402 AUDUBON 



heard the delightful song of the Ruby-crowned Wren 

 again and again; what would I give to find the nest of this 

 northern Humming- Bird ? We found the Fox-colored 

 Sparrow in full song, and had our captain been up to 

 birds' ways, he would have found its nest; for one started 

 from his feet, and doubtless from the eggs, as she flut- 

 tered off with drooping wings, and led him away from the 

 spot, which could not again be found. John and Co. 

 found an island with upwards of two hundred nests of the 

 Lams canus} all with eggs, but not a young one hatched. 

 The nests were placed on the bare rock; formed of sea- 

 weed, about six inches in diameter within, and a foot 

 without; some were much thicker and larger than others; 

 in many instances only a foot apart, in others a greater 

 distance was found. The eggs are much smaller than 

 those of Larus marimis. The eggs of the Cayenne Tern, 2 



1 Common Gull. This record raises an interesting question, which can 

 hardly be settled satisfactorily. Larus canus, the common Gull of Europe, 

 is given by various authors in Audubon's time, besides himself, as a bird of 

 the Atlantic coast of North America, from Labrador southward. But it is 

 not known as such to ornithologists of the present day. The American 

 Ornithologists' Union catalogues L. canus as merely a straggler in North 

 America, with the query, "accidental in Labrador?" In his Notes on the 

 Ornithology of Labrador, in Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila. 1861, p. 246, Dr. 

 Coues gives L. delawarensis, the Ring-billed Gull, three specimens of which 

 he procured at Henley Harbor, Aug. 21, 1860. These were birds of the 

 year, and one of them, afterward sent to England, was identified by Mr. 

 Howard Saunders as L. canus (P. Z. S. 1877, p. 178; Cat. B. Brit. Mus., 

 xxv. 1896, p. 281). This would seem to bear out Audubon's Journal;, 

 but the " Common American Gull " of his published works is the one he 

 calls L. zonorhynchns (i. e., L. delawarensis), and on p. 155 of the Birds of 

 Am., 8vo ed., he gives the very incident here narrated in his Journal, as 

 pertaining to the latter species. The probabilities are that, notwithstand- 

 ing Dr. Coues' finding of the supposed L. canus in Labrador, the whole 

 Audubonian record really belongs to L. delawarensis. E. C. 



2 This appears to be an error, reflected in all of Audubon's published 

 works. The Cayenne Tern of Audubon, as described and figured by him, is 

 Sterna regia, which has never been known to occur in Labrador. Audubon 

 never knew the Caspian Tern, S. tschegrava, and it is believed that this is 

 the species which he saw in Labrador, and mistook for the Cayenne Tern 

 as he might easily do. See Coues, Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 

 669, where the case is noted. E. C. 



