NODDY TEEN 403 



been recorded. From S. fuliginosa it may be distinguished 

 by its browner back and wings, longer white stripe over 

 the eye, greyish tint on the neck and less fully webbed feet : 

 the young bird, even as a nestling, has a white breast 

 and abdomen. S. lunata, with a slate-grey back, inhabits 

 Oceania (Saunders). 



NODDY TERN. Anous stolidus (Linnaeus). 

 Coloured Figures. Lilford, ' Coloured Figures,' vol. vi, pi. 13. 



This is another exceedingly rare wanderer from the 

 Tropics and the Southern Seas, which has touched on the 

 British coast on two occasions. 



About 1830, two specimens were obtained on the east 

 coast of Ireland between the Tuskar Eock, co. Wexford, and 

 Dublin Bay (Thompson, Nat. Hist. Irel., vol. iii, p. 308). 



One of these birds is preserved in the National Museum, 

 Dublin ; both specimens were adult. Mr. Ussher states 

 that there is a second Noddy Tern among the Irish birds in 

 the Belfast Museum, without a date, which may be the 

 second bird obtained in 1830. 



Sixty-seven years later, a record appeared in the ' Zoo- 

 logist' for 1897, p. 510, mentioning that a Noddy Tern 

 was said to have been shot about six years previously on 

 the -marshes of the Dee. 



The singular habit of the Noddies of building a rude nest 

 of large size, composed of dry grass, sticks, sea-wrack, fish- 

 bones, and other materials, on the top of a cocoa-nut or 

 other tree, is worthy of note. In some places, the nests are 

 on shelving rocks beneath overhanging cliffs, and more 

 rarely on patches of sand or grassy slopes. 



DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 



PLUMAGE. Adult male nuptial. Top of head, ' french ' 

 grey ; back of neck and throat, greyish-brown ; breast and 

 abdomen, dark brown ; back and scapulars, sooty-brown ; 

 wings still darker; from the eye to the base of the beak 

 there is a black stripe ; the tail, unlike that of other Terns, 

 is not forked, the central pair of feathers being the longest, 

 the marginal ones the shortest. 



