NESTING-SERIES OF BRITISH BIRDS. 185 



principally of small fish, sand-eels, shrimps, and other Crustacea, and, like 

 the Arctic Tern, it may constantly be seen plunging headlong into the 

 sea in pursuit of its prey. The eggs, which vary greatly in colour and 

 markings, are two or three in number, and deposited in a shallow 

 depression in the sand or among shingle, dry seaweed, and short 

 herbage ; many pairs of birds sometimes nesting within a small area. 



Kent, June. 

 Presented by Colonel Willoughby Verner. 



No. 131. LITTLE TERN. (Sterna minuta.) 



This is the smallest of our Terns, and arrives early in May at its 

 breeding-stations on the flat sandy or shingly shores scattered along 

 the coasts of the British Islands. In September or early in October 

 it leaves for the south. About the end of May two or three stone- 

 coloured eggs, spotted with grey and brown, are laid in a slight hollow 

 scratched in the sand or among the shingle. In the colony from which 

 the birds and nests exhibited were taken the nests were more widely 

 scattered, being from five to ten yards apart. The egg were found on 

 the 12th of June and the young sixteen days later. 



Kent, June. 

 Presented by Colonel Willoughby Verner. 



No. 132. ARCTIC TERN, (Sterna macrura.) 



This Tern reaches England towards the end of April and departs 

 southward in the autumn, the migration lasting from August to 

 October. Large colonies breed on many of the islands off the coasts 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, but the species is most numerously 

 represented towards the north of Scotland, and, though it has been 

 found nesting by freshwater lakes in Ireland, its breeding-places are 

 usually by the sea. On migration it is generally distributed along our 

 shores. Two, or sometimes three, eggs, which vary greatly in colour 

 and markings, are laid in a shallow depression of the sand or among 

 shingle, sometimes on dead seaweed or in scanty herbage. 



Island of Mousa, Shetlands, June. 

 Presented by Lieut. G. H. Bruce, R.N., fy E. M. Nelson, Esq. 



