 

 head, eyelids, sides of the neck, passing quite round below the 

 hind-head, and whole lower parts, are pure white; the back is 

 dark ash, each feather broadly tipt with brown; the wings a 

 dark lead colour, extending an inch and a half beyond the tail, 

 which is also of the same tint, and slightly forked; shoulders of 

 the wing brownish ash; legs and webbed feet tawny. It had a 

 sharp shrill cry when wounded and taken. 



This is probably the Brown Tern mentioned by Willough- 

 by, of which so many imperfect accounts have already been 

 given. The figure in the plate, like those which accompany it, 

 is reduced to one half the size of life. 



