AVES LARID^E. I 79 



fawn color and marked in this area is a well defined dusky V, directed 

 to the point of feather. The head is decidedly buffy on the crown, and 

 each buff feather has a dusky streak giving the whole top of the head a 

 striped effect. There is a dusky patch in the auricular region extending 

 to the eye, a little below it but not in front. The bill is yellowish brown, 

 and the feet and legs brown. 



The primaries are darker than in adults, and have ivory white shafts. 



Nestlings. --(No. 5393, 9, P. U. O. C. Cobb's Island, Virginia, 26 

 July, 1 88 1, W. E. D. S.) Greyish buff above, with two lines of dusky spots 

 on the back, dusky spotting on the humeral portion of each wing and on 

 the back of the neck and top and sides of the head down to the eyes. 

 The lower parts and terminal point of the wing are ivory white. Bill, feet 

 and legs yellowish flesh color. This bird was but a day or two old and 

 still retains the "egg-tooth" at the extremity of the upper mandible. 



Geographical Range. Europe below 55 North Latitude in summer ; 

 temperate Asia and Southern China ; Malay Islands to Australia ; North 

 Africa and Egypt ; Eastern North America, regularly north to Capes of 

 the Delaware, occasional on Long Island, New York, and casual on the 

 Massachusetts coast. Very rare inland. On the South American Atlantic 

 Coast south to Southern Argentina, and rare or not recorded on the 

 Pacific except on the coast of Guatemala. 



The Gull-billed Tern was not noticed by the Princeton Expeditions to 

 Patagonia, and the descriptions are based chiefly on material in the 

 Princeton University Museum taken at Cobbs Island, coast of Virginia, 

 during 1881 by the writer. The birds were breeding at that point then 

 in vast numbers and varied but little if at all in their nesting habits from 

 the other species of Terns, S. maxima, S. hirundo and S. forsteri, that also 

 bred on the same island in great hosts. Each kind of Tern had its own 

 area for nesting and the several kinds of birds breeding did not affiliate. 



Three eggs are frequently laid, but the usual number is two, and some- 

 times a solitary egg is hatched. Little or no attempt at building a nest is 

 made ; a hollow in the sand dunes with a sparse lining of seaweed is the 

 greatest elaboration, but most birds are satisfied apparently with a shallow 

 depression on the ground. 



