530 THE TERNS. 



As one approaches the rocky shores, large numbers of Terns 

 are seen scouring the surface of the water for food. Of all 

 the birds of our northern seas, these are the most elegant 

 and graceful. Mackerel Gulls, the fishermen call them, but, 

 though nearly related to them, they are no Gulls at all. 

 Bearing a resemblance in almost every point to these larger 

 and more bulky birds, they are of a much more slender 

 and delicate mould. Small and light-bodied, fork-tailed, 

 with slender pointed bill, long pointed wings, and small 

 webbed feet, they are the very ideal of a swimming bird of 

 flight. In no respect are they divers, but birds of the air, 

 which delight to sport on the surface of the waters. Their 

 color, too, is at once the most chaste and elegant. The soft 

 silvery-gray of the upper parts harmonizes finely with the 

 sea and sky. The lighter tints, or white of the under 

 parts, is pure as the snowy crests of foam; while the crowns 

 of glossy-black, and the bills and feet of coral-red, are 

 points of bright and pleasing contrast. What a powerful 

 leverage in the air have those long pointed wings, raising 

 the light body several inches at every stroke, and serving it 

 as a well-trimmed sail before the wind. How lightly this 

 bird drops upon the water for its food of tiny fishes, 

 being too light and airy to dive out of sight, and often 

 carrying its prey like a toy for some time, as if it fished for 

 sport rather than from hunger. Occasionally a group of 

 Terns will play together with a little fish, one seizing it in 

 the air as another drops it, and so passing it from bill to bill, 

 apparently for the sheer sport of catching it. As the Tern 

 flies low over the water, its downward-pointing bill moving 

 this way and that, it seems to be fishing in earnest; and 

 again it gyrates high in air, light, agile and airy as a Swal- 

 low, and so suggests the propriety of one of its names 

 the Sea Swallow. 



