578 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 



confinement, and to become very tame ; at least I can 

 answer for one that I saw in the Zoological Gardens 

 last summer; it was so tame that it would take 

 small fish from the keeper's hands. In a wild state 

 the food consists of fish, small shell-fish, young 

 frogs, frog- spawn, also various sorts of insects, which 

 it catches very dexterously on the wing ; shrimps 

 seem rather a favourite food, as many as fifteen full- 

 sized shrimps having been found in the stomach of 

 one bird.* 



The Black Tern does not at present breed in any 

 part of our county, although it may have done so in 

 some parts before drainage and cultivation interfered 

 with it : it still, however, breeds in some parts of 

 England. The nests are said to be placed on tufts 

 of grass and rushes, sometimes in very wet situa- 

 tions, and barely raised above the level of the water : 

 they are made of flags and coarse grass, t 



This bird is rather larger than the Lesser but 

 smaller than the Common Tern. The adult birds 

 killed in April had the bill black ; the irides dusky ; 

 the whole of the head, neck, breast, belly and flanks 

 black ; the back and all the rest of the upper sur- 

 face smoky gre}^ lightest on the tail-coverts and tail, 

 which is forked, but not so much as in some of the 

 Terns ; the primary quills are much darker than the 



* Zoologist ' for 1866 (Second Series, p. 266). 

 f Yarrell, vol. iii., p. 530. 



