SANDWICH TERN. 275 



nests were merely slight hollows in the bare sand, in diameter and 

 depth of the dimensions of a cheese-plate, and they and their contents 

 were so difficult to distinguish from the sand and fine gravel, that my 

 first discovery of the colony \vas to find that I had " put my foot in it/' 

 and broken a Sandwich Tern's egg. In the thick of them there must 

 have been on an average a nest per square yard. The birds, which were 

 not then sitting (it was the 3rd of June), soon discovered that then* colony 

 was being invaded, and flew in hundreds over us for a short time. In a 

 quarter of an hour we found the nest of an Eider Duck containing eggs, 

 several nests containing eggs of the Lesser Black-backed Gull, a Ringed 

 Plover's nest containing four eggs, two Oyster-catcher's nests (one with 

 three and the other with four eggs) , a dozen eggs of the Arctic Tern, and 

 we certainly saw more than two hundred eggs of the Sandwich Tern. 



In the year when I found them in still greater abundance they had chosen 

 the same locality for their colony ; but they were so much molested that they 

 soon deserted the place, and moved their quarters to the grass-covered 

 island adjoining, where their eggs were in such profusion that we inad- 

 vertently trod on many of them. In this locality many of the birds had 

 arranged the scattered bits of dead weed which were lying about into the 

 semblance of a nest. In addition to the krr-ee, which seems, in a more or 

 less modified form, to be common to all the Terns, the Sandwich Tern has 

 a note which may be represented by the syllables skerr-rek. Although 

 this Tern is preeminently a salt-water species, and generally breeds on out- 

 lying islands at some distance from the shore, it does not always do so. 

 In 1819 Naumann visited a colony on the island of Norderog, off the coast 

 of Schleswig, and estimated the numbers of Sandwich Terns breeding there 

 at upwards of half a million ; but on the west shores of the Black Sea I 

 have taken eggs from a small colony on an island in a lagoon some dis- 

 tance inland, and my friend Mr. Warren found a small colony in County 

 Mayo, on an island in a moorland tarn some miles from the sea and quite 

 unconnected with it (' Zoologist/ 1877, p. 101). 



The eggs of the Sandwich Tern are remarkably handsome, and are un- 

 rivalled in the boldness of the markings which they occasionally display. 

 The ground-colour varies from pure white to brownish buff; the com- 

 monest colour is creamy white, and the rarest white with a slight tinge of 

 olive. The colour of the surface-spots is dark brown, frequently approach- 

 ing black, whilst the underlying markings, which are generally very con- 

 spicuous, are pale slate-grey. The size, shape, and distribution of the spots 

 present almost endless variations. In some of the handsomest eggs a 

 fantastically shaped spot covers a third of the visible surface, and occa- 

 sionally eggs are met with in which the spots are delicate though short 

 streaks. They vary in length from 2*3 to 1*9 inch, and in breadth from 

 1'5 to 1*3 inch. The eggs of the Sandwich Tern are not easily confused 



