28 EOSEATE TEEN. 



Their flight is as interesting and deserving of notice as 

 that of the other species, and as you may have seen any 

 of these birds in days of yore, so will you see them still 

 and always, for nature changes not, but like her Maker, 

 and obedient to His laws, is the 's^me yesterday and to-day.' 

 'The sea is His and He made it' and 'all that therein is;' 

 and it and all that belong to it obey ever and always His 

 'perpetual decree.' 



These birds feed on small fish. 



The note is expressed by the word 'crake,' or 'eras,' uttered 

 in a hoarse and grating manner. 



This species makes its nest among the herbage there may 

 be on low banks of sand, or shingle, or upon the bare ground 

 itself. 



The eggs are two or three in number; the ground colour 

 yellowish cream white, pale brown, or yellowish olive green, 

 spotted and speckled with grey and brown. 



Male; length, one foot three inches and a half; bill, jet 

 black, slender, and slightly curved, the base vermilion red; 

 the inside of the mouth bright orange red. Iris, dark 

 brownish black. Forehead, crown, neck on the back, and 

 nape, jet black, the feathers on the latter parts elongated, 

 and terminating in a point; the sides of the head, under 

 the eyes, white. Chin, throat, and breast, white, the latter 

 with a tinge of rose-colour, from which the bird derives its 

 name, reminding an entomologist of the delicate moth called 

 the 'maiden's blush.' This transient colour, like the hopes of 

 early youth, 'too bright to last,' fades away with the life 

 of the bird, and I -hope that all the ladies who are my 

 readers will preserve the same pleasing attraction as long as 

 they live, remembering the maxim of Dr. Gregory, 'when 

 a woman ceases to blush, she loses the most powerful 

 charm of beauty:' so it is with the bird; its beauty is in 

 its life who then can wantonly shoot the graceful and 

 chaste-coloured Sea Swallow? 



Back, pale grey; greater and lesser wing coverts, pale grey; 

 primaries, dark hoary grey on the outer webs, paler on the 

 inner, verging to white at the tips. The shafts white, the 

 first one has the outer web dark hoary, or nearly black; 

 tertiaries, tipped with white. The tail, which is greatly forked, 

 and the outer feathers narrow, is very long, and extends two 

 inches, or in some specimens, nearly three inches beyond the 

 closed wings, its colour white or very pale grey; the tail 



