PLATE I 

 SANDWICH TERN. Sterna cantiaca 



June io//t, 1893. The nest depicted in the Plate was taken on a very inter- 

 esting expedition to the Fame Islands, off North Sunderland. We drove down 

 and engaged a boat from Cuthbertson to take us across. There was very 

 little wind, and we had to row most of the way, which was rather tantalising, 

 as it was a lovely bright day, and I wanted to do as much as possible 

 in the time. 



The first island we visited was the Inner Wide-open. On our way there 

 we had seen very few birds, only a few Gulls lazily swimming about or 

 basking in the sun, but as we approached we could see that the ground was 

 covered with hundreds of Terns, and when we landed they rose in thousands, 

 screaming in the air above our heads, and looking like a regular snowstorm. 

 We soon came upon a colony of Sandwich Tern nests on the short grass 

 among the huge masses of sea-campion and nettles near the middle of the 

 island. Some of these patches were more than two feet high, and formed 

 a splendid shelter for the birds; I counted seventy-two nests, all containing 

 eggs. The nests were for the most part mere hollows scraped in the short 

 turf, with a few straws or bits of dry grass to line them, many of them 

 without even these scanty preparations. Many of the nests were within a foot 

 or so of each other, and I obtained a photograph of about four square yards 

 of ground with six nests on it. In this colony we found two young birds 

 already hatched, and most of the eggs were chipped. 



We next examined a small colony of some twenty or thirty nests on the 

 shore of the same island ; here many of the nests were placed under the shelter 

 of the plant of sea-campion, which grew quite close down to high-water mark 

 among the sand. Most of the campion was in full flower, and made a lovely 

 background for the handsome eggs of the Sandwich Tern. 



The largest colony of this species on the Fame Islands was on a small, 

 low island, joined to the inner Wide-open at low tide by a narrow ridge of 

 the most slippery seaweed-covered boulders I have ever seen, during the crossing 

 of which I had two sudden and somewhat painful falls. On reaching the other 



