COMMON TERN. 19 



all mottled with sandy buff tips, before which is a distinct bar 

 of blackish. 



Range in Great Britain. I cannot do better than quote the 

 remarks of Mr. Saunders as to the distribution of the present 

 species in the British Isles. He writes : " Broadly speaking, 

 I believe that the Common Tern is the predominant species 

 along the shores of the Channel, and on the west side of 

 Great Britain as far north as the Isle of Skye; while on the 

 east it is found from Kent to the Moray Firth, and was the 

 only species that I observed near Nairn during August, 1885. 

 Continuing northwards, we find it yielding numerically to the 

 Arctic Tern, and showing a liking for fresh-water lochs or 

 estuaries rather than for exposed islands, though Mr. Harvie- 

 Brown states that in 1885 it was nesting abundantly at the west 

 end of the Pentland Skerries, while the eastern was occupied 

 by a colony of Arctic Terns. I have no conclusive evidence 

 of the occurrence of the Common Tern in the Shetlands, 

 Orkneys, or Outer Hebrides." Mr. R. J. Ussher says that 

 in Ireland it breeds on islands off the coasts of most of the 

 maritime counties, and also on lakes in Londonderry, Antrim, 

 Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh, Cavan, Longford, Roscommon, 

 Mayo, and Leitrim. 



Range Outside the British Islands. The Common Tern is found 

 breeding on the coasts, rivers, and inland lakes of nearly every 

 country in Europe, from Norway southwards, and the same 

 may be said of the whole of Central Asia to the highlands of 

 Cashmere and Thibet. In winter its range extends to India 

 and Ceylon, and the coasts of Western and Southern Africa. 

 It also inhabits temperate North America, breeding as far south 

 as Texas, visiting the West Indies in winter, whence it also 

 extends to Brazil. It is almost unrecorded from the Pacific 

 coast of North America, but an immature bird was shot by Mr. 

 Osbert Salvin at San Jose de Guatemala in December, 1862. 



Habits. The motions of this pretty bird in the air are full of 

 grace, and as it flies along the sea-shore at a little distance from 

 the land, it looks like a slender and graceful Gull, not in the 

 least adopting the swift motions of a Swallow, although " Sea- 

 swallow " is the name generally applied to it. The Common 



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